Oh no, less than an eighth of what they lost on their stupid metaverse project. I’m sure they’ll really feel the sting of this judgement and learn their lesson.
I wish they could do something like first offence,
10% of your annual revenue for the next 10 years goes to restitution efforts. Second offence, it’s 30% plus the govt. gets to set a CEO and the top management for a year. Thrd strike and the company is shut down and liquidated and the board members or any big stockholders never get to work in that industry again.
Why shouldn’t anyone with an investment in a corporation be culpable for any criminal behavior of the company they’ve invested in? That’s a step or two away from “I didn’t rape and murder that little girl, my LLC did.”
For fucks sake can we stop doing flat dollar amount fines on megacorps and do percentage of revenue - yes, revenue specifically, not profit, which can be gamed in tons of interesting ways - as punitive measures? Even astronomical 8 or 9 figure fines on companies with market caps in the ballpark of a trillion fucking dollars are effectively brushed off as the cost of doing business, and are ultimately inconsequential and entirely ineffective in terms of serving as a meaningful deterrent to the things they’re being fined for.
Meta is not going to give a single shit about this. This is a small speed bump, nothing more.
8 and 9 digit fines aren’t astronomical for them (which, I realize, is the point of your comment; I’m just saying this fine is even more a complete nothingburger). Even if you go into 10-figure fines, you’re still in the range where they make it back within the week.
You’ve got to get into the 11-digit range before it starts to hurt, and the 12-digit range before it starts to send a message.
But while I agree that we shouldn’t use profits, I’m not sure about revenue. That’s definitely better, but I think we should target the number they’re actively encouraged to pump as high as possible: market capitalization.
That specifically affects how much they can pull in investment and lending, which can keep them going even if they have zeroes or net-negatives at the bottom of their balance sheet; and it’s the number they’re incentivized to make look as big and beefy as possible, so trying to wiggle out of a fine by making that number smaller might well hurt them more than just paying the fine.
A lot of companies since Jack Welch oozed his way into executive roles have lived on market cap and vibes for years without turning a profit or making much in revenue at all. Sure, for younger companies, or newly-public ones, they might have a higher annual revenue than their market cap. Maybe we could say “revenue or capitalization, whichever is higher.”
In the case of Meta, their market cap is $1.5T on $220B of annual revenue. Fining them 15% of their market cap would erase a whole year of revenue; that would send a message.
For companies like this, punitive fines need to legitimately threaten to put the business under. Especially when it’s not their first offense. Fines totaling 15% of market cap, with the percentage doubling for each offense after the first, seem like they’d be effective in changing behavior; and if they don’t, then the company gets fined into nonexistence after two or three strikes. Problem solved either way.
Spot on. Until fines are levied as a non-negotiable percentage of global annual revenue—just like the EU attempted with GDPR and the DMA—these payouts are literally baked into their operational budgets as an expected line item. If breaking the law nets $5 billion and the fine is $500 million, that’s not a penalty; that’s a 90% profit margin on corporate crime.
If we lived in a more just world, Zuck, Musk, Altman and all the rest would be sitting before Congress getting a short break from their interminable stays in prison cells, explaining to the American people the ins and outs of the deliberately harmful products they created.
It’s nice to see that some of the states and a handful of countries, at least, are doing what the US Government never will and trying to hold these people accountable to some degree.
If you told me 30 years ago that I’d live to see the day when a CP generator or that a major company would hang its hat on distributing CP for a child rape ring are not only a reality, but one that anyone can access just for paying a subscription, I’m not sure I’d have believed it. But here we are.
Just another thought for my “This is why a good god doesn’t exist” file.
Exactly 21 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds of revenue for them. They literally already made that back since the ruling was made and they haven’t even cut a check yet. Cool, I’m sure that’ll totally change things.
I guess it depends on where in the world that person lives. In the state where I grew up, it’d be more like fining a McDonald’s employee $45, at least in terms of raw income. But if you’re talking about how punitive the measure feels, I think it’s more like a $5 fine. Meta budgets and lives in quarters and years; McDonald’s employees budget and live in hours and weeks.
Punchy & Cynical: "Fines aren’t punishments at that scale—they’re just the cost of doing business. When a penalty is wiped out in less than a single day’s revenue, it’s not a deterrent, it’s just a line item on an expense report.
The total in the case is $942m. It’s also not the only major lawsuit. It’s still not a lot but the people commenting should at least read the article before posting. Be better than Reddit
A vast majority of the money, totaling $420m [of the $567m figure], will go towards treatment of harms Meta’s platforms have already caused, through the funding of “appropriate clinical or other behavioral health programs and professionals,” according to the order.
