[HN Gopher] Meta to pay Texas $1.4B for using facial recognition...
___________________________________________________________________
Meta to pay Texas $1.4B for using facial recognition without users'
permission
Author : perihelions
Score : 246 points
Date : 2024-07-30 16:41 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.texastribune.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.texastribune.org)
| tareqak wrote:
| Same story from the Associated Press:
|
| _Meta agrees to $1.4B settlement with Texas in privacy lawsuit
| over facial recognition_ - https://apnews.com/article/texas-
| attorney-general-meta-settl...
| dantyti wrote:
| This one seems like the better of the two, as it includes Q124
| profit and revenue numbers, as well as the stock's movement
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| it also suggests some important details, like the fact that
| this was already opt-in:
|
| > At the time, more than a third of Facebook's daily active
| users had opted in to have their faces recognized by the
| social network's system.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Many of Facebook's "opt-in" things aren't actually consent,
| so I'm prejudicially wary of any numbers Facebook gives. (I
| have no insight into this particular case.)
| gerdesj wrote:
| How was the "opt in" offered?
|
| In general, when I come across some sort of opt in I get
| offered a choice between allowing something to work and it
| not working and having some sort of a sub optimal
| experience. I can't even try before I buy either because
| once I have consented, the data/image/whatever is already
| "released".
|
| Most opt-in choices, unless coerced by laws, will be heavy
| handed nudges at best.
|
| I'm an IT consultant and stand more of a chance than most
| at making an informed choice but please don't wave "opt in"
| as some sort of laundering procedure. I am deliberately
| juxtaposing with money laundering.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Do fines to big corporations even work? I tend to suspect paying
| them is a part of the business model - they will keep doing
| whatever they want to generate huge profits covering whatever
| fines they may have to pay.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Well, I would expect that, in addition to paying money, this
| settlement also obliges Meta to stop doing whatever they were
| doing. And if they don't, then I would expect fine for repeated
| offense to be much higher, like 10x. At some point that would
| make ignoring law unprofitable.
| camdat wrote:
| Meta had already ceased facial tagging over a year before the
| suit was filed, according to Ars.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/meta-to-
| pay-1-4-...
| dlachausse wrote:
| Facebook annual revenue last year was $134.90 billion.
|
| https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
| mbreese wrote:
| That's still a fine of 1% of revenue, which seems like a
| small percentage, but is still a sizable hit. It's enough to
| make investors notice, but probably not substantially if it
| is a once-off event. If it isn't a one-off event though and
| states/countries start fining it all over the place, then
| there might be more of an issue.
| dantyti wrote:
| as noted in the AP article, it's at least a second
| settlement:
|
| > In 2021, a judge approved a $650 million settlement with
| the company, formerly known as Facebook, over similar
| allegations of users in Illinois.
| dartos wrote:
| Ain't no amount of money that can compare to infinite
| growth and mass media control.
| j_maffe wrote:
| This is just factually incorrect. Facebook doesn't have
| "infinite growth"
| ta1243 wrote:
| If the illegal practice raised $5b in extra revenue then
| that's just good business sense.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| You should cite net income when trying to make a point on
| this.
| DoubleDerper wrote:
| Corporate Crime and Punishment: An Empirical Study
|
| "Put simply, for large companies, criminal penalties may be
| just another cost of doing business--and quite a low cost at
| that."
|
| source:
| https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2147/
| AmVess wrote:
| Nope. They get passed on to the consumer, anyway.
|
| The only way to stop this type of behavior is to throw execs in
| jail and take their personal assets off them.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Based on how long this was going on, its about $5 per user per
| year.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I can report yes. California has been using them for years afer
| passing the CCPA to motivate better data privacy policy and
| procedure.
| suprjami wrote:
| So if every US state sues Meta and settles for ~1.5B that's
| halved the value of the company.
|
| One more infraction with the same consequences and the company
| has no money left.
|
| That sounds pretty effective to me?
| echelon wrote:
| Their market cap is approximately 1000x larger.
|
| Their annual income is approximately 100x larger.
| kelnos wrote:
| That doesn't work, though. In practice, most states probably
| won't sue for this. And even if they do, Texas is one of the
| most populous states in the US. Presumably the per-state
| settlements will be proportionate to the number of people
| harmed. So it's not going to be 1.5B * 50 = $75B.
