this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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They just lost a huge part of their buisness revenue permanently. The FTC prohibited them from selling their most valuable type of data, and from collecting it in the future.
This action will also cause all of these other data brokers to tighten up their likely shitty practices or be next, so this is a big privacy win in several directions.
That's an excellent fine. The FTC chair, Lina Khan, is an absolute beast. She is fighting mergers like a motherfucker and shutting shits like this down.
Ok. If I take 100 dollars off you each month until the police stop me. Stopping me is punishment enough because I lose revenue.
Talking money off you and taking your data and selling it on is different, but both are wrong and both should come with a punishment. Not just an order to stop.
In the EU they wouldn't have tried this in the first place, because they'd get fined.
My main revenue isn't $100/month. It's a lot more l that I use to live indoors and eat. If you removed it, that would be a huge and consequential penalty. Its odd that you think losing a lot of money permanently is not a punishment.
As to the EU, the US has no such privacy laws. The FTC just established at least part of them with this action. Sad as it is, that's huge progress for this country that shouldnt be brushed off.
Let’s put this a different way. If I make a living robbing people, and get caught one time and only have to give the stuff back, what is my incentive to not continue robbing people? There is none.
Now the real question is, what is everyone else’s incentive to not rob people? They’ve seen what happens, they just have to give the stuff back. Worst case they make no money, best case they get rich easy.
So robbings continue unabated.
Up to this point, robbing people wasent explicitly illegal.
Should the first person who is caught robbing people be imprisoned or should it be made explicitly clear to every robber that yes, robbing is illegal and we will enforce the law going forward?
That isn’t what’s happening here, at all. These aren’t new regulations.
Do they not get shut down as a company if they continue collecting and selling data?
The first time you get caught, you give things back. The second time you are put to death. No?
What stops them from doing it again?
What stops other busunesses from carrying on until their caught? No one is in jail.
Escalating enforcement? Why do you think the FTC can't add fines/jail time now that they have set strict rules?
Should the FTC have fined/jailed the company execs before it made its policy clear to at least one example like Xmode?
I'm not American but my understanding is the FTC has been toothless for 30 years.
It comes and goes with various administrations unfortunately. Since we basically cant pass any law that would cost a company $1 now, it falls to these executive agencies to make quasi laws with previously legally granted power to get anywhere near sanity.
This FTC has been heavy hitting because the biden admin has been putting mostly serious people into these roles.