Meta being fined $100k a day for personalized ads in Norway
Meta being fined $100k a day for personalized ads in Norway
techcrunch.com
Meta's behavioral ads banned in Norway on Facebook and Instagram
88 comments
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Fine should be larger. And more countries should join in.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
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Just getting a fine and making huge benefits so it is "worth" to keep doing? It should be banned because it keeps doing ilegal actions but since they have money they can do whatever they want
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Do they really make a hundred grand a day in Norway though? It's not a big country.
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Nah. I would hate to live in a country that bans personalized ads. It would be like living in the 90s watching cable TV seeing completely irrelevant tampon and baby ads as a single dude.
Personalized ads are much less annoying than the "spray-and-pray" noise we used to deal with.
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$100k is nothing to these people. It's like your or I paying $0.25 a day. They see it as the cost of doing business.
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Norway has a population of 5-6 mil. I don't think there's enough of them to generate 100k/day, is there? Or maybe that's worth it, what do I know? They're not gonna get fined that much anyway
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Based on https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-facebook-fb-make-money.asp 39$/user/year for Facebook & Messenger alone. In a country of 5-6M people, let's say 5.5M, with 70% of the population being users ( from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/584917/facebook-users-in-norway-by-age-group/ ), that gives ~3.85M users * 39$ = 150.15M$/year, 12.5M$/month, or 417k$/day. Norway is a rich country, so one should assume a Norway user's revenue is higher than the 39$ average.
So, 100k$/day is certainly a decent figure for Norway's operations, meaning a local Facebook senior manager must be in panic right now. But Would that local senior manager have any power to change anything given Norway is such a small market but yielding would set a precedent for all other EU members? That's what is at stake!
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it's probably worth it as a show of power to them
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Let's just double the amount of ads in Norway to cover the loss.
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I mean, any money flowing from them to nation is good at the end of the day.
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Right, but it's not really about getting money for their country. Or at least it shouldn't be.
It's about punishing corporations for not following their laws/regulations, and making the consequences onerous enough to dissuade them and others from doing it again.
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100k? That's not even a rounding error for them.
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100k/day (36.5 million anually) is ~0.03% of Meta's 2022 profits (121 billion). That's not a fine, it's barely even a tax. If you make 50k/year profit and the government gave you a similar fine, they'd be taking $15 from you. That sounds more like bribe money for Norwegian politicians than a good faith attempt to protect their citizens.
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I have a hard time believe they profited 121 billion dollars, when their 2022 gross revenue was 116 billion
I'm sure it's still a ridiculous amount of profit but that number seemed way to big at first glance so I had to check
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Should have been "per user per day"
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100k a day is not even worth looking at for them.
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100k a day for operating in a country of 5 million people. The question isn't "how much does this affect their global earnings?", it's "is it worth paying 100k a day to run personalized ads in a country with a population of Minnesota?"
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Does Facebook have a business in Minnesota?
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There's Norway we're paying that, ha ha. More zingers like that over on Threads!
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It's still better than nothing. I guess it's the beginning.
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That'll show them, right?
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It should be 100k per user per day. Otherwise it's just a rounding error for them. I can also garantee that no user on Facebook is generating 100k in ad revenue in a single day. Let alone that much in a year.
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Came to say the same, this is just a cost of doing business for Meta.
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How many people do you guys know who have Signal installed who also use Facebook / Insta? Feel like these are separate circles in a venn diagram.
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Most of the family members I've gotten to use signal still use FB and insta
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That’s me. I’m not abandoning friends who are solely reachable on FB/Insta, but I’ll also talk on signal when possible
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Exactly.
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Like two maybe? And even then only kinda sorta. One almost never uses FB, the other almost never uses Signal
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So, what exactly happens if Facebook just says "no" to paying the fine?
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In most places companies become blocked from operating in the country, and any potential assets in the country will be taken as compensation.
There might also be a lawsuit in the companies main country of operation.
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That's something I never really understood. Like, someone can get in trouble for violating the laws of a country they aren't even a resident in.
I get blocking them, or seizing local assets, but international lawsuits? How does that even work? How do other countries have legal authority or legal presence in other countries?
Is it through some diplomatic agreement/treaty between countries similar to how extradition works?
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That's like fining a person 0.01 per day for speeding. The company sees it as a limited time only discount and invitation to do it a TON right now and get people accustomed to it, before the people who don't like it start complaining louder. From Facebooks perspective its a black Friday sale on Norwegian data.
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Fines shpuld be based a percent of income. A multi billion company lole meta wont care about this tiny fine
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So it’s essentially a fee
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That's peanuts for a company that size. That's the cost of doing business.
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Facebook somehow makes about $18 per person on the planet in ad revenue.
Norway is 5 million people or $90 million/year all else being equal.
$100k/day is $36.5 million/year.
So, it’s less than it should be by probably a factor of 4-5, but still not so small they won’t feel it
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That's why if a fine does not exceed the benefit the company gained from it, it's not a deterrent but a cost of business.
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The way I read it, the fine is capped to $1M NOK.
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This is what you might call a "public-private partnership".
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So, about .000000001 of what they make a day?
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They make $10,000,000,000,000 a day? Must be a hell of a business model.
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Selling personal data sure is profitable.
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chump change for the zuck, but still way better than nothing! good job norway
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You love to see it.
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We....
88 comments
From the linked techcrunch article:
From the order itself:
Misleading title.
"Do you consent to the processing?"
'No, I do not consent'
[Account Suspended]
"Wait, I CONSENT! Please, take all my data! Take all the data of my entire family and everyone I've ever associated with online! ANYTHING but suspend the account. PLEASE!"
'Thank you for your patronage.'
It's going to be closer to an E-mail saying "We are informing you that we have updated our privacy policy." which nobody is going to read. And the change is going to be an added line of "With continuation of usage of our products and services in the Norway region you give meta the right to collect and processes your information for marketing purposes.". Which also nobody is going to read. Voila, plausible consent.