| suprjami wrote:
| It doesn't matter if the states do or not. It's a
| deterrent.
|
| You go into your quarterly earnings call and say "we're
| conducting illegal business practices which expose us to up
| to $75B of risk" and see how the investors like that.
|
| You don't get caught every time you speed, but the fine
| certainly is a deterrent against doing 100mph everywhere.
| JohnFen wrote:
| But that's not what they say to shareholders. These deals
| always come along with "admitting no fault", so they
| don't have to say to anyone that they're conducting
| illegal activities. They're perfectly free to cite the
| fine up to overzealous prosecution or whatever. I think
| that usually the case that's made is "we didn't do
| anything wrong, but it was cheaper to settle than to
| fight".
| suprjami wrote:
| Venture capitalists aren't stupid. Even if Zuck says
| everything is okay they come to their own conclusions.
|
| Obviously everything is NOT okay, otherwise the company
| wouldn't be getting fined in court for breaking the law.
|
| VCs know just as well as we do that Facebook's business
| model (privacy-invading targeted advertising) exists
| because law has not caught up to technology yet. That's
| starting to change, as this settlement shows.
|
| If Meta suffer many more of these legal settlements which
| wipe >1% off the annual profit then investors will start
| to divest. The value of the company will fall.
|
| Keep in mind this was a _settlement_ amount which
| suggests the legal liability was actually a lot higher
| than $1.5B
|
| So I think my statement is supported: fining corporations
| works.
| nickburns wrote:
| It's even more insulting than a fine. It's a voluntary payment
| in settlement that admits no liability or wrongdoing.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| They stopped doing facial recognition, so yes.
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| from the better ap-news article linked by the top comment:
|
| > The company announced in 2021 that it was shutting down its
| face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than
| 1 billion people amid growing concerns about the technology and
| its misuse by governments, police and others.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Not really imo.
|
| Getting fined for doing something illegal just really means its
| legal for a price.
| tomwheeler wrote:
| Was Texas the victim? If not, why shouldn't the _actual_ victims
| get the money?
| dantyti wrote:
| when someone litters on my lawn the administrative fine goes
| into the local/state budget, not my pocket.
| equivocates wrote:
| when someone steals your tv, the restitution is paid to the
| victims.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Restitution is payed to the victims; fines are payed to
| law-enforcing organizations.
| selectodude wrote:
| When Illinois won a judgement, I received a check in the
| mail.
| olyjohn wrote:
| You split the money up among the users, everybody gets a $1.50
| check in the mail that costs $0.50 to mail out. Most of the
| checks will get tossed in the trash. Might as well just burn
| the money.
| davidgay wrote:
| 1.4 billion $ / 30 million people = $47/person.
|
| Do the math before being generically cynical?
| lulzury wrote:
| There's a similar ongoing lawsuit by Texas against Google
|
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/texas-fights-goo...
| dantyti wrote:
| I think this adware company is pure evil, but this feature seems
| like something a user might actually opt in to (as noted in the
| AP story, quite a few did).
|
| Interesting to see that while meta at least publicly scraps the
| feature, a similar one on iOS Photos is not even an opt-in - you
| can't turn it off.
| ta1243 wrote:
| It will be trivial to get users to opt in, just bury it in the
| "terms of service" for whatsapp/instragram/facebook/etc and
| you're set.
|
| Network effects mean you can't realistically say no.
| phyrex wrote:
| The difference is that the information gets processed, stored,
| and accessed only on your own devices with Apple, and on metas
| servers in the case of Facebook.
| joeamroo wrote:
| This going to be a slippery slope as more governments start to
| use fines as an alternative type of tax unique to these tech
| companies. I don't know how Meta/Google can react to these fines
| (Except the whole opt-in part, but then you have a tradeoff with
| usability, and people against it usually think that Meta cares
| about their data outside the aggregate)
| Zambyte wrote:
| I do hope informed consent is a slippery slope. That would be
| stellar.
| surfingdino wrote:
| There is fuck all that those companies need facial recognition
| for. It is simply not needed and is just a massive invasion of
| privacy.
| autoexec wrote:
| They need it so that they can spy on you. It's not needed,
| but many companies are built on surveillance capitalism and
| an increasing number of companies are using that surveillance
| to gain a huge advantage over their customers. The more a
| company knows about you, the easier it is for them to take
| advantage of you.
