[sjwhevvvvvsj]

The FTCs fine on Facebook from a few years ago exceeds the combined value of all GDPR fines levied to date.

The Irish government fills its coffers with the largesse of tech companies that are headquartered there specifically to dodge taxes and regulation.

Likewise, while GDPR has some initial changes in privacy after many months of inaction tracking levels started to rebound because everybody figured out nobody was going to enforce it.

[crote]

> The FTCs fine on Facebook from a few years ago exceeds the combined value of all GDPR fines levied to date.

Which is quite ironic, because when the GDPR was introduced just about everyone on HN adamantly insisted that one-person startups would be getting a €20M fine every time they made the slightest mistake.

[bemusedthrow75]

> The FTCs fine on Facebook from a few years ago exceeds the combined value of all GDPR fines levied to date.

This isn't anywhere near as significant a point as you think.

[sjwhevvvvvsj]

The fun thing about hacker news is that for all you know I may be directly involved in these issues and speak from direct first-hand, but highly confidential, knowledge.

Or I’m just some moron, posting opinions with absolutely no basis in fact.

Only I can be sure!

[bemusedthrow75]

And yet either way it still would not, IMO, be as significant a point as you think.

[sjwhevvvvvsj]

Ah, but you are be very wrong.

[smoldesu]

Given that we have to take you on your merits as an entirely anonymous source, I think they're actually very right.

[bemusedthrow75]

I am assuming that the parent poster worked in Google’s ad tech or analytics unit. Perhaps another FAANG. Perhaps Facebook.

Still: that doesn’t make the assertion about the size of Facebook’s FTC settlement and all GDPR settlements as significant as they think, for a bunch of important reasons that start to be obvious once you break it down.

The parent poster could be posting from a FAANG C suite, and it wouldn’t change that it’s an apples and oranges comparison.