If corporations make more money from the infraction than the fine, they will always choose the infraction.
Regulations and regulators need to make fines an actual deterrent.
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@Em0nM4stodon part of the problem is even if these corporations get fined massive amounts, the people in charge still get their golden parachutes and face no personal consequences. They don’t care about their companies, only about their personal net worth. We need a system where the people running the show face personal consequences for intentional bad actions.
@Em0nM4stodon @briankrebs one problem is the concept of fining a company billions when another gets fined for thousands feels unfair. Penalties should be