|
| There's a lot of money to be made exploiting the most
| intimate details of our lives. Nobody "needs" that money, but
| they sure don't want to leave it on the table when the
| government isn't going to stop them from violating our
| privacy and then stuffing their pockets with our cash.
| jart wrote:
| If there's a lot of money to be made, could you give some
| concrete examples with that have wide applicability?
| Ideally I'd like to hear something better than just selling
| it to an advertiser or data broker.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Mass surveillance. Paid for by your tax dollars.
| autoexec wrote:
| Examples on how companies and people can make more money
| by exploiting the massive amounts of private data being
| collected and sold? I guess that's fair. No company will
| tell you when they exploit your data to their advantage.
| It's hidden.
|
| Prices can be set according to the data companies have on
| you and the assumptions they make using that same data.
| The price you're asked to pay for something when you shop
| online isn't always the same price your neighbor would be
| asked to pay for the exact same item. Lots of potential
| here too when restaurants don't publicly disclose their
| prices, but insist that you use a cell phone app or scan
| a QR code just to see a menu. Your prices don't have to
| be the same as the person in line behind you for the same
| foods. Physical retailers have been trying to get this
| going for age.
|
| "For example, ZipRecruiter, an online employment
| marketplace, indicates that it could increase profits by
| 84% by experimenting with personalized prices" (https://l
| ink.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-019-00224-3)
|
| Fast food chain Wendy's tried to move the needle closer
| to personalized pricing (aka discriminatory pricing) when
| they said they were moving to surge pricing and you'd
| never know how much a burger was going to cost you until
| you'd waited in line at the drive through and were told
| what price you were getting. They backed down due to
| consumer backlash, but their desire to squeeze every last
| dime possible out of you by leveraging big data and
| algorithms is still there.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mac-
| users-pa...
|
| Health insurance companies want your data so they can
| charge you more for not moving enough, or because people
| in your zip code were logged eating more fastfood, or
| because you've been spending too much on alcohol at the
| store.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/health-insurers-are-
| vacuu...
|
| https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-
| management/digital/insurer...
|
| A lot of the tracking we see is explicitly trying to
| assess traits like intelligence, education level, and
| mental illnesses including dementia and bipolar disorder.
|
| Companies and scammers alike can easily target uneducated
| and low intelligence individuals, and machine learning
| algorithms can detect when bi-polar people are in a manic
| phase, or what time your ADHD meds usually start to wear
| off, or when someone with alzheimers starts sundowning
| and they can jump at those chances to hit people with
| ads, scams, and manipulations when they think their
| target is weakest/most confused/most impulsive. Even
| without a diagnosis your mental health is a huge business
| opportunity for the person willing to exploit it
| (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/28/suicide-
| hotline-sil...)
|
| The data being collected on you is increasingly used for
| really big things like hiring decisions, or approving
| someone's rental lease agreement, but also really trivial
| things like determining how long to leave you on hold
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/business/secret-
| consumer-...)
|
| Companies aren't collecting huge amounts of facts about
| you and your life because it's fun for them. They
| collect, store, maintain, backup, and scrutinize all that
| data because it's making them money and almost always
| their increased profits come at your expense.
| qeternity wrote:
| This is such a ridiculous attitude. Facial recognition in my
| photo albums is hugely useful. It makes searching for people
| a breeze. Just because you don't have a need for it does not
| mean it is "simply not needed".
| can16358p wrote:
| While I get the point, IIRC the point is about using those
| features _without consent_.
| nox101 wrote:
| Can I consent to scan my photos if you're in them? I can
| certainly manually write the names on a physical photo of
| the people in the photo. That used to be a fairly common
| practice before digital.
| wil421 wrote:
| Facebook does not need to use facial recognition on me and
| we both know they use it for more than tagging photos. If
| my phone does it I am asked for permission.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is great news until privacy legislation catches up. Big
| Tech should be fearful they'll step on a mine financilly.
| autoexec wrote:
| Oh yeah, big tech is going to be shaking in their boots. I'm
| sure Meta is really crying about the 1.4 billion they lost
| while they're rolling around in the 134 billion in revenue
| they made last year. They've even got a nice easy payment
| plan which allows them to invest and make money on the $225
| million they're going to be paying each year from 2025 to
| 2028.
