They make $1.4B per day. This is basically just a cheap subscription for them
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
994 points (98.8% liked)
Privacy
32173 readers
426 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
For comparison, if you made $365,000 per year this would be the same as you paying 7 cents per day in a fine, or $25 per year.
If a fine is less than the profit it is legal and the cost of doing business.
Exactly right. Facebook will factor this in as am expected cost of doing business (if they didnβt already) and their stock will go up. This isnβt a penalty, this is just like paying a bribe. In the end, both are just lining the pockets of officials more interested in appearing to do something for the next news cycle so they can get re-elected.
Did you mean $365,000,000? Or did you get confused by the "."? Cause that's used as a comma for numbers in a lot of European countries, so it's $100k per day, not $100.
Also, it'd be exactly 10 cents per day, since $365k per year would be $1k per day, which 100 is 10% of.
No, they meant 100k is 0.0071428571429% of 1.4b, and 26 is the same percent of 365k. Basically, if you made 365k a year and had an equal percentage fine, it would come out to less than 7 cents per day.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
From the article:
$100,000 per day for a country with ~5.4 million people is a lot. If even 20 percent used Facebook regularly, then that would still be 10 cents per user per day. It's unlikely that Meta is generating so much profit per user - every day.
This is a reasonable observation and I wonder what Meta would do once one of their services becomes unprofitable in a specific country. Anyway if you add Instagram and WhatsApp to the math, maybe they would still generate profits from the Norwegian userbase
I wonder if this is a big amount for Norway's government. After 3 years you've got 100 million dollars. Not huge but you could build a nice hospital or something with that.
per capita, iirc, Norway is richer than U.S.
they don't need to fine fecesbook to get rich
Not really, they have the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway
load more comments
(1 replies)
I don't know where you're getting that number but it's definitely wrong. Their most profitable year so far was 2021, and they made $39.4 billion for the entire year. Source
So assuming things haven't changed too much for them, this is about 1%. Barely noticeable.
I mean, I want them to pay as much as possible, but 1% of their global revenue, for just a small country like Norway, still seems pretty decent.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Ah. Got that number from a Google search. Thanks for telling me.
I think the 2 points the article makes about that are pretty valid though. It's most probably more than Facebook's revenue in this single country plus it's just the beginning.
It must be nice to live in a country that actively protects its people.
I would love for the EU to just go all-out hardcore privacy protection and fine GAFAM et al. into fucking oblivion for not complying. If they shut down services, that's probably for the better, although it will be a rough awakening for most people (probably including myself)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Companies operate at a loss in certain markets all the time in order to keep competition out. Even if they're not profitable in Norway, they don't want a Norwegian social network muscling in on their territory.
"Competition is for losers." - Peter Thiel, first investor in Facebook and mentor of Mark Zuckerberg
But I really hope this sets a precedent for all other countries, need money to finance something? Just tax the shit out of Facebook. Of course it's a joke, we should properly tax them in the first place, or better yet force them not to exploit people data for profit
load more comments
(14 replies)
Fines like these should be exponential in some way, that way they can't keep getting away with it.
Nah, exponentiation is too good for them.
Fines should be tetrated.
This guy ββ
Explanation for the downvoters: The double up arrow is the symbol for tetration.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Not enough. The price for violating a human right should be enough to leave anyone bankrupt.
Besides panicking a few regional managers, this can only be a bad news for Meta if other countries, or even better, the EU follows them.
100kUSD/day for a 5.4M inhabitants country, that scales to 8.3M$/day for the total 450M inhabitants EU has (yes: I know that's not how it works, I'm doing a very gross approximation here).
That's would be 3B$/year. Now we're talking!
load more comments
(1 replies)
Meta was also recently ordered to pay a thousand dollars to every brazilian who can prove they were using Facebook in a specific year. Though they are still fighting back on that decision and no payment was made yet.
This will probably be changed into some fixed payment to the government instead, if not overturned completely, but it would be fun to see the whole country getting some extra paychecks for using Facebook.
Facebook should pay it. Imagine the user uptick when people think other countries might get the same payout.
This is exactly the sort of thing I want governments doing. Let bad businesses fail! Help them down the drain, even.
load more comments
(4 replies)
All the governments should do like this
For those who are dumb like I am, the fine is one hundred thousand per day and not one hundred per day (the decimal threw me off)
I did not get what you meant at first but yeah most of us europeans us "," as a decimal and "." to make bigger numbers more readable
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Anti revenue stream.
I likey
I should visit Norway, sounds like there are cool people there.
From what I've been hearing, it's actually one of the best places to live in.
load more comments
(7 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
LOL. To put that in perspective, let imagine it's some $100,000 annual pay worker. This means Facebook just added 365 employees to their ranks, if they ignored this order completely.
They fire and hire people in the thousands, the penalty is a joke of scale.
Except this is for a single country. Is it worth that kind of expense for 5 million people? Does Facebook make $36.5 million in profit just in Norway? If not, then this is a net loss for them.
Danegeld.
Danegeld never changes.
I wish WhatsApp get similar treatment also. the entirety of my country depend on it.
load more comments
(7 replies)
view more: next βΊ