In addition, Meta was ordered to:
Eliminate “like” counts for users under 18
Ban push notifications for such users every day between 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM and to ban such notifications during the typical school year between 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, except on weekends
Implement a mandatory usage limit for such users of 90 cumulative hours per month across Instagram and Facebook, or about three hours per day
I’m not sure how to position myself when a court orders a company to adapt their software in such specific ways. At the very least that should be a matter of a legislation with a broader analysis and considerations applied to the whole sector. Plus, maybe, consider parenting in the picture… Teenagers should maybe not be looking a notifications during the night.
“A New Mexico judge ordered the Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp parent company to pay another $567m for the way it has harmed children.”
Does this include the new news of them accepting CSAM and authrozing it to be sent on their platform as ads? What about for making glasses so pedophiles can secretly record children to later have AI undress for them? Maybe the part where Zuck had them actively work to get their AI to sex chat with little kids because that would mean the kids used his platform more?
No? Wait, this is just psychological harm to kids who use the platform? Man, the legal system is way beyond the goings on at Meta.
Oh no, less than an eighth of what they lost on their stupid metaverse project. I’m sure they’ll really feel the sting of this judgement and learn their lesson.
While technically true, the fine is actually around 0.7% of what they lost on metaverse (estimated 80 billion)
God, I love math nerds on Lemmy.
Thank you for this and Happy Friday.
How does on spend 80 billion on a metaverse? (And would it have been another 40 billion to add legs?)
Thanks! I guess the article I use for reference was from near the start of that debacle.
I wish they could do something like first offence, 10% of your annual revenue for the next 10 years goes to restitution efforts. Second offence, it’s 30% plus the govt. gets to set a CEO and the top management for a year. Thrd strike and the company is shut down and liquidated and the board members or any big stockholders never get to work in that industry again.
Also, (maybe some would argue first) might be that someone goes to prison over a thing like this.
Ding ding ding!
Ruin the life of thousands of kids, financial slap on your wrist.
Steal food for feeding your children, you sir ara a threat to humanity. Go to prison for 2 years to reform.
Like…all shareholders?
Why shouldn’t anyone with an investment in a corporation be culpable for any criminal behavior of the company they’ve invested in? That’s a step or two away from “I didn’t rape and murder that little girl, my LLC did.”
For fucks sake can we stop doing flat dollar amount fines on megacorps and do percentage of revenue - yes, revenue specifically, not profit, which can be gamed in tons of interesting ways - as punitive measures? Even astronomical 8 or 9 figure fines on companies with market caps in the ballpark of a trillion fucking dollars are effectively brushed off as the cost of doing business, and are ultimately inconsequential and entirely ineffective in terms of serving as a meaningful deterrent to the things they’re being fined for.
Meta is not going to give a single shit about this. This is a small speed bump, nothing more.
8 and 9 digit fines aren’t astronomical for them (which, I realize, is the point of your comment; I’m just saying this fine is even more a complete nothingburger). Even if you go into 10-figure fines, you’re still in the range where they make it back within the week.
You’ve got to get into the 11-digit range before it starts to hurt, and the 12-digit range before it starts to send a message.
But while I agree that we shouldn’t use profits, I’m not sure about revenue. That’s definitely better, but I think we should target the number they’re actively encouraged to pump as high as possible: market capitalization.
That specifically affects how much they can pull in investment and lending, which can keep them going even if they have zeroes or net-negatives at the bottom of their balance sheet; and it’s the number they’re incentivized to make look as big and beefy as possible, so trying to wiggle out of a fine by making that number smaller might well hurt them more than just paying the fine.
A lot of companies since Jack Welch oozed his way into executive roles have lived on market cap and vibes for years without turning a profit or making much in revenue at all. Sure, for younger companies, or newly-public ones, they might have a higher annual revenue than their market cap. Maybe we could say “revenue or capitalization, whichever is higher.”
In the case of Meta, their market cap is $1.5T on $220B of annual revenue. Fining them 15% of their market cap would erase a whole year of revenue; that would send a message.
For companies like this, punitive fines need to legitimately threaten to put the business under. Especially when it’s not their first offense. Fines totaling 15% of market cap, with the percentage doubling for each offense after the first, seem like they’d be effective in changing behavior; and if they don’t, then the company gets fined into nonexistence after two or three strikes. Problem solved either way.
