Privacy

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[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

And what? The EU has a trackrecord of pretty hefty fines. They won't risk it for this many users.

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[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Think about it in terms of risk / reward or if you like, shareholder value.

If the value of the data exceeds the fine combined with the risk of it being discovered, the data will continue to exist.

Factor in the cost of actually guaranteeing that deleting something across all online, nearline, offline and archived data stores and the chances of anything being purposely deleted are not high.

Accidental data loss, sure, purposeful data loss, I can't see it happening.

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[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

GDPR fines can reach up to $20 million dollars. That's not a business expense. That's quiet a dent in their quarterly balance sheet. And the EU has issued hefty fines in the past. This is not the USA we're talking about.

hideshow 4 child comments

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[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

Again, you vastly underestimate the size of Meta.

In the last quarter of 2024 it shows a net income of $20,838 million. A $20 million fine would change that 3 into a 1 and again, that's net income for just for three months.

Source: https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2025/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2024-Results/default.aspx

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https://dataprivacymanager.net/5-biggest-gdpr-fines-so-far-2020/

[–] thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

How about a $1.2 Billion fine ? Would that perhaps be consequential ?

They got hit with that 2 years ago

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[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

Interesting, when you read that article, it says that Meta will appeal, searching for the GDPR fine and the appeal, all I found was more fines, but no records of the results of any appeals.

Also, it was €1.2 Billion, not $1.2 Billion.

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[–] thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Appeal never lodged as far as I can find searching tje Irish high court lists. They lodged appeals against a €90m fine though which started hearing last week, and withdrew an appeal against a 2018 €251m fine

Yeah sorry, €1.2bn was USD $1.3billion at the time and about 1.25bn now, so hardly misleading though.

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[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 point 1 year ago

I only noticed the € vs $ because I was searching for the case, so all good.

It's telling that they continue to attract fines. I saw the ones you mentioned also but didn't have the energy to start digging.

Despite assertions made to the contrary in this thread, I'm not at all convinced that they're doing anything other than maximising shareholder value to the exclusion of all other considerations, including making a risk assessment in relation to paying fines versus compliance with the law.