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However, the long awaited punishment, to which Facebook is well prepared, is unlikely to reduce the pockets of the social media giant. But it will probably also impose additional restrictions on society and additional scrutiny.
Facebook and the FTC refused to comment on the vote by 3 votes to 3, which went against party lines – Republicans for support and Democrats for the opposition to the settlement.
For most companies, a fine of 5 billion US dollars would be disabling. But Facebook is not the most business. Last year, its turnover rose to nearly 50 billion euros. Analysts expect this year about 61 billion euros. As a one-time expense, the Company will also be able to exclude the amount of its earnings-adjusted results – the earnings figure examined by investors and financial badysts.
"This closes a dark chapter and places it in the rearview mirror with Cambridge Analytica," said another badyst. "Investors still feared that the fine would not be approved, and now Wall Street can breathe a little easier."
Facebook had reserved $ 3 billion for a potential fine and, in April, he planned to pay up to $ 5 billion. However, while Wall Street – and probably Facebook's executives – may breathe a little easier, the fine alone has not appeased critics on Facebook, including advocates for life private and lawmakers.
"The $ 5 billion penalty is barely a wrist shot, not even a slap," said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat. "Such a financial punishment for deliberate and blatant illegality is a radical change for a company that earns tens of billions of dollars every year."
With others, he wondered if US regulators would force Facebook to make significant changes to users' data management. This may include limitations on the information collected about people and how they target ads. At present, it is unclear what measures the regulation includes beyond the fine.
Privacy advocates have been calling on regulators to use Facebook for a decade – but since then, the money, power, and influence of society at the government level have steadily increased.
"The privacy regulations are broken," said Nuala O. Connor, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Although heavy after-the-fact fines count, which is far more important, they are strict and clear rules to protect consumers."
The CDT is pushing for federal legislation on online privacy in the United States.
Some have called on regulators to hold Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally responsible for privacy violations, but this is probably not the case.
Since the Cambridge Analytica debacle erupted a year ago and prompted the FTC's investigation, Facebook is committed to doing a better job in correcting the data of its users. This scandal revealed that a data mining company affiliated with Donald Trump's 2016 campaign had inaccurately accessed confidential information from 87 million Facebook users via a quiz application. The issue was whether Facebook was violating a 2011 agreement with the FTC regarding user privacy.
Other leaky controls have also appeared since. Facebook has acknowledged giving large technology companies such as Amazon and Yahoo extensive access to users' personal data, thereby exempting them from the usual privacy rules. And he collected call logs and SMS from phones running Google's Android system in 2015.
Wall Street seemed unfazed by the fine. Shares of Facebook closed at $ 204.87 on Friday and rose 24 cents after normal hours. The stock is up more than 50% since January. In fact, Facebook's market value has increased by 57 billion since the publication of its April earnings report, which announced how much it expected a fine.
The fine, however, does not mean the end of Facebook's problems. The company faces many other investigations that may result in fines and, more importantly, the possibility of limiting data collection. The Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland, whose office oversees the European regulation on privacy protection, undertakes nearly a dozen separate investigations.
Independent Sunday
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