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Comment by underseacables | Hacker News Reader

Is there any recourse that would force Facebook to comply?

I am not sure.

If this was some random small company you could imagine that the regulators have bigger fish to fry, but in this case this is the #1 offender worldwide when it comes to privacy - if there are "fish to fry", this is the biggest fish, and the regulator's lack of serious action (such as the million-dollar fines everyone is fear-mongering about) suggests they're either incompetent or complicit.

Maybe suing your local privacy regulator in local court is the next step? Open Rights Group is taking that approach in the UK: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/privacy-organ...

The EU courts could go after any assets/companies associated with Facebook operating in the EU and basically dissolve them as bankrupt if they fail to pay their increasing fines.

Another venue is to go directly after Facebooks European customers and make it illegal for any company to pay Facebook for ads targeting European customers.

In the end this would force Facebook to abandon Europe and lead to local competitors taking over that market weakening Facebooks network effects in non-US markets.

this is an escalation and delaying game and so far facebook is banking on some political saving grace that probably wont come as well privacy is considered an human rights by European courts and not something an simple short term political majority can simply erase because it's convenient for some US megacorp.

I would expect that the US government would apply diplomatic pressure to prevent such outcomes as it would lead to copycat measures.

The question here is does the US have any leverage left as it's not like the American diplomatic service haven't tried pressure European regulators and courts to water down the enforcement of European privacy regulation since it was enacted.

If the showdown happens in the highly independent German court system, i just don't see how American political pressure is going to stop the slow but steady path of escalating measures likely to be taken if Facebook refuses to comply with court rulings.

I wonder if they could put an arrest warrant out for Mark Zuckerberg for something like contempt of court?

Fine them 4% of their annual revenue.

80% of revenue would teach them better

Sucking up 4% of revenue is catastrophic enough (that is probably double digits of profit). The goal of fines isn't to make be an extinction level event for a company.

In this case, plenty of us won't be shedding any tears.

> The goal of fines isn't to make be an extinction level event for a company.

Why not, out of curiosity? We don't make this distinction for low-income folks who get parking tickets. If you don't make them truly punitive why comply? It just gets factored into the cost of doing business.

You could just do both: start with relatively modest fines, then escalate if they don't comply.

Yup, that's more or less what I had in mind.

Exponentially?

I don't know if that's strictly necessary. Even a linear increase of 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, etc. seems like it could be sufficient?

Because you want to encourage compliance — encourage the companies to do the right thing. If you make the fine too high, they’ll be scared and try to hide the offense.

But fines and tickets being pegged to income is a good idea. Fixed amounts for fines are really expensive if you don’t make much money. Similarly, they aren’t much of a deterrent if they are a small amount of your income.

I guess, the way I see it, you can offer substantial discounts if they self-report. However, if you take them to court over obvious misbehavior, and they lose, I mean ... have at them. In this case I'd want to see something progressive, starting at X% then going up Y% each month of non-compliance.

A small but not negligible portion of the world does make the distinction between fines for the poor and fines for the rich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

GDPR allows 4%.

Although significant, unfortunately I don't think 4% of revenue means as much as it should to Facebook specifically.

Facebook has a distinctly high profit ratio (2020 Facebook revenue was $85 billion, net income $29 billion), so 4% of revenue means a lot less to Facebook than other companies that GDPR restrains. 4% of their revenue is $3.4 billion which is 11% of their net income.

And the potential negative impact of Facebook's negligence in data handling is distinctly greater than other companies, Facebook collects far more data than most other companies and has access to far more personal data. They have somehow managed to convince a huge portion of the world's population to share a significant tap of data into their lives.

block them via dns. most users that are on facebook probably do not know how to go around that block.

Are you suggesting that the German government try to prevent its citizens from using Facebook "for their own good"?

You have to look at Facebook as a national threat.

Ban it. It's the only way.

The same is being done with the pirate bay in many EU countries, it's not unprecedented. Though I agree it's unlikely here.

I remember there were plans to require large social platforms, of which Facebook is the largest, to at least provide an equal access to as much API as their official apps have, and at most support interoperability (federation).

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