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Comment by jonahb | Hacker News Reader

The market cares. It had already priced in a fine, possibly one larger than 3B. The reduction in uncertainty -- knowing the magnitude of the fine -- also positively affects the stock price. If the fine were cancelled tomorrow, you can be sure that, all else equal, Facebook's market cap would jump by 3B.

The fines need to be bigger.

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They need to increase the fine substantially for each repeated violation. After a few violations its going to be hard to justify a $50B fine to investors.

Totally agree, at the third time there is really no excuse anymore to not bump this up to maybe even threaten the existence of an organization or it changes its behavior.

For FB this is the nth time. I don't even know what n is anymore.

Neither do any of the regulators...

No, they need to adjust the first-time penalties for deterrence. $50B at a minimum, because it has to hurt their stock price when they do these things. Or hey, how about a year of revenue.

The fines also needs to be fair, not fixed cost. I think the EU has got the percentage-of-revenue approach right. A million dollar fine for a small company can be death-sentence while for a big player it is lose change, that is not fair.

I agree that percent of revenue is a much better metric to base these kinds of fines off of, but not without reservations -- a small company with high sales revenue but razor thin margin could get killed by a % revenue fine; this seems unfair to the little guy.

On the other hand, if the fine is % income or anything but % gross receipts, then of course the system will be gamed endlessly by accountants and lawyers to show the smallest possible net number. The end result might be worse than a fixed fine. So % of revenue it is.

> So % of revenue it is.

GDPR, 4% of Global revenue and your Directors can be barred from operating in the EU.

The fines should be 100 billion. Make them itch a little.

Yes. The fine needs to take into account how much Facebook would stand to lose if the case went to trial and they were found guilty, setting a precedent for future actions against them. That seems like it could result in near-unlimited liability for Facebook. The fine for avoiding an admission of wrongdoing should be set equal to the expected value of all that liability, based on an estimate of the probability of winning the case.

There's no way the government has the same resources as Facebook to make that case. The FTC loses when it goes to Court. Facebook would have more lawyers on the case than the FTC has paralegals total.

And that guarantees victory? Interesting judicial system you have, over there.

Where is that fundamentally different in other countries for very large (especially domestic) players?

Will Germany actually take a swing at Volkswagen? Will Germany try to go after those that defrauded the government with cum-ex-trades?

Everybody vs banks regarding the Libor scandal? Sure, they paid some fines, but the fines were far below the damage done, and it appears to still have been a good investment for the banks, that is: all in all they made money, fines included.

Crime does pay at that level.

That's not something US specific, I believe.

I was referring to the fact that you can outpay your opponent.

Yes, large corporations can get away with much more in other countries as well, but rarely by outpaying their opponents.

Disagree. The money is very important to creating and maintaining the position they sit in.

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