If Facebook gets a company-destroying fine for each act of wrongdoing, then it’s just a race where the first victims to prosecute get compensated. The slowpokes are screwed because the company has nothing left to pay out. This seems like a less fair system than one where fines are proportional to the value extracted or damages caused by the illegal conduct.
if we see it just like that then the breaking a law is just a calculated risk. And companies take calculated risks all the time, they will take it. There is my mind no way that facebook did not know that they are breaking the law.
if we allow that the law is just one parameter in the strategy, then the law is just a tax that you have to pay if you get caught.
If I was Facebook I would become quite uneasy by that.
Please, be specific.
But it's not like there's a lack of other issues to pick from [1], of course, one can insist on it all being "alleged", but let's be real here on hackernews: If it's technically feasible, then it's most likely being done, legalities are regularly just an afterthought to the actual product, particularly when it's about the monetization of user data.
A lot of that might be completely legal in the US with law-doctrines that undermine privacy expectations on a fundamental level [3], but the US isn't the whole world.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-tracking...