Big for Texas, not for Meta.

It’s under 5 hours of GDP for Texas. It’s a big fine, but not a huge deal for either party.

So what's the point? If neither party is really affected by a penalty (no diacernible benefit or loss to either), then is it all just performative?

Maybe I just answered my own question.

Things don’t need to be huge deals to influence behavior or be a net gain.

I bet you’ve taken a shortcut to save less than 1h for example.

I think time is different because it's finite. I admit I'll still opt for store brand to save a few bucks even making an engineering salary. But I'll also do something "illegal" (like parking at a metered spot without paying) to save time or otherwise do what I want and just deal with whatever financial cost incurred if I know it won't break me.

A saying I've heard is that if the punishment for a crime is financial, then it is only a deterrent for those who lack the means to pay. Small business gets caught doing bad stuff, a $30k fine could mean shutting down. Meta gets caught doing bad stuff, a billion dollar fine is almost a rounding error in their operational expenses.

You also have to ask "how much is the specific thing in the lawsuit worth to Meta?"

I don't know how much automatically opting everyone in to automatic photo tagging made Meta, but I assume its "less than 100% of their revenue".

Barring the point of contention being integral to the business's revenue model or management of the company being infected with oppositional defiant disorder a lawsuit is just an opportunity for some middle manager + team to get praised for making a revenue-negative change that reduces the risk of future fines.

Work like that is a gold mind; several people will probably get promoted for it.

I see this as roughly equivalent to amortized big O complexity. If I push to a vector repeatedly, sometimes I will incur a significant cost O(n) of reallocation, but most of the time it's still O(1).

Similarly, if Meta violates the law, and is infrequently fined a small fraction of their revenue by a small number of governments, in general it will not be a big deal for them.