> Ah, I was looking at it from a system level. Make it a highly lopsided financial cost for a company to use data that hasn't been consented to, and the huge number of people keeping tabs on them would make it financially ruinous for a company to try and skirt the rules.

So you want to make it so only rich companies can do this? Or is the idea to make it so that only the juiciest targets end up becoming victims, because their consent doesn't matter? If you care about data privacy and are looking at it at a "system level", why in the world would you not just completely outlaw nonconsensual data collection? And force a company that violates the law to heavily pay and remove all traces of the data so that it's closer to "infinite cost", instead of permitting them to just keep everything and treat the $100 fine as a cost of business?

> End outcome is the same - peoples privacy already has a price. That price is just currently only represented by FAANG profits.

Same as what? Making it outright illegal? No it's not, with your scheme you're explicitly giving them permission without people's consent, instead of preventing them from doing it in the first place.

In the US the civil courts dole out rulings requiring the injured party be paid by the offender when enough evidence has been presented. It’s not perfect-money can’t right all wrongs and the valuations can be problematic-but it can act as a counterbalance. Making it a law would mean a company would risk losing their ability to continue as a business following a successful conviction. In the US this has been turned into rarely indicting companies as the government doesn’t want to destroy whole companies that way and give other companies undue market power, or something.

Feels like an area that could be handled better.