Take all Facebook executives and decimate the group.
This is the only correct response.
Spot on. Until fines are levied as a non-negotiable percentage of global annual revenue—just like the EU attempted with GDPR and the DMA—these payouts are literally baked into their operational budgets as an expected line item. If breaking the law nets $5 billion and the fine is $500 million, that’s not a penalty; that’s a 90% profit margin on corporate crime.
You know what would really make them take notice? Prison time.
You can’t imprison a company
If we lived in a more just world, Zuck, Musk, Altman and all the rest would be sitting before Congress getting a short break from their interminable stays in prison cells, explaining to the American people the ins and outs of the deliberately harmful products they created.
It’s nice to see that some of the states and a handful of countries, at least, are doing what the US Government never will and trying to hold these people accountable to some degree.
If you told me 30 years ago that I’d live to see the day when a CP generator or that a major company would hang its hat on distributing CP for a child rape ring are not only a reality, but one that anyone can access just for paying a subscription, I’m not sure I’d have believed it. But here we are.
Just another thought for my “This is why a good god doesn’t exist” file.
They elected a known child rapist. They have a looooong way to go before holding leaders accountable for anything.
This is excellent. Thank you so much.
I wanna see executives in orange jump suits, please and thank you.
567,000,000 ÷ 228,248,000,000 × 365 × 24 = 21.76
Exactly 21 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds of revenue for them. They literally already made that back since the ruling was made and they haven’t even cut a check yet. Cool, I’m sure that’ll totally change things.
Revoke their corporate charter for half a year so they can’t do business in the country. That’ll make em sit up in their seats.
Why is new mexico the only one holding them to account for the damage against our society?
Not even a full day. That’s like fining a person who works at McDonald’s like $75
I guess it depends on where in the world that person lives. In the state where I grew up, it’d be more like fining a McDonald’s employee $45, at least in terms of raw income. But if you’re talking about how punitive the measure feels, I think it’s more like a $5 fine. Meta budgets and lives in quarters and years; McDonald’s employees budget and live in hours and weeks.
Great way to bring it down to earth, though.
Punchy & Cynical: "Fines aren’t punishments at that scale—they’re just the cost of doing business. When a penalty is wiped out in less than a single day’s revenue, it’s not a deterrent, it’s just a line item on an expense report.
The total in the case is $942m. It’s also not the only major lawsuit. It’s still not a lot but the people commenting should at least read the article before posting. Be better than Reddit
I’m not sure how to position myself when a court orders a company to adapt their software in such specific ways. At the very least that should be a matter of a legislation with a broader analysis and considerations applied to the whole sector. Plus, maybe, consider parenting in the picture… Teenagers should maybe not be looking a notifications during the night.
That’s peanuts to these fuckers.
Oh no, whatever will they do without that specific drop of water?
Probably fire a few people so they can maintain their giant bonuses for executives
Only 567m?
For one state, you’ve got 50, right? Precedent like this declares open season. Suck it Meta.
So pennies on the dollar then?
EDIIT: $567 million is .03% of Meta’s current net worth of 1.51 trillion, or 1% of its 2026 revenue of $56 billion.
Millions? It should be some billions of dollars.
while selling those pervert glasses, that potentially be used to make CP through AI.
How very imaginative of you
“A New Mexico judge ordered the Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp parent company to pay another $567m for the way it has harmed children.”
Does this include the new news of them accepting CSAM and authrozing it to be sent on their platform as ads? What about for making glasses so pedophiles can secretly record children to later have AI undress for them? Maybe the part where Zuck had them actively work to get their AI to sex chat with little kids because that would mean the kids used his platform more?
No? Wait, this is just psychological harm to kids who use the platform? Man, the legal system is way beyond the goings on at Meta.
"Oh no, my pocket change!"
Oh please, he’s so rich he doesn’t spend his own money.
So I guess Zuckerberg will be donating a million bucks or so to trump’s “campaign” in the very near future. trump can be bought relatively cheaply.
Not enough but good news is good news, if only for the optics. This is making mainstream news so good.
this is like $5 to them
Honestly meta should be fined $565 Billion dollars
Where does the money go?
trump’s coffers
upgrading the android body of zuckerberg.
Let’s see how the party of “protect the kids” responds to this one…
Paid for by the us government lol.
Dang it, Mark!
When people without billions distribute CP, they get thrown in prison for the rest of their lives.
I’m thinking if we threw Zuck in prison for the rest of his life, the social media landscape would shift overnight.