What makes it outlandish?
Look at precedent[1]. Glyphosate and J&J talc are among the biggest awards (to be fair: they were settlements), and those allege that the defendants' products actually caused cancer -- actually killed people.
The tobacco settlement for 46 states was $206 billion. Again, for causing millions of deaths. New Mexico is 0.62% of the U.S. population, so less than $2 billion would be New Mexico's share of that.
Compare that to this 25 billion for the crime of illicitly letting political advertisers access too much of the interest data that Facebook users provided to Facebook?
The only way this penalty makes any sense is if you believe that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the most heinous crime ever perpetrated by any company in U.S. history.
No. Fines are punitive and intended for deterrence. You're thinking of reimbursements (cost recovery and damages). The latter is intended to be proportional to real world harm/costs, the former need not be.
A traffic law violation could cause no harm, but you'll still get fined for it.
Some jurisdictions even impose fines based on how deep the defendants' wallet is, calculating the amount that might serve as appropriate deterrent/punishment based on their financial situation. Fining a billionare $50,000 for literring will still not serve as a deterrent, but doing the same to a minimum wage worker would unfairly financially ruin them.
This is about emotion and resentment about social media. I get it. I hate social media too. But it's absurd to levy such a fine for petty data misuse - especially considering this is just going to pad state coffers. The state wasn't harmed here! If you take the position that New Mexicans will never be the same again, then that $11,737 per New Mexico resident should go to the residents. All of it. Write them checks.
You seem to assume that money being transferred from Meta's into New Mexico state coffers is worse than burning it. Also did the people of New Mexico not elect their government?
Additionally, what instance of "giving people cancer" is not being pursued because resources were allocated to this instead?
Finally, fines must be high enough to have the intended effect of deterrence. If only absurdly high fines work, which appears to be the case in Meta's instance, then absurdly high they must be. If they continue that pattern of behavior while ignoring every fine, then the only alternatives would be either shutting Meta down for being a criminal enterprise and putting people behind bars, or throwing the idea of "rule of law" out the window. A high fine is doing them a favor.
I do believe that. I'd say that about any state or federal government though. Think of all the good that money could do in the hands of people. At least if you burned it, it would offset inflation for a few days.
> shutting Meta down for being a criminal enterprise
Again, interesting to suggest that this is the other fair outcome here for advertising shenanigans, but not for the many corporations who outright kill people every day like health insurers.
If we're starting out from different axioms, there's really no point for us to argue about about policy and outcomes. We'll have to align our assumptions first.
> At least if you burned it, it would offset inflation for a few days.
Yes. And keeping it in Meta's coffers might ultimately redirect economic output towards maintenance of Zuck's yachts.
> Again, interesting to suggest that this is the other fair outcome here for advertising shenanigans, but not for the many corporations who outright kill people every day like health insurers.
You're conflating moral and legal arguments and read things into people's comments that were never said - only as a setup for some whataboutism. For your second post in a row.
There's an interesting discussion here, but this is not how to have it.
TL;DR: I think he already put it this way, but if Meta gets hit with $25B for ad-data tricks then why are we fining social media far more aggressively per user than companies that literally gave (and continue to give) people cancer? The answer is partly in my first paragraph but I still do not find it particularly reassuring.
And I acknowledge that a fine of a very manageable sum turns a violation of a law into a cost of doing business, like the proverbial rich man's parking ticket just looks to him like a really not-bad deal for a plum parking spot. So, yes, it's tricky to use fines to rein in businesses. But it's still very odd/suspect that Meta is fined 25 billion dollars for this, while Equifax, which lost the SSNs and financial data of every household in America, and they paid a settlement of 575 million dollars. Why? Because Meta's unpopular. That's the only reason.
A fine that amounts to 1/5 of the entire GDP of New Mexico, or 75% of its government's annual budget, seems farcical to me. Unless of course New Mexico will give a one-time tax rebate equalling to 75% of tax revenue to its people, in which case it's still farcical, but at least it's helping people.
And they reduced it, so we're already admitting that the penalty is based on vibes and not simply an unbiased calculation. So it's just the whims of this particular judge that says the right number is $25,000,000,000.00 and not $250,000,000,000.00. Sounds like that number is no more justified than $25,000,000.00 or $25.
We are? I haven't read the judgement and I'm pretty sure you haven't either. You're making a pretty big assumption here.
"Sounds like that number is no more justified than $25,000,000.00 or $25."
The penalty was written into law. That's what justified it.
The irony is that you're saying the award is based on "vibes" or feelings but, honestly, that's all I've been seeing from critics of the penalty. No one can explain what's wrong with it from a legal perspective. It's just been a lot of "it's a really high number!" and "they're making numbers up!" from people who can't point to anything from the decision itself.
In math terms, Concrete × vibes = vibes. Feel free to prove me wrong.
The best part is the clause you tell me to reference is extensively explained in the judgement. That you haven't read.
If you fine a billionaire with a two dollars fine, this will have ... what impact exactly?
No, that's wrong. Fines are also in proportion to how much wealth the company has. You totally did not mention this in your post - I wonder why.
And it should go for every company of a similar size. Apple falsely advertised all the capabilities of Siri that they hadn't even successfully built, and never did. That should have been 25 billion dollars too.
Would those be stupid? Because if those are stupid, I think it has to be because whatever data privacy violation they did was worse than allowing someone to get their feelings hurt, or messing up traffic for 15 minutes.
And my point is that it is worse than those things; but it's not worse than giving millions of Americans cancer.
There is plenty of precedent for Cambridge Analytica-related fines. California got $50 million. 40-ish states combined got something like $460 million. New Mexico will get paid in the same range.
Yeah maybe in movies