| mulmen wrote:
| Revenue isn't profit. This is gradeschool finance. Meta's
| net income in 2023 was $39 billion. $1.4 billion is 3.5% of
| _worldwide_ income for one US state. It's an unsustainable
| penalty for Meta if more states and jurisdictions issue
| similar penalties.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Revenue isn't profit.
|
| No, and I didn't say that it was. Reported revenue was
| just the data Meta has made available. Unless I've missed
| it somewhere, they don't explicitly state exactly how
| much profit they made last year. I think it's reasonable
| to assume that it was several times more than the 1.4
| billion dollar fine though, which is really the point. If
| Meta/facebook makes even just tens of billions in profit,
| 1.4 billion could easily be a sustainable penalty. The
| more years they are hit with a fine that size, and the
| more other states start demanding their cut of the action
| too, the less sustainable it becomes, probably, but for
| all we know paying this 1.4 billion fine (over several
| years) to Texas could actually be (or end up being)
| _profitable_ for meta.
|
| How much money did they make off the data they've been
| collecting and abusing since 2011? How much money will
| they make in the future from what they learned by abusing
| that facial recognition data for nearly 15 years? If it
| ever amounts to more than the fine, or if other
| incentives make it justifiable to shareholders then Meta
| is better off for having broken the law.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Policy and progress takes time, but does happen.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/30/seante
| -...
| autoexec wrote:
| We need protections in law, but I can't say I'm a big fan
| of KOSA. It not only fails to address the problem for
| anyone other than children, but it enables a lot of harm.
| Censorship isn't the solution. Ending the buying and
| selling of personal data, outlawing ads that are targeted
| to individuals as opposed to targeting content/context,
| and requiring companies to apply the same policies and
| prices for all of their customers no matter who that
| customer is, or how much money that customer has in the
| bank would be a better approach.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Sometimes censorship is the solution, because humans are
| tricky and every human comes with their own baggage. Not
| always of course, there is always nuance.
| autoexec wrote:
| > I don't know how Meta/Google can react to these fines
|
| They'll react by lobbying for fines while also lobbying to
| limit the amount of those fines. They love the fines. Fines are
| something they can budget for and can let them violate the laws
| as long as they are willing to pay the government a
| fee/toll/bribe. Without fines they might be held meaningfully
| accountable for their crimes. The last thing they want is to
| face a risk of ending up in prison the way that you or I most
| certainly would for repeatedly ignoring the law.
| phyrex wrote:
| They're also an economic moat to stop other networks from
| emerging. Facebook can pay those fines, $upstart can't.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Maybe, but already two years ago, if you read the fine print
| for ex. by buying a ticket for Cirque de Soleil you accept they
| can use your face on the video for ai training.
| lokar wrote:
| I went to a show last week. I did not buy the tickets or even
| see one. I did not agree to anything.
| prussian wrote:
| Isn't this a case of shrinkwrap contracts? Use (viewing) is
| acceptance?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkwrap_(contract_law)
| lokar wrote:
| Except there you were shown the agreement and had to
| click or whatever.
|
| For event tickets, you are not even made aware there is
| an "agreement "
| _trampeltier wrote:
| But somebody did buy the ticket for you. Today you accept a
| lot when buying a ticket. Mostly you accept also to things
| like, they can use your picture on commercials / media and
| so on. Just the next time, take the time and read the full
| EULA when buying a ticket from a large event.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Or worse, to target specific companies that the government
| doesn't like for whatever reason (arguably, this is already
| happening in the EU).
| tossandthrow wrote:
| How is this happening in the EU?
| can16358p wrote:
| That's EU's whole weaponized business model for lacking in
| technological development (I mean the "big tech" not tech in
| general though).
| immibis wrote:
| Have you considered the Occam's razor possibility that
| Europe genuinely doesn't want these companies doing
| business the way they do, rather than it being a conspiracy
| to increase government revenue? Remember, it's often
| illegal to take a photograph in public in Germany, and for
| this reason Google Street View is decades old.
| can16358p wrote:
| I of course considered it. If they genuinely think that
| way, it's even worse IMHO.
|
| If it was just a tactic it could at least have a sensible
| (though evil) explanation.
| tomComb wrote:
| Now we're getting to the real point of this.
|
| It is usually whatever company isn't friendly enough to the
| current government.
|
| In Canada, it is any company that dares to compete with the
| telecom companies.
| ta1243 wrote:
| > I don't know how Meta/Google can react to these fines
|
| How about by not breaking the law?
