A decent start

Posted on by

I found this very pleasing:

A judge has ruled that Meta intentionally violated Washington campaign-finance law 822 times, according to Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

A judge ruled on Sept. 2 that Facebook owner Meta repeatedly and intentionally violated Washington campaign-finance law, and must pay penalties, the Washington state Attorney General’s Office said.

According to Ferguson, intentional violations can result in tripled penalties.

…

Washington’s transparency law, passed by voters about 50 years ago, requires ad sellers such as Meta to disclose the names and addresses of those who buy political ads, the target of such ads and the total number of views of each ad. Ad sellers must provide the information to anyone who asks for it.

The social media giant, which also owns Instagram and other social media platforms, has repeatedly objected to the requirements, and argued in a summary judgment motion that Washington’s law “unduly burdens political speech” and is “virtually impossible to comply with.”

The law allows financial penalties of $10,000 per violation, which can be tripled when violations are deemed intentional. The Attorney General’s Office asserts Facebook has committed hundreds of violations since 2018.

Meta (Facebook) could face a fine of nearly $25M. After the crap they pulled in the 2020 election I consider this a decent start.

Share

5 thoughts on “A decent start”

  1. $25 million is less than pocket change to these people. You’d have to charge them 25 billion for them to blink.

  2. Virtually impossible to comply with those rules? Seriously?

    Meta/Facebook/whatever probably have the most detailed and extensive records of what their products (aka users) do, than any company in history with the possible exception of Amazon. I’d be amazed if they couldn’t provide ad view data accurate to the single digits place … if they chose to.

  3. Sadly such a small fine won’t even be noticed by anyone there except the bean counting accountants. And it certainly won’t serve to deter them from continuing their criminal behavior.

  5. It’s looking more and more like one of those AT&T moments. And not just for Facebook. Amazon and Google should be on the block in several different pieces also.
    Split them up. And sale them off. No mercy. Covid and the 2020 election has proved they have none for us.

Comments are closed.