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by StopDisinfo910 119 days ago
1% of Meta's global revenue is a tiny-tiny cost of doing business? At that point, I think I can stop even trying to argue here. It's a massive fine any way you put it. Especially when you consider the ceiling hasn't been reached and non compliance is more and more costly by design.
2 comments
KoolKat23 119 days ago
Their net profit was $60billion in 2024. This is peanuts. It can fluctuate by multiples of this fine in a month, depending on whether or not they've had a bad or good month, nevermind year. This pretty much is just a cost of doing business.
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Zanfa 119 days ago
It's not even 1% of their annual revenue, let alone the entire multi year period they've been in breach before and since. It's nothing to them.
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StopDisinfo910 119 days ago
The interesting part is that it keeps going up. You seem to believe we have somehow reached a cap where Meta can just expense it as a cost of doing business. That's not how European law works. The fine maximum is far higher and repeated non compliance keeps making the fines higher and higher. It's a ladder not a sizing precedent.
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Zanfa 119 days ago
Unfortunately it doesn't in practice. Meta's total revenue since 2018 when GDPR came into force is just shy of $1T. Even with all the smaller fines combined, the total amount of GDPR related fines is in the range of $3B. It's a rounding error.

There isn't a trend of increasing fines, nor has any fine even reached the cap, let alone applied multiple times for the recurring violations. Even more with the current US administration's foreign policy towards the EU.

While GDPR as a law is fine, with the exception of enforcement limitations, enforcement so far has been a complete joke.

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Detrytus 119 days ago
Maximum GDPR fine is 4% of global revenue in the previous year. If a company has 30% profit margin then they can, in theory, treat is as a cost of doing business, indefinitely.
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StopDisinfo910 119 days ago
It's 4% per fine. Each violation is a fine and Meta owns multiple companies that can be fined. But 4% of global revenue already can't be treated as just a cost of doing business. Their shareholders would murder them.
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