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Facebook must pay $100.000 to Norway each day for violating our right to privacy | Better HN

Facebook must pay $100.000 to Norway each day for violating our right to privacy (opens in new tab)

(tutanota.com)

59 pointshammadmajid2y ago72 comments

72 comments

jsnell2y ago

Dupe (on both the primary sources and real reporting, rather than this content marketing with a clickbait headline):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36756101

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37045185

imiric2y ago

> $100,000 per day for a country with ~5.4 million people is a lot. If even 20 percent used Facebook regularly, then that would still be 10 cents per user per day. It's unlikely that Meta is generating so much profit per user - every day.

TFA underestimates the value of user data.

From [1]:

> by the end of 2022, Meta’s [average revenue per user] worldwide was $10.86. While in US & Canada, it was $58.77; in Europe, it was $17.29; in Asia, $4.61 and in the rest of the world, it was $3.52.

$17.29 ARPU, per quarter, comes out at about 19 cents per day. Sure, revenue, not profit, but this is still way above 10c/day.

And this is only in Europe, and it doesn't account for all revenue user data can generate. Once adtech has user data, it can sell it in perpetuity on data broker markets, which is likely where the long tail revenues come from. Long after the user stops using FB, or even if they don't use FB at all (shadow profiles).

So this fine from a small country is just the cost of doing business for Meta. If every EU country did this, and the fines were incremental, then it _might_ cause Meta to rethink their strategy in the EU.

[1]: https://fourweekmba.com/facebook-arpu/

sixhobbits2y ago

> The small country of Norway is taking on the tech giant. Will David be able to bring down Goliath?

Kind of interesting that here the *country* is david while the *business* is goliath..

vidarh2y ago

Given Norways sovereign wealth fund alone has twice the market cap of Facebook, it's also not very accurate.

It's downright insulting. Norway is a country not a mere here today gone tomorrow company.

croisillon2y ago

Some companies lasted longer than some countries

petecooper2y ago

>$100.000 each day

For clarity & comment skimmers:

TFA uses $100,000 in the subheading and beyond. Some European countries use `.` as a thousands separator, so it's not "a hundred dollars a day".

boxed2y ago

I have experienced this pain, and wrote an article about it: https://kodare.net/2021/04/04/safe_number_parsing.html

vidarh2y ago

Norway being one of those.

Nobody should use punctuation as thousands separator regardless of which side you are on.

veave2y ago

No one uses 3 digits to represent cents, so nobody is going to interpret this as a hundred dollars a day.

Bahraini Dinar (and some other Dinars I believe) use 3 digits for their currency. I wouldn't assume no dollar does it. Sure, it's very unlikely. But if you've never dealt with some other currency, it may not by that obvious.

sho_hn2y ago

"Falsehoods programmers believe about time^Wmoney

(Reference to https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...)

jcpst2y ago

It took me a minute. My brain saw the period and then truncated the third zero to make sense of it. This is pretty common in humans. But because I thought that one hundred dollars was odd, I read the article, which I then realized it was one hundred thousand.

generic920342y ago

There are some exceptions:

BHD Bahraini Dinar

IQD Iraqui Dinar

JOD Jordanian Dinar

KWD Kuwaiti Dinar

LYD Libyan Dinar

OMR Omani Rial

TND Tunisian Dinar

Cent is short for 'centime' or 1/100th, so indeed, nobody is using three digits to represent cents. But there are currencies with finer grained denominations than cents.

0, 2, 3, 4 are all in use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217

ComputerGuru2y ago

Gasoline in the USA was (is?) priced to the third decimal place (always a 9).

petecooper2y ago

That's fair. I stand corrected. Thank you.

adhesive_wombat2y ago

Make the fine 1 krone, but double it every day.

SigmundurM2y ago

For those who think Norway is small compared to facebook, heres Norway's Wealth Fund in real time: https://www.nbim.no/

drexlspivey2y ago

They own 1.32% of Meta

toomuchtodo2y ago

You can both invest through your sovereign fund while still extracting penalties for breaking the law.

o_x2y ago

So 36M USD per year? I wonder how that stacks against the profits they make from that market.

Think of it as a starting point. I'm all for applying network algorithms to fines like this: if you don't back off we'll double the fine. Every time it is levied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_backoff

And if the company can't pay then the execs are on the hook, everybody with a C-level title or a board seat. I would happily wager this would get even the largest entities into compliance within days, weeks at most.

