The IT Nerd

The Federal Trade Commission voted this week to approve a roughly $5 billion settlement with Facebook over a long-running probe into the tech giant’s privacy missteps, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter [The link may be paywalled. Here’s an alternative source]:

The 3-2 vote by FTC commissioners broke along party lines, with the Republican majority lining up to support the pact while Democratic commissioners objected, the people said. The matter has been moved to the Justice Department’s civil division and it is unclear how long it will take to finalize, the person said. Justice Department reviews are part of the FTC’s procedure but typically don’t change the outcome of an FTC decision. A settlement is expected to include other government restrictions on how Facebook treats user privacy. The additional terms of the settlement couldn’t immediately be learned. An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a Facebook spokesman. Facebook said April 24 that it was expecting to pay up to $5 billion to settle the probe. A resolution was bogged down by a split between Republicans and Democrats on the FTC, with the Democrats pushing for tougher oversight of the social-media giant.

The problem that I have with this fine is $5 billion is a rounding error to Facebook. So in my mind, that’s a #fail. But if there are really good government restrictions that Facebook has to adhere to for years, then maybe this might mean something. I’ll guess it will be up to the Europeans to really slap Facebook silly.

This entry was posted on July 12, 2019 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Facebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.