Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws
atg.wa.gov
atg.wa.gov
If they had simply not complied at all and tried to blame their customers for not classifying the ads correctly, it might have gone a bit better in their favor.
Related, it's still insane that companies can basically argue "this ad that thousands upon thousands will see cannot be reviewed by hand even once because that would be too hard".
This would have been blatant contempt of court. What they did was slightly less blatant.
what
Facebook and Washington "entered into a stipulated judgment that covered Meta’s violations through November 30, 2018" in 2018 [1]. (It required Facebook "no longer 'accept ads that relate to Washington’s state or local elected officials, candidates, elections or ballot initiatives.'")
Not complying at all with requests from the AG, i.e. arguing they had no knowledge about the situation (versus that they misunderstood the rules), could thus be interpreted as willful violation of the judgement.
[1] https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/174_StatesMSJ.PDF page 3
It seems your conclusion is, "Therefore they should be above the law."
No, that isn't how it works. They *must* comply with the law, and if they cannot be profitable when they are not a criminal entity, then they should go out of business.
Requiring a human to review each ad increases the fixed cost of serving a campaign.
I can only assume Meta feels the risk/costs of fines are less than the bennefit of not disclosing who pays them big dollars for targeting certain demographics. I.e not provide ammunition for law makers to come after them in more costly area.
What would happen if meta defied a subpoena? IDK TBH. Perhaps a total shutdown until they comply? IDK if a company has ever defied a congressional subpoena.
This case was about civil liability so the rules are all a little different. Not giving data during discovery generally means adverse inferences are made by the court (IE, this data is so bad that we have no choice but to believe what the plaintiff is saying about it).
Defying subpoenas, though, generally results in contempt and fines. For an individual, that'd mean jail time.
If it can’t be automated, Facebook isn’t interested in complying.
Although, come to think, I haven't heard from them in a while.
Link to highlight: https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-ferguson-judge-...
Fines are often considered "the cost of doing business" these days. We need to revisit the system and take new approaches, like what you propose.
Testing this out right now, from my home in Washington, if I try to create an ad and mark it as political, I'm told I need to get authorized to be able to run such an ad.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/us/politics/senate-republ...
Probably because they were doing hyperspecific targeting, not because FB literally didn't have any more users to serve ads.
I doubt political ads are a major part of the mix - for one, there is little evidence that they are all that effective compared to TV ads.
Is this one of those weird "billion means something different in my country" things? Because even then, the miscommunication is usually between billion (10^9 in most English) and trillion (10^12), in short scale[1].
[0]: https://www.fec.gov/data/candidate/P80003353/?tab=summary
What really is the end game here? The whole point of money or power would be to use it to do something you care about? What use is money and power for the sake of itself? Why have it if all you want is more of it?
At least some rich people seem to want to do something with their riches and power. Which makes the rest of them even more of an enigma.
I just don't believe such person exist. Everyone wants something.
(Not really… there were just some newscasters that were really bad at math)
But he did spend like $1B as just one candidate in the primaries.
The fact that this isn't already the case is so weird. Probably due to the age of the constitution and legal system, its deification and the generic allergy to any evolution on that front.
Campaign regulations, including fairness in representation and budget limits are necessary for a healthy democracy, otherwise it's too susceptible to influence by rich people.
For instance, in Bulgaria that's taken to a somewhat extreme point - party/coalition lists running for election (it's a parliamentary democracy) get a fixed budget from the country if they fit the requirements (enough candidates, enough signatures) with a maximum allowance for donations and own funds to be used. Ads can't be just an attack on a rival, and have to include disclaimers who they're for, who they're paid for, and that buying and selling votes is a crime (an issue in Bulgarian elections, sadly). The system isn't perfect but IMHO it'd be far worse without those protections.
is what you are referring to.
Edit: To be clear my opinion is that FB should be forced to comply, by federal action if necessary. That their business depends on not taking responsibility for the messages they choose to amplify is their problem and they should be paying the cost of that.
...then they would be on a level playing field with everybody else. The alternative ("we don't care for some of these laws in some places we operate, so we decline to follow them") is what is generally referred to as a criminal enterprise.
If a 1000 (or 10k, or whatever) businesses in aggregate have a similar market cap and revenue to them while also following the rules then I fail to see how a single company has a problem with that. If it does then maybe splitting it up will make things easier...
But just in case you actually believe this should be convincing, consider how many tax jurisdictions Facebook does business in. Do you think they just ignore all those local rules?
Happens in government without any repercussions all the time. Washington state took ten years after being ordered by the state Supreme Court to fully fund education to actually do it.
The AG identified 782 violations and requested treble damages [1]. That's $23mm right there, not including the state's legal costs (which are also trebled).
[1] https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/174_StatesMSJ.PDF
Washington requested and received injunctive relief [1]. Next steps would involve documented ongoing willful violation, getting a contempt of court ruling and then getting nasty with Facebook's assets and employees.
[1] https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/174_StatesMSJ.PDF
Allow courts to "fire"[1] high level managers and executives who either can be proven to have actual knowledge, or who should have known by nature of their position that the crimes were occurring, and who failed to take appropriate steps to try and prevent this from continuing to occur[1].
This would only apply for significant enough crimes, and only if the criminal nature of the action is clearly obvious (This is not some gray area where people could reasonably believe the actions are legal, even if it turns out not to be), or when person in question was clearly on notice that the actions are illegal such as from previous fines or similar enforcement action.
This has benefits over criminally prosecuting the people, since it allows ousting a person for severe incompetence in preventing crimes, even if the incompetence does not rise to the level of being criminal in itself. It is also better than really large fines which tend to actually punish the wrong people. (Big enough fines lead to layoffs, punishing the low level employees who may not be at fault. Big enough fines also tend to punish the shareholders, which for public companies often don't have anywhere near enough transparency into the workings of the company to know the crimes are occurring, and pressure the management/executives to fix things.). This generally makes it in management's personal best interests to actually investigate and stop crimes occurring within the company, rather than trying to brush it under the carpet or accepting fines as "the cost of doing business". After all, getting forced out of the company kinda hurts both their pride and their wallet.
[1] This "firing" would take the form of voiding the employment contract, enjoining the manager or executive from performing managerial/executive functions, enjoining the company from continuing to employ the individual, or from paying the person anything more than for time worked not already paid. (Specifically no severance, no executing golden parachute clauses, etc.)
[2] The nature of the crime, like OHSA violations might be pretty much impossible to completely prevent, and sometimes the person in question, might not have the authority to issue orders that could completely prevent the crime from continuing, but must have made reasonable efforts to get the person who does have the authority to to be aware and take actions.
I've always wondered if a sensible structure could be made to ensure that the fine is at minimum a few multiples of the possible benefit to the company. With advertising this is harder than say, falling trees.
e.g. we estimate your company generate revenues of X from this activity, so we set the fine at 10X. If you disagree with X, you can prove it with detailed, audited statements, and we will take 10 times that amount if we are convinced.
I’d be very much in favour of the “swiss model” for traffic fines - based on your income.
You did X wrong, here’s the set price from our catalogue vs. you did X wrong and based on your earnings, here’s what you owe.
If I do something very illegal to double my revenue, I've also doubled my fines.
States rights and all.