Stranger432y ago

The doubling of fines was tried successfully against microsoft back in the web 1.0 when they refused to acknowledge the antitrust fine.

Basically the EU(or even Norway) is way to big a market for advertisements for the industry to just ignore so sooner of later adtech will fold and play nice.

icegreentea22y ago

Meta makes (revenue) ~25 billion a year from EU. Very crudely compensating for Norway vs EU population (~5 vs 450 million), you'd estimate ~250-300 million revenue per year from Norway.

36M USD per year then works out to like 10-15% of yearly revenue. Meta reports overall operating margin in the 20-30% range, so 10-15% revenue loss is significant, but not immediately deadly... which seems to match the stated intent of Norwegian authorities.

So what stops Facebook from just banning Norwegian users?

retrac2y ago

Getting banned in multiple western countries (this won't be the last case like this I suspect) for refusal to comply with their democratically-valid laws is a great way to end up a corporate pariah.

Facebook is in a similar showdown right now with the EU, appealing a 1 billion EUR fine: https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/meta-fined-record-us-1-3-bil...

Their disagreement with the Canadian government is coming to a head too: https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/all-news-in-canada-will-be-r...

If they choose to only operate in markets which let them operate entirely as they see fit, they may find themselves soon with no markets left to operate in.

betaby2y ago

Not related like at all Canadian one. Beside the fact 'governments are not happy.'

Money from advertising. Sure, they can cut off everyone who tried to sue them... but won't last long that way. Also they could be still sued for the past non-compliance instead.

gmerc2y ago

Google taking the advertising cake.

throw5555788o2y ago

Or simply not complying. After all what can Norway do about it? Lol

It reminds them of the Canada govt trying to make FB pay for news. Ehh... NOPE.

Lol indeed: throw their execs in jail when they transit through a country with which they have an extradition agreement (plenty of precedent for that), freeze or seize their assets, block them at the ISP level (ISPs would have to play ball unless they themselves would want to be come a target).

The idea that some crap company outranks a nation state with millions of citizens is ridiculous.

Also: even though Norway isn't part of the EU (though it is in Schengen) they could bring a case in the EU courts and have Meta's assets in Ireland seized. That would really hurt if the court allowed it.

gmerc2y ago

I love you one causally goes about “can’t they just violate the law”

Fuck around and find out Facebook.

hdjjhhvvhga2y ago

They can freeze their assets. They can basically do everything you can do against a company that doesn't obey the law.

They can block FB in their country.

1vuio0pswjnm72y ago

It's relatively common IME to see cynical, anti-government sentiment from HN commenters. Perhaps these comments are aimed at the US. But stories like this out of Norway show that not all national governments are useless. Some national governments are trying to address the problem of so-called "tech" companies.

I find it interesting that the _smaller_ countries imposes these restrictions and fines as their way of generating revenue. $100,000 a day I can imagine is a fair bit for Norway.

closewith2y ago

Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund made a gain of 1,501 billion crowns or $143 billion USD in H1 2023. That's roughly $781 million USD per day in the first half of this year. I don't think this fine was about revenue generation.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/norway-wealth-fund-...

clan2y ago

Your imagination is lacking:

"Norway's 'oil fund' earns 131 billion euros in first half of 2023"

https://www.thelocal.no/20230816/norways-oil-fund-earns-131-...

silvester232y ago

Norway may be small in terms of population but it's still one of the richest countries in the world. I doubt they are doing this for the money.

I think you may want to peruse the CIA world factbook for bit to bring you up to date about Norway, in particular the 'Economy' section:

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/norway/#eco...

This fine represents no more than a very small fraction of a percent of Norway's GDP. Let's generously assume $1B / day, then $100k per day is 4 decimal orders of magnitude less or 0.01%.

8organicbits2y ago

Why do you believe that? There's lots of evidence[1] of other countries issuing larger fines to social media companies. The point of these is to force the behavior to stop, not to raise money. A lower fine would probably raise more money in total, as the behavior could continue long term.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/09/twitter-f...

Ylpertnodi2y ago

>I find it interesting that the _smaller_ countries imposes these restrictions and fines as their way of generating revenue.

And I always thought fines were to disuade/ punish certain behaviours.

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