Facebook gets a $5 billion fine from FTC for various privacy violations

Because we know that Facebook’s revenue in the last quarter alone was $15 billion which is 3x more than the fine. Also, Facebook reported a profit of $22 billion last year. So it seems like Facebook has gotten away with a pretty small amount.

However, it has to be noted that this is the biggest fine that has been given by FTC to any company in the United States. Earlier, Google was handed a fine of $22 million in 2012. Also, the fine on Facebook was surprisingly welcomed by the stock markets. Because as soon as the fine was announced, Facebook’s stock prices went up.

This is because even the shareholders feel that $5 billion fine for Facebook is nothing. However, a much bigger fine would have definitely crashed Facebook’s stocks. Kara Swisher says that Facebook should be handed a fine by FTC by adding a zero in this figure. She wants to get Facebook penalized for $50 billion which will definitely hurt them. This is more than a two-year profit from Facebook if we go by last year’s numbers.

At the moment, it feels like companies are getting away with this type of violations and are only given a slap on their wrists by regulators. Instead, people are calling on for the regulators to hurt the companies where it hurts.

However, it has to be said that Facebook’s stocks rising as soon as the company was handed a fine is insane. With this fine, Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth increased instead of decreasing.