Amazon saved children's voices recorded by Alexa even after parents asked for it to be deleted. Now it's paying a $25 million fine.

Totally agree. Facebook should have been absolutely crippled financially after influencing an election, but they get off scot free.

My idea is this:

Instead of a maximum fine being applied, you take a violation, lets say influencing an election, and you calculate how much of the corporations revenue came from that source. (i.e. Facebook messenger revenue would not count for election manipulation). Then, take a huge portion of that revenue (60%, 70%? [Depending on the violation]) and take that from their revenue. Who gives a shit if Facebook literally has to close down one of their services from lack of finances, thats what they get.

Agreed.

I only mentioned my range because then perhaps it would move to a different column in their budget.

25 million is nothing to Amazon.

A couple of billion might move it into an enterily new spreadsheet and maybe even precipitate a meeting to figure out who needs to be fired. Maybe.

Fair enough, good reply.

Upvoted :)

(Maybe Lemmy will bring back some good discussions in threads like these...)

I think the public gets fatigued when we hear about the profits these companies make and then we see these comparatively small fines.

If this is how we "steer the vessel of regulation" then I can accept that this is a push in a better direction.

However, I still feel that a fine in the hundreds of millions, ( not bankrupting but a "shot in the leg" versus a "slap on the wrist"), is appropriate for these very large corporations. They already weild so much political and economic power that consequences for things like this should be higher.

In other words, let's encourage them to operate responsibly in the first place.

That is the solution.

And before the usual story "but companies are not people and you cannot punish people for things a company did": in the end, in a company there is always someone that make a decision. It is too easy to commit a crime and then say "but the company did it".

That's not how laws work.

If you break the law, you deal with the consequences.

It's not a "game system" where additional infractions lead to multipliers of consequences.

Child labor laws exist because we saw what happened in the past when they did not exist. We, as a society, care about our children enough to protect them. That includes preventing them, by law, from working in industrial environments.

Some states seem inclined to repeat the past by repealing or loosening child labor laws... .

Now another child is dead as a result.

A penalty should be something you want to avoid. A 25 million (occasional) fine for Amazon is like asking me to pay a .25 (occasional) fine for, say, no parking. It has no deterrence.

On the other hand, a percentual on the profits is a lot more deterrent, expecially for a company. Maybe 25% is too much, I agree, but let's say a 2-5% of the profits is not that bad.

Note that a fine that is a percentual of your profits (or income) is far more balanced because it hurts the small and the big company the same way.

25% of profits for wilfully breaching privacy law... that's actually quite low given what creative accounting can do for profits.

GDPR maximum fine is 4% of global turnover. Luckily for amazon it's capped otherwise they'd be on the hook for billions.

You can somewhat trust some people with your data if there is no profit motive. You can't trust a corporation or a government. Ever.

Meta had been fined $1.3 billion this year by the European Union's GDPR. Before that Amazon was fined $781 million.

So 2.5 billion could happen, but not in the US obviously.

If that actually were the punishment, you'd actually see companies behaving a lot less evil very quickly. A tiny fine that isn't even a blip in the companies pocket won't do anything.

Or just count loans as income for tax reasons.

Are both of you living with your parents? I would make a point to not talk when such devices are present. Or just voice order expensive shit on Amazon for his account.