Facebook’s $5 Billion Penalty Misses the Point
The digital economy needs better rules — and it’s Congress’s job to write them.
Haul ’em in.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
No one will ever feel sorry for Facebook Inc. Its history of deceptiveness, obfuscation and sheer blundering indiscretion has no modern peer. Even so, it’s fair to ask whether the Federal Trade Commission got it right this week by imposing a record-smashing $5 billion penalty on the company — and to wonder what this might portend for the rest of the tech business.
The payment resulted from a year-long probe into whether Facebook had misled its users about how it handles their personal information, in violation of a previous FTC order in 2012. In a press release, the commission said the deal would impose “unprecedented new restrictions on Facebook’s business operations” and “change Facebook’s entire privacy culture.”