| freejazz wrote:
| > I don't know how Meta/Google can react to these fines
|
| They could start by not breaking the law...
| websap wrote:
| This is kinda foolish. I find this feature to be extremely
| useful. Governments need to do better at reducing the burden of
| choice for end users.
|
| I as an end user of an app shouldn't have to go through every
| feature, how it is implemented and if that meets my personal
| privacy bar. Sensible defaults are important.
| causal wrote:
| > Governments need to do better at reducing the burden of
| choice for end users.
|
| Arguably that's what Texas is doing here. Requiring permission
| to apply facial recognition feels like a very sensible default.
| autoexec wrote:
| What Texas is doing here is telling companies that they don't
| need your permission to steal your facial recognition data.
| Companies just need to consider that after several years of
| profiting from that facial recognition data they _might_ one
| day have to pay just a tiny fraction of the money they make
| to the state of Texas. Cost of doing business really.
| downrightmike wrote:
| yes, but that would require a good, better than California's
| protections, federal GDPR like law, and data brokers are
| actively lobbying against it.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Were Facebook's lawyers asleep at the wheel for this one? It
| seems like they could have thrown in a clause about "pictures
| uploaded may be subject to facial recognition software" and no
| one would have batted an eye. How is it possible that they
| dropped the ball so hard here?
| chmod775 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if they had that. They also could've
| added a clause that Facebook now owns your house, and it'd
| probably be roughly as interesting to a court.
|
| The fact is that many things buried in EULAs and whatnot are
| not really enforceable nor constitute consent. Some things have
| to be agreed to more explicitly than putting them on page 50 of
| your fine-print.
|
| It's especially problematic when companies start doing
| something you didn't directly sign up for or couldn't have
| expected to happen when you did. I don't think that many people
| who signed up for a social network in 2015 expected that their
| photos would later be scanned. It might surprise people even
| now.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Putting it in the TOS wouldn't help. If my friend takes a
| picture of me and posts it on Facebook, I have in no way agreed
| to Facebook's TOS.
| CursedUrn wrote:
| Hopefully other states and countries sue them too. Facebook has
| taken massive liberties with our private data and they should be
| held accountable for it.
| qingcharles wrote:
| They already did. They settled this same kind of suit in
| Illinois a couple of years back and paid everyone a few
| hundreds dollars piece. Google too.
| burningChrome wrote:
| This is always my frustration with class action lawsuits. The
| people who've been affected by the company never get anything
| of value. Its always the attorney's and state that started
| the suits that make all the money.
|
| The worst was back in the day when Chevy used some bogus
| primer for their trucks. They refused to say it was their
| fault owners paint was coming off their trucks sans any rust.
| A class action was started and then over the course of
| several years, the government and owners finally won.
|
| What did the owners get? Coupons for $100 off a paint job at
| the local Chevy dealer.
|
| So not only did the owners not get anything to help them fix
| their problems, they were forwarded to a local dealership
| where the dealership could then take advantage of them again
| and charge them thousands of dollars and essentially make all
| the money back they were paying the attorney's and
| government.
| twodave wrote:
| If you have damages that are worth more, then you can
| excuse yourself from the class and sue them individually.
| dataflow wrote:
| What if your damages aren't worth the expense of suing
| them.
| jfengel wrote:
| Much of the time the actual harm to individuals is fairly
| small, but there are so many that the aggregate harm is
| hard to ignore.
|
| It's a quandary. You can ignore it, but that encourages
| criminal behavior. Or you can pursue it, but proving your
| case beyond a reasonable doubt is time consuming and
| difficult. Often, there is no money to pay the lawyers in
| advance, so they expect to be compensated for the risk of
| getting nothing.
|
| If the lawyers worked for free you might get double or
| triple the settlement, but it's hardly better to get $300
| off a paint job than $100. The cash equivalent is probably
| only $30.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I'm not in that class, but I think that (like any other
| case) cash is the right way to settle, in the absence of
| a mutual agreement to the contrary. The beneficiaries
| didn't get to bargain for a voucher, and shouldn't have
| to go to the dealer in order to be made whole.
|
| The only thing that seems fair to me is if the settlement
| is held in trust and disbursed with minimum friction to
| anyone eligible. If Chevy wants to give those people a
| $100 voucher for thirty bucks if they show their
| eligibility for the action then go ahead!
