Oh boy would I be thrilled if that happens.

Nothing of value will really be lost, replacements would spring up super quickly and I'd like to think that we would have learned enough about the downsides of the current social-network systems for the next generation to avoid the pitfalls and hopefully make something much better.

I wish US corporate laws had teeth, it's only the criminal ones that apply to every day citizens that do.

Are there any instances of otherwise financially sound major global corporations being dissolved as a result of EU fines / regulatory action? I suspect if the rubber hits the road in this situation, FB would prevail.

Not dissolved, but the EU have shown themselves to be willing to tackle the tech behemoths, as Google recently found with their EUR2.4Bn fine https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/google-brac...

That's insane. What's a "single" infraction? It doesn't distinguish between revenue and profit? 4% of global revenue could be more than the total of all profit and salaries.

> 4% of global revenue could be more than the total of all profit and salaries.

That’s the point. Google recently came of comparatively well with a 4 billion EUR fine, but 2 more fines of the same height for Google are expected.

The only way to force a company to follow a law is to make infringing the law more expensive than any profit you could ever dream of making from it.

"Profit" can be kept at zero essentially forever. Revenue is much harder to hide.

> What's a "single" infraction?

There are lots of things that constitute an infraction: the GDPR aims to broadly protect EU citizen rights. Some infractions can be per individual harmed.

Then they better do their best not to infringe the privacy rights of EU citizens then, eh?

Yes.

And European courts consider intent carefully. Mere aggregation of personal data isn’t necessarily a violation, but using it commercially almost certainly is.