Meta Fined $400M for Treatment of Children’s Data on Instagram | Hacker News Reader

Meta Fined $400M for Treatment of Children’s Data on Instagram

nytimes.com

118 pointslatchkey35 comments

0.3% of worldwide annual revenue (or around 1% of profit) of Meta, for anyone who is wondering.

Ireland has 0.06% of the world population for reference.

For an even better reference, total social media advertising spending in Ireland was 386M euros in 2021

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1197773/social-media-adv...

Naively assume that meta captures 100% of this total and that it's the same in this year, that means Meta has lost more than 100% of its revenues and is running at a net loss in ireland.

I think it would make more sense to look at the entire EU, since Ireland is just the jurisdiction they picked for EU representation.

What happens when a bunch of countries copy this

LOL, chump change to the real game. Regulatory capture gets another example.

Right? And may I say, if you’re using any Meta products you’re complicit in this continuing harm of children.

To the people down voting this, can you say why it’s true or not? I’m curious, I’m actually curious. Because if a product is harming children, if the company has been fined for it, charged guilty for it, and you’re still using it, how do you think you’re not complicit?

You referred to it as "continuing", which is probably why, since that's not true. The practice they were fined for ended.

If you eat food, some child labor was probably involved. Same with wearing clothes. Allowing accounts for teens to share their email addresses seems like reasonably small potatoes in comparison.

This iteration of the practice. The highest revenue stream is children. Companies making billions off them won't stop at trivial hurdles.

Source: workplace.

Actually, I disagree. If you look at the stats they say otherwise.

Source: me

>The highest revenue stream is children

No it isn't given that children tend to have no substantial income to spend. The highest revenue group is generally young, single, professionals given that they tend to have high amounts of disposable income, and that's generally reflected in advertisement preferences.

Children have parents that eventually buy them the thing they are constantly nagging them about.

You're probably being downvoted because your argument makes as much sense as asking someone why they drive a car if some people kill people with them, so surely they must be complicit. Just because illegal activity can happen, doesn't make everyone part of that illegal activity.

If Apple makes phones using kids, buying an iPhone makes you implicit. Despite western narrowed vision. That's not your example.

Your example: If one iPhone was used as a hammer to bash a window, when you make a call, with a different iPhone, you're implicit. Which is wrong.

The idea is criticizing where you put your money. In companies that exploit children, and actively build our generation's "9 out of 10 doctors smoke" mentality, or elsewhere?

I literally don’t get these replies. Of course if I use iPhones and Apple exploited children I’m complicate as well.

You comparing using a phone to bash a window is nonsensical. Buying the phone makes you complicit.

I've been trying, in vain, to figure out whether it's true or not. The article doesn't say what Meta did to earn such a large fine. A reuters article on the same subject spoke of "child users between the ages of 13 and 17 who were allowed to operate business accounts, which facilitated the publication of the user's phone number and/or email address." [1]

Frankly, this doesn't seem that bad at all. Revealing the phone and email address of a business account? Most business accounts want their official phone and email to be public. But the business accounts were made by 13-17 year olds? Some minors really do operate businesses, though.

To be quite honest, it seems like the readers here are furious with Meta/Facebook for reasons that have nothing to do with the phone numbers and emails of European children. This story has nothing to do with the thing we'd really love to be having a grand ol' fight about right now-- which is whether Facebook endangered American democracy by censoring conservatives too much, or by not censoring them enough.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/irish-regulator-fines-ins...

Man, Americans are good enough endangering their own democracy just fine on their own. Don’t act like things _just_ got his way, this has been picking up steam steadily for 50+ years.

Facebook is like an average gust compared to things like gerrymandering, media consolidation, discarding fair use doctrine, economic stratification, inflation, economic instability, corporate personhood, corruption, lack of legal reform, lack of land reform, etc.

The problem isn’t what I do, it’s what somebody else does. I’m not complicit because it’s Meta causing the problem. It’s not me causing global warming, it’s the corporations.

I can’t tell if this is a sarcastic common or not but I’ll assume that it’s not.

If you, along with everyone else, supports his corporations that are causing Global warming, then you are complicit. To think that the corporations will change when they continue to profit off of your behavior is ridiculous.

Have you ever heard of a boycott before?

> if a product is harming children ... how do you think you’re not complicit?

Not saying you're wrong, but do you have any idea how many companies that covers? Privacy violations are not the only kind of harm. Every "energy" company, every food or consumer-goods conglomerate, every electronics company, has probably been fined somewhere for acts that involved harm of children. We can and should do better, both by direct consumer choice and via regulation, but "you're complicit" finger-pointing is non-constructive if not outright hypocritical.

way to ensure there will never be a competitor to Instagram. Thanks regs!

I’m not so sure, they seem to be going after the big players (cynic in me would say to optimize the payoff). Smaller companies will fly under the radar until they get large enough, but then it’s a “good problem to have” sort of thing.

Ironic that they've been fined by the Irish DPC, considering that Ireland has been the key enabler of FB/Meta's tax avoidance for years.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/xtTET

This is part of a process. Originally, the Wild West. Later, being between a newspaper and a telecom. Today, telling me I could ask messages to disappear (which is for real because space is no longer expanding infinitely, and they compete on each app, and because it's verifiable if you can make killer input). And further there's character development, I saw Mark Zuckerberg speak in public twice on Stanford campus, he was better the second time a year later, this was face-to-face. The first time he made the audience laugh, the second time he made the audience laugh. Night and day, and that was 2011 to 2012.

This is actually a meaningfully-sized fine. It's good for Facebook, undoes how pissed people are (on this forum for one) about how small fines have been, leads to moral development. It's easier to weigh money higher when it's more money. You don't get as many MBA's versus ethicists. Talk stock not stakeholders, can actually crunch the numbers. Like punishment has to hurt but if it does it leads to moral development, it's a language they understand as a company. Lots of punishment I'm grateful for. Made me better.

Like there is no way for a company that size to respect a $4 million fine, no matter how much it wanted to, bigger fines are win-win.

In the lack of any actual agreement on what the product/market/online-world should look like, we instead play this stupid game where we fine companies random amounts at random times like a mix of taxation and roulette...

Pretty sure the court was able to point out which laws they've broken.

I am sure they can, down to the chapter and verse. But what will this actually change or achieve?

A drop from the ocean.

Now do TikTok

Obligatory reply: They had about $322 million in revenue per day during Q2 of this year.

For reference the parent is citing Meta's revenue not Insta's which is over half of Meta but definitely not 322M/day yet. I was confused at first by the huge jump in Instagram income. :P

I think this fine works out to about ~10 days of Instagram profits.

just the cost of doing business. though i thought gdpr had sharper teeth? maybe it’s 4% of annual revenue? a paltry speeding ticket for meta, well worth it to move fast and break things, things being our lives

I'm shocked. Shocked! To find Meta was misusing children's data.

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