I don't know if you've followed the news, but multiple governments have investigated, sued and fined Facebook. A quick Google indicates Facebook may end up paying 1.6 billion to the EU. The UK is doing an investigation too, with FB's impact on the Brexit referendum, as well as the whole Cambridge Analytica thing.
If you're thinking Facebook is getting away with it, you're wrong.
Of course, they're mainly getting fined; if that isn't harsh enough punishment then I don't know what to do next, that's dangerous territory.
Eventually fines can exceed revenue. There are also laws which allow board members to be directly liable, one of which (I have been told by trade-union-funded free legal aid) is the UK can go after board members who knowingly trade while insolvent — and demand they personally pay the debts.
Another (which is merely me reading the law and therefore probably doesn’t mean what I think it does) is prison time and equipment seizure if a business engages in copyright infringement commercially.
> that isn't harsh enough punishment then I don't know what to do next,
Split the business into smaller, independent ones. We've seen this before. There's enough services hiding inside FB that treating them like a monopoly is not a terrible idea.
1.) The US FTC really needs to update its working definition of a monopoly. “Consumer welfare” is normally shown via price and since free services are always free, it’s a tough thing to argue.
2.) Facebook owns about 70% of the social networking space, and Google and Facebook have a virtual lock on online advertising. Moreover, through its share buttons, Facebook has created a web full of data gathering - the sheer amount of information they have makes them very hard to compete against. Add in some regulatory issues in the Instagram and Whatsapp regulations and there’s an image of a company that’s just about impossible to compete against and that has used its clout to bring net harm to consumers.
They don't. I meant the similar approach of splitting them up would make both the regulation easier and self-regulation more incentivise - the same reason monopolies are split.
Facebook faces a small punishment or perhaps a public rebuke from some politician, someone from the company makes some lame statement about how they’re committed to do better, and then within two weeks another story comes out that demonstrates they don’t give a shit about their users.
Facebook has thumbed its nose at every single attempt to rein it in. The next steps are dangerous territory, but only for companies that behave in tremendously antisocial ways. It would be a net win for the rest of us.
Well, not much is changing after these kind of fines.
> A quick Google indicates Facebook may end up paying 1.6 billion to the EU.
A slap on the wrist, Facebook had 8 billion in revenue Q1 2019. But first let's see if they actually end up paying that.
It's just like how banks change after receiving massive fines for their role in the crisis, money laundering, transacting to sanctioned countries (they don't really, aside from some minor internal processes to prevent the exact same thing from happening again).
I don't think personal liability for white collar crime would be "dangerous." Someone either signed off on this, or negligently let it happen, and they should own it. Unfortunately, we'll probably just keep fining the company, and occasionally dragging Zuck in front of Congress for a bit of scolding and boilerplate apologizing.
If you're thinking Facebook is getting away with it, you're wrong.
Of course, they're mainly getting fined; if that isn't harsh enough punishment then I don't know what to do next, that's dangerous territory.