Re:If a $5B Fine Is Chump Change, How Do You Punish Facebook?
by luckylion on Saturday April 27, 2019 @10:34AM
(#19765730)
> But I don’t understand why, on the basis of Cambridge Analytica, the company should be fined out of existence.
I'm with you that it shouldn't kill them, but it needs to really hurt so they take better care (and not do illegal stuff in the future). I don't think something like this does. It's annoying, yes.
Consider a similar scenario where a food or drug manufacturer doesn't check their raw materials and poisons a bunch of people. Should their supplier make sure that they don't sell them poisonous stuff? Absolutely. Do they themselves bear the responsibility to make sure that nothing bad happens? I believe so, so by skipping their own checks to save a few bucks, it's their fault. And you can be quite sure that in such a case, there won't just be a small fine - there will be a fine, and production halt with a lengthy and expensive re-certification, because the processes they had in place are obviously flawed. Yeah, FB doesn't produce food, so those regulations don't apply to them. I don't really subscribe to the theory, but there are many who believe that they have the power to sway elections - that certainly puts them in the same ballpark as the company that provides your aspirin or pizza sauce.
I'm with you that it shouldn't kill them, but it needs to really hurt so they take better care (and not do illegal stuff in the future). I don't think something like this does. It's annoying, yes.
Consider a similar scenario where a food or drug manufacturer doesn't check their raw materials and poisons a bunch of people. Should their supplier make sure that they don't sell them poisonous stuff? Absolutely. Do they themselves bear the responsibility to make sure that nothing bad happens? I believe so, so by skipping their own checks to save a few bucks, it's their fault. And you can be quite sure that in such a case, there won't just be a small fine - there will be a fine, and production halt with a lengthy and expensive re-certification, because the processes they had in place are obviously flawed. Yeah, FB doesn't produce food, so those regulations don't apply to them. I don't really subscribe to the theory, but there are many who believe that they have the power to sway elections - that certainly puts them in the same ballpark as the company that provides your aspirin or pizza sauce.