| knodi123 wrote:
| > Facebook has taken massive liberties with our private data
|
| Gotta remember the quote from Zuckerberg during the early days,
| when someone asked him how he got all that private data. He
| said, and I quote, "People just submitted it. I don't know why.
| They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Texas passed a pretty solid CCPA-like data privacy law (TDPSA)
| which went into effect July 1st of 2024. That start date was
| announced when it was passed in JUne of 2023. Meta needs to get
| with the times, they're wildly out of compliance.
| kazinator wrote:
| Governmental cash grab; the actual users whose faces were subject
| to recognition won't see a cent, assuming anything is actually
| paid. Those not in Texas will not benefit indirectly in any way.
| enobrev wrote:
| Certainly possible. At the very least, in IL, I got a check for
| somewhere around $400.
| delichon wrote:
| > This was the first lawsuit Paxton's office argued under a 2009
| state law that protects Texans' biometric data, like fingerprints
| and facial scans. The law requires businesses to inform and get
| consent from individuals before collecting such data.
|
| I hope it only restricts business, because I have an awkward
| amount of face blindness and would love to have an app that could
| put names to them. I wonder if the maker of such an app would be
| liable for my use of it in Texas.
| criddell wrote:
| As long as it's opt-in, there wouldn't be a problem.
|
| Without that, I don't think it could work. Does your need for
| an accessibility device trump my right to privacy?
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Where can I tell the Texas government (or Illinois, etc) that
| I opt-in to all facial-recognition software available to
| users?
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| this is a really important point that's not clear to me -
| from the [ap news article](https://apnews.com/article/texas-
| attorney-general-meta-settl...) linked in the top comment -
|
| > At the time, more than a third of Facebook's daily active
| users had opted in to have their faces recognized by the
| social network's system. Facebook introduced facial
| recognition more than a decade earlier but gradually made it
| easier to opt out of the feature as it faced scrutiny from
| courts and regulators.
| jeffwask wrote:
| When do I get my 46.6 dollars or even better my 933 dollars if we
| only look at active Facebook users either way it still seems like
| a great deal price for everyone's biometrics.
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| Undoubtedly a great price. At times like this I'd like to see
| the entire extent of the profits split up among the plaintiffs.
|
| > "Wherever I'm going, I'll be there to apply the formula. I'll
| keep the secret intact. It's simple arithmetic. It's a story
| problem. If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago
| traveling west at 60 miles per hour, and the rear differential
| locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped
| inside, does my company initiate a recall? You take the
| population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the
| probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the
| average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times
| C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a
| recall. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall
| the cars and no one gets hurt. If X is less than the cost of a
| recall, then we don't recall."
| singleshot_ wrote:
| The Coase equation.
| al_borland wrote:
| These penalties need to be much higher if we're going to hope
| for any change in behavior.
|
| Maybe every state should sue, so it would be $70B. Of course
| that still doesn't make a dent when Meta's market cap is $1.174
| T. It's a rounding error.
| conductr wrote:
| The penalty would be greater if they continued violating.
| First time penalties should probably work that way. However,
| there needs to be a 3 strike rule or something similar, where
| penalties of any type by the same entity grow exponentially
| and ultimately you get banned from operating. Status quo is a
| series of slaps on the wrists for differing infractions. It
| just trains them to hide their wrongdoing better.
| swamp40 wrote:
| Is this why Illinois made it illegal too? For a nice big payout?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Or maybe because the public wants this? I sure as hell want
| facial recognition made more difficult. I can't change my face
| so I would prefer it not be used as a key in any database
| immibis wrote:
| There's a zero to negative correlation between the amount the
| voting public wants a bill to pass, and the likelihood that
| it passes.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
| poli...
| jmakov wrote:
| This is a trend not only among banks but more and more among big
| tech - just include the (future) fine into your product price,
| then settle (if they investigate at all). No harm, nobody goes to
| prison, everybody happy.
| jldugger wrote:
| Also feels like a trend among states to end-run the commerce
| clause. Want to tax imports despite the Constitution? Just pass
| regulations that only affect out of state industries and fine
| them for non-compliance.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think that's fair, given that the commerce clause is
| interpreted so ridiculously broadly that the 10th amendment
| might as well not exist.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It should really be flipped. Wickard should be overruled,
| as a result reducing the federal power to regulate intra-
| state affairs, but state power better circumscribed by the
| Commerce Clause: no one state should be able to dictate
| nationwide commerce terms on account of its economy's size.
| Whether that would prevent Texas from regulating Meta as in
| this case is not clear -- the courts would have to figure
| that out.
| andsoitis wrote:
| This pattern is not exclusive to "big companies".
|
| We all know individuals who explicitly do the same w.r.t.
| speeding on the highway, driving in the HOV lanes, etc.
|
| So it seems to me that there's a fundamental human trait ("what
| can I get away with" ??) that warrants thinking about as well.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| > So it seems to me that there's a fundamental human trait
| ("what can I get away with" ??) that warrants thinking about
| as well.
|
| Idk, I suspect many "crimes" like jaywalking and speeding are
| more around, this rule errs too hard on safety, but I know I
| can do this safely, and if it's not safe enough I'll get to
| pay the consequences (fines, accidents, dying). That's
| nothing like violating the privacy of other people for profit
| and no real penalty (actual jailtime for those involved, not
| just a --fine-- tax on the profits)
| petsfed wrote:
| > _this rule errs too hard on safety, but I know I can do
| this safely, and if it 's not safe enough I'll get to pay
| the consequences (fines, accidents, dying)_
|
| The analogy here is that people, like corporations, are
| frequently _very_ bad at assessing where the appropriate
| line for safety actually is, doubly so when the appropriate
| line personally inconveniences them. Some rules are perhaps
| too stringent, but frequently, the guidelines are akin to
| safe working loads, with safety margins built in, rather
| than do-not-exceed limits. Anyone who has to understand
| either of those things will tell you that if your
| operational envelope exceeds the safe working limit, you
| will eventually fail, catastrophically.
|
| It's certainly true that traffic fines are not similar to
| corporate fines in the sense that you don't lose your
| chemical manufacturing license after committing 15 points
| worth of chemical safety infractions, but for other kinds
| of infractions, the fine for people is _also_ frequently
| just part of the cost of doing the thing.
|
| All of that said, I 100% agree that company leadership
| should see jail time for a variety of infractions, with a
| sort of inverted burden of proof as it pertains to
| determining who is at fault in an offending organization:
| you can only pass the buck down as far as the highest
| person who you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
| deliberately hid information from those above them.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > speeding on the highway, driving in the HOV lanes
|
| This seems like it's apples to oranges. The people choosing
| to do these things aren't doing so because they consider it
| to be a cost of business, expecting that they'll generate
| more in revenue, but because they think the likelihood of
| being caught and the gravity of the offense are relatively
| low. This practice of disregarding regulations because the
| fines can be factored as a cost is fairly well confined to
| large corporations.
|
| (I guess someone being paid per mile driven from advertising
| decals on their car would get a business benefit from the
| speeding; they may even factor in the probability of being
| caught with the amount of the fine to determine their
| speeding decisions. That's nobody I know, though.)
| MassiveQuasar wrote:
| Time is money in the end. Speeding reduces time spent on
| the road and allows more time being spent elsewhere. The
| analogy still holds, just more abstractly.
| consp wrote:
| Which is the reason why around here your license is void
| (for a certain time, as in years terms) if you speed too
| much (plus you can show up for a behavioural course which
| not only costs quite a bit for people with less money but
| also takes three days for those who can afford it). And
| no chauffeur is going to risk that since it will void the
| means of living.
|
| edit: I do not see any reason to not apply "license of
| cooperation in [state/country]" void in case of continued
| breaking of laws.
| htrp wrote:
| The trick (at least in the USA) to use an out of state
| licence which isn't connected to the DMV system of the
| state you're driving in. Sure you'll get fines, but your
| licence won't be revoked.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| $1.4B is serious money though. You can't be paying that out
| left and right, and there's no way Meta made more than $1.4B on
| doing facial analysis of photos uploaded by Texans. This was an
| actual loss by them, and thus an error.
| whythre wrote:
| It also seems to leave the door open to similar outcomes in
| other jurisdictions, compounding the potential loss.
| queuebert wrote:
| Finally an advantage for the people of the US being a
| republic of states instead of a monolithic democracy.
| glaucon wrote:
| 1.5 days revenue which they have negotiated to pay over the
| course of five years.
| neongodzilla wrote:
| No harm? What about the people who lost their privacy without
| consent? That doesn't get repaired.
| hamasho wrote:
| I think GP meant no harm for those corporations.
| renonce wrote:
| > The settlement, announced Tuesday, does not act as an
| admission of guilt and Meta maintains no wrongdoing.
|
| > In 2011, Meta introduced a feature known as Tag Suggestions
| to make it easier for users to tag people in their photos.
| According to Paxton's office, the feature was turned on by
| default and ran facial recognition on users' photos,
| automatically capturing data protected by the 2009 law. That
| system was discontinued in 2021, with Meta saying it deleted
| over 1 billion people's individual facial recognition data.
|
| > The 2022 lawsuit
|
| > We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to
| exploring future opportunities to deepen our business
| investments in Texas, including potentially developing data
| centers
|
| Each statement makes it increasingly harder to view it as a
| fine than a tax. An offence that lasted 11 years and got
| prosecuted a year after it ended can be explained in no other
| way than being an excuse dug out of the ground to make a ransom
| worstspotgain wrote:
| Well they got in trouble because they were shooting _pictures_.
|
| Just a bad joke, please don't hate.
| eftychis wrote:
| Equitable and more specifically injunctive relief is the way out
| of this abuse of "crime is the cost of doing business" mentality.
| (That a lot of us raise here.)
|
| What could that mean: Meta or whichever company breaks the law,
| loses ownership and rights to anything that is the result of the
| crime.
|
| If it's a model, Meta can not use that or any other version of
| the model that utilized data illegally acquired. And that model
| becomes property of the victims.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| That would be the equivalent of confiscating a fleet or trucks
| from a trucking company whenever a driver broke a law. A little
| extreme and will never happen. China doesn't even operate like
| this.
| eftychis wrote:
| Not unheard of for some crimes, eg drugs or money laundering.
|
| Securities fraud also essentially offers that: all money made
| out of the fraud and gains on that belong to the victims.
|
| California's Unfair Competition framework also dictates
| essentially payment of the proceeds of the "unlawful
| activity" and taking actions to undo it.
|
| Again this is already an existing relief for certain crimes
| or civil torts committed by individuals.
|
| We just have not legislated to apply it to you know the other
| "persons," the companies.
| farceSpherule wrote:
| The fine is nothing. Not even 10% of their net profits for 2023.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| If every state sues and gets almost %10 that could be an
| issue...
| Dowwie wrote:
| Do the users get any of that money?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Will they delete the information? Or they purchased Texan facial
| data for 1.4b?
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| the ap news article linked by the top comment indicates that
| they deleted 'faceprints':
|
| > The company announced in 2021 that it was shutting down its
| face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than
| 1 billion people...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| What does deletion mean anyways? some bullshit soft deletion
| without any auditing that will enable them to keep using the
| data?
| phyrex wrote:
| Meta does get audited
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| > The attorney general's office did not say whether the money
| from the settlement would go into the state's general fund or if
| it would be distributed in some other way.
|
| so where's that money going to wind up?
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Huh, I wondered why this feature stopped being available. It
| would be even more useful now that you could use AI to say "find
| me all photos of George riding his bike" or "find all pictures of
| me with Dave".
| hamasho wrote:
| Probably that data was used to train AI models too. I hope we
| establish a legal framework that prevents training models without
| proper permission, and the companies that have already trained
| their models will get fined and those models will be banned from
| commercial use.
|
| I enjoy the rapid progress of LLMs. ChatGPT and Claude are
| already a critical part of my daily work. But I don't like the
| current situation where VCs and start-ups use unpermitted data to
| train the models, don't respect content creators, and take
| advantage of the lack of regulations.
| sensanaty wrote:
| There really needs to be a 3-strike rule type of thing with fines
| like these. It's ridiculous to me that they can continue to
| violate people's privacy without their consent, get fined a
| percentage of a percentage of the money they actually made on the
| practice, and that's the end of it.
|
| These fines should be exponential in nature, and aggressively so.
| The 4th-in-a-row fine of this nature should basically take
| _everything_ they earned in the whole year. Let 's see how quick
| and efficient they suddenly become once there's actual
| consequences.
|
| That, or Zucc and his cronies should be getting jailed. I'm fine
| with either option, or preferably both.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| Anyone know how much money the legal firm gets from this? Their
| cut should be substantial since we are talking $1.4 billon
| dollars here.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It's the AG's office filing the suit, not a class action.
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