A judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for deceiving users about privacy and content moderation policies on Facebook.
Judge Francis Mathew handed down the amount, which state Attorney General Raúl Torrez described as "one of the largest, if not the single largest state verdict against a company in American history.”
Torrez said the verdict should be a warning for tech companies and that New Mexico would continue to hold them accountable.
Disagree. Nearly a month’s worth of revenue is nothing to sneeze at. I do agree that the fines need to be higher though, preferably a percentage. I’m of the mind that fines should be 1% of YoY global worldwide revenue per person affected per infraction
It also depends how long they have to pay. The recent $18B settlement must be paid over 10 years. So that basically doesn’t matter to a company like Meta.
Fines should be separated into two categories.
Fine applied against the company for minor regulatory issues (avoiding fees, mis-reporting finances, accidents, etc.)
Fines applied against the executives personal assets for criminal activity. This would be for deliberate actions that causes harm. These should start out at a minimum 1 years gross income per instance and go up from there.
It would take redefining the limited liability of corporations to only apply to minor things or true accidents.