Facebook FTC's $ 5 Billion Fine Is An Embarrassing Joke

The stock of Facebook went up after the announcement of a record $ 5 billion fine imposed by the FTC for various privacy breaches has erupted today.

What, like New York Times & # 39; Mike Isaac points out that the real story is this: the US government has spent months proposing a punishment for Facebook's long list of bad behavior related to privacy, and the best it can be. could do was so weak that the share price of Facebook had increased.

From other points of view, this $ 5 billion fine is a big problem, of course: it's the biggest fine in the history of the FTC, well above the $ 22 million fine imposed on Google. 2012. And $ 5 billion is a lot, of course. . It's just that, like anything that comes into contact with the scale of Facebook, it's still too small: Facebook generated $ 15 billion in revenue in the last quarter and $ 22 billion in revenue. profit last year.

The FTC's biggest fine in the country's history is roughly one month's turnover for Facebook, and the company has been so successful in telegraphing investors that the share price has gone up.

Here's another way of saying it: The biggest FTC fine in US history has increased Mark Zuckerberg's net worth.

What lesson would you to learn from this? Someone would he want?

This is the real problem: fines and penalties are only effective if they have negative consequences for bad behavior. But Facebook has done nothing but behave badly since its inception and has only been hit by authority figures and rewarded by the market. After all, Facebook was already under a previous FTC consent decree for privacy breaches imposed in 2011, and this did not seem to prevent the company's recent scandals from occurring. As Kara Swisher wrote, you must add another zero to this fine to make sense of it.

The regulation contains other elements, such as Tony Romm at the Washington Post reported: Facebook will have to document how it plans to use the data before launching new products, and leaders such as Zuckerberg will have to promise the company to protect the privacy of its users. But none of these conditions will prevent Facebook from collecting and sharing data, and they will certainly not affect Facebook's incredibly lucrative advertising market, which relies on this data.

And as Peter Kafka points out, regulatory compliance costs are also not a deterrent: Facebook will pay the fine, will assume the cost of some additional lawyers and public relations representatives to ensure compliance with the rules. this new order and will continue the activities of, uh, issue a new world currency while exposing underpaid contractors to horrendous videos of people murdered for $ 15 an hour.

Members of Congress Already Oppose These Rules – Representative David Cicilline Speaks of "Christmas Present" While Senator Ron Wyden said the FTC "failed miserably". Senator Richard Blumenthal said the decision is "inadequate" and "historically hollow", and Senator Mark Warner said "It's time for Congress to act."

There will certainly be many more statements and convictions from the FTC in the coming weeks, when the settlement goes through a review by the Department of Justice and inevitable approval. But words are just words, really. If our government holds Facebook responsible for its irresponsible and irresponsible behavior, it must in fact make and so that Mark Zuckerberg learns that acts have consequences.