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by loeg5 hours ago |
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upvoteby eks3911 hours ago|
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It already was. According to NM law, the sum of fines for the 43 million violations Facebook committed against New Mexico would have been $219B, but the judge was feeling kind that day.

https://www.neowin.net/news/new-mexico-judge-slashes-metas-p...

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upvoteby dam_jackalopes4 hours ago|
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What makes it outlandish?
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upvoteby paxy3 hours ago|
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You could sue Facebook for $25 trillion and a local jury would unanimously vote yes. These numbers don’t mean anything. This kind of “small town folk vs giant out-of-state corporation” fight is an automatic win for any state attorney. You think they'd have trouble finding 12 jurors in Santa Fe, NM who dislike big tech? It is always shut down or massively reduced by a higher court.
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upvoteby dam_jackalopes2 hours ago|
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That's not what happened here though. The penalties were defined by law, the jurors applied them. The judge already reduced most of the penalty. So... what about this case is outlandish?
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upvoteby paxy1 hours ago|
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All such "let's multiply one large number with another large number followed by a third large number to come up with hundreds of billions in penalities" calculations never hold up in appeals. Otherwise if the logic was sound and there were actually 43 million violations then why was it reduced from $219.5 billion to $25 billion in the first place? Like I said everyone is making up numbers, and the appeals court will make up another one.

There is plenty of precedent for Cambridge Analytica-related fines. California got $50 million. 40-ish states combined got something like $460 million. New Mexico will get paid in the same range.

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upvoteby dam_jackalopes1 hours ago|
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I don't know why the judge reduced the penalty as the article didn't state that. I don't really have anything to go on other than you saying everyone is just making up numbers. I don't find that argument convincing given my experience with the courts.
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upvoteby Forgeties791 hours ago|
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>This kind of “small town folk vs giant out-of-state corporation” fight is an automatic win for any state attorney.

Yeah maybe in movies

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upvoteby xp843 hours ago|
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Outlandish on its face. In short, shouldn't the amount of money you expect for a fine be at least vaguely proportional to the harms caused?

Look at precedent[1]. Glyphosate and J&J talc are among the biggest awards (to be fair: they were settlements), and those allege that the defendants' products actually caused cancer -- actually killed people.

The tobacco settlement for 46 states was $206 billion. Again, for causing millions of deaths. New Mexico is 0.62% of the U.S. population, so less than $2 billion would be New Mexico's share of that.

Compare that to this 25 billion for the crime of illicitly letting political advertisers access too much of the interest data that Facebook users provided to Facebook?

The only way this penalty makes any sense is if you believe that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the most heinous crime ever perpetrated by any company in U.S. history.

[1] https://verdictwiki.com/landmark-cases/

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upvoteby chmod7751 hours ago|
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> In short, shouldn't the amount of money you expect for a fine be at least vaguely proportional to the harms caused?

No. Fines are punitive and intended for deterrence. You're thinking of reimbursements (cost recovery and damages). The latter is intended to be proportional to real world harm/costs, the former need not be.

A traffic law violation could cause no harm, but you'll still get fined for it.

Some jurisdictions even impose fines based on how deep the defendants' wallet is, calculating the amount that might serve as appropriate deterrent/punishment based on their financial situation. Fining a billionare $50,000 for literring will still not serve as a deterrent, but doing the same to a minimum wage worker would unfairly financially ruin them.

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upvoteby dam_jackalopes3 hours ago|
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Yeah, that makes sense. On the other hand, the severity of the crime isn't what makes the penalty high in this case. The fine for the crime in this case is $5,000. Given that the penalty was reduced by nearly 90%, the penalty for the crime is something like $570. That doesn't seem outlandish to me.
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