I never hear where those fines go and what is ultimate the outcome of them.
So, ok - company A gets fined N millions of dollars.
You never hear anything like:
“Googles $600k fine was used to finance school supplies for 3 million students! Yay!”
Im not being flippant - in just pointing out that there is never(?) any followup as to what happens to said “fines for transgression”
The fine is due to personal privacy damages against the users of said companies services.
IMO - the freaking fines should go directly to the users. Not some opaque and potentially mis-managed “general budget.
An analogy would be to say - tesla had a bug in thei software which caused 1,000 teslas to act “not as regulated, designed or intended” so the government is going to fine teala 600k and allocate that wherever they want.
The actual users of the product/service are the ones that need reimbursement - not some opaque “generl budget”
Thats why i hate these fines.
Its false justice for thise actually affected by the issue for which the company is being fined for.
Let me give tou a concrete personal example:
The 2008 housing mortgage crash.
I go to pay my mortgage one day - and the payment option is missing. I cant pay my mortgage on my $480,000 (put 100k down) home in San Jose.
Long story short - after 9 montha of nefarious dodging of to whom the “sold my mortgage to” (me: credit 780 - never missed a payment nor late)
Made $175,000/ year at the time , wife made $150,000z
So the just foreclose on me. Multiple times telling me “obamas going to fix it”
Demand $75,000 in three days or else. So i get foreclosed upon.
Sue.
But instead added to a class action suit against this.
I “win”
They pay me out my settlement: $1,100.08
I have never recovered from that and this is why i think these things are bullshit and i rage about it to this day.
Do you know that that home zillows for (i stand corrected - last tome i zillowed it it was at 1.39 million - but that was like two years ago. It sold last month for 790k
Still has all my remodels that i did at forclosure time. The custom capiz cabinets i had specially built and shipped from the philippines for $11,000 my bamboo floors my lighting the only thing in that house i didnt do was the green shower and the wainscoting in the closet my tv wall my downstairs bathroom.
Fuck these guys.
This is what created the "I'll sue you" for everything mentality in the US. It's peak individualism and I'll be happy if we can keep this american cancer culture out of Europe for as long as possible.
Also, it goes to the end user, building roads, schools and other infrastructures. Even an half assed public budget is still better for me than some random dude getting half a millions euros out of nowhere. This guy didn't lose any money and didn't get any physical damage, why would giving him $600k be a truer sense of justice ?
You seem very angry about a broken system that doesn't have anything to do with the article btw. I don't think you could ever end up in a situation like yours in Europe, there are too many safeguards and regulations, but I guess that's too close to """communism""" for people across the pond