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It might pay the interest on US national debt for a week.Where does the money go from these fines? Just into the government's general coffers for future spending?
Where does the money go from these fines? Just into the government's general coffers for future spending?
We live in a crazy world when a corporation can simply shrug off a $5 billion fine, and its shareholders rejoice because the amount was so 'low.'
Where does the money go from these fines? Just into the government's general coffers for future spending?
Definitely not to the victims of the crime, which is where it should go.
How inconvenient - the costs of doing business
So long as "regulators" persists in punishing organisations rather than decision makers for behaviour of this sort, nothing will change.
If Zuckerberg and some of Facebook's senior personnel were jailed for a year or two we might see some genuine attempts to respect people's privacy - fining either them or the relevant organisation can just be put down to "expenses".
It was insane, the share price rose 1.8% which probably wasn't far off increasing the value by the same amount as the fine.
If this isn't an indication a corporation is too big, I don't know what is. I understand that the size and scale of their operations may be directly beneficial to users in terms of what functionality they can obtain, however, the fines for this sort of morally reprehensible behaviour still have to be a genuine punishment - 10% NOT 1% of market cap. The shareholders must feel the punishment directly, so that they are driven to ensure the corporation they own behaves properly in the future.
It is time for society to decide whether they and others like them need to be broken up, in the same way and for similar reasons that the Bell System was (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System).
Social media is a platform of communication, imagine if you all of a sudden had your phone cut off because you said something that somebody found offensive somewhere in the world.
If Facebook didn't exist, the censorship that they could be argued to impose wouldn't be an issue . . .I'm less interested in the Privacy, more interested in their control over free-speech and censoring certain political viewpoints that they deem unsuitable.
If Facebook didn't exist, the censorship that they could be argued to impose wouldn't be an issue . . .
. . . which might be a damned good thing.