Honestly, I think there’s actually a good chance that the fine’s bigger than the profit here. What a lot of people don’t realise is that data is only valuable because there’s usually a lot of it. The value of your average Facebook user’s data is like ten dollars a year and Facebook spends a lot of time trying to increase that to eleven dollars because when multiplied by half a billion users, then it becomes something meaningful.
But still, a fine needs to hurt in order to be effective. $12 million is likely less than what they paid the lawyers.
Honestly, I think there’s actually a good chance that the fine’s bigger than the profit here. What a lot of people don’t realise is that data is only valuable because there’s usually a lot of it. The value of your average Facebook user’s data is like ten dollars a year and Facebook spends a lot of time trying to increase that to eleven dollars because when multiplied by half a billion users, then it becomes something meaningful.
But still, a fine needs to hurt in order to be effective. $12 million is likely less than what they paid the lawyers.