cross-posted from google@lemdro.id
- Google will pay $93M to settle a privacy lawsuit in California for violating consumer protection laws.
- The company was found to have engaged in deceptive practices related to collecting Android users’ location data without proper consent.
- Users believed disabling “Location History” would stop tracking, but another setting, “Web & App Activity,” remained enabled.
- As part of the settlement, Google will improve user-friendly account controls and be more transparent about data collection practices.
- This follows similar lawsuits and fines against Google for privacy violations in other jurisdictions.
That ratio doesn’t matter.
What matters is the value derived from some prohibited activity relative to the fine/lawsuits resulting from that activity.
Let’s say that Company A sells oranges, and uses some pesticide that isn’t approved, and gets a fine for it.
Let’s say that Company B sells apples, and improperly claimed that the apples were fresher than they were to grocery stores and is sued for that.
Let’s say that Company A and Company B merge and form Company C. The value of Company C would be larger, but it would make no sense for either of the above two disincentives to be larger. Being part of Company C doesn’t make engaging in bad behavior more-desirable than it does for when A and B were separate, and so the disincentives one establishes for bad behavior shouldn’t grow either.
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Let’s say company C pooled their resources to pay for lawyers that could reduce the penalty to a profitable level, but A and B couldn’t individually.
The ratio does matter. The fine is supposed to be a punishment/disincentive, but when that disincentive is less than trivial it no longer disincentivizes. Like a crime punishable by a $250 fine–the working class will follow the law because that’s three days’ but the rich won’t care because it’s a glass of wine at a decent restaurant. Google will simply pay the fine with no reason or intent to stop the questionable behavior because they’ll just pay the trivial fine again when they get caught–just like they’ve been doing for years…