Facebook Settlement With FTC Could Run Into the Billions (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission are discussing a settlement over privacy violations that could amount to a record, multibillion-dollar fine, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. The company and the F.T.C.'s consumer protection and enforcement staff have been in negotiations over a financial penalty for claims that Facebook violated a 2011 privacy consent decree with the agency, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is private. In 2011, Facebook promised a series of measures to protect user privacy after an investigation found it had harmed consumers with its handling of user data. The current talks have not yet reached the F.T.C.'s five commissioners for a vote and it is unclear how close the two sides are to wrapping up the nearly 11-month investigation. The commissioners met in mid-December and were updated by staff members that they had at that point found considerable evidence of violations of the 2011 consent decree. The FTC investigation into Facebook began after it was reported that the information of 87 million users had been harvested by a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, without their permission. The agency could seek up to $41,000 for each violation found.

Comments

To quote Grumpy Cat.

[sandbagger]

Good. They made a fortune off of poisoning the well of civic conversation.

Go FTC!

[mrwireless]

The FTC has been 'woke' on this issue since 2014 when they released a pretty good report on the goings on in the data broker market:
https://www.ftc.gov/system/fil...

They requested information from 9 databrokers, and explained things most of society still doesn't grasp like:
- It's not about 'your data'. Your raw data is turned into scores, and those scores are what is being sold. This 'derived' or 'inferred' data is what we should be talking about.
- Most of the money made from profiling is not made from advertising, but from selling 'risk management' products. The hundreds of scores the databrokers developed are sold to banks, insurers, employers. Cambridge Analytica's psychological profiles were once example of this algorithmically derived data.
- Databrokers sell a lot of data to each other too. This means you get scores.. which are sold and then aggregated into new scores.. which are then aggregated into new scores. Basically, there is no end to how long you can store data on people as long as you keep regurgitating and transforming it. Think of it like data whitewashing.

Because databrokers sell the derived data, and not the original data, there is little keeping them from scooping up data from leaks and feeding that to the algorithm too.

What Cambridge Analytica was, was the first glimmer of awareness with the larger public that the narrative of 'we create profiles to show you more relevant adds' is a only half the story, and it's diverting from what's really going on.

This is only the tip of the ice berg.

Make 10 billion fined 1 billion - profit!

[EnOne]

1. Do something illegal or semi-legal and make 10 billion
2. Get caught and say your sorry, really, really, sorry
3. Get fined 1 billion
4. Roll around in the 9 billion left over
5. Avoid taxes since the 1 billion in fines is a deductible loss

Now that you've been caught, find new illegal or semi-legal thing to make 10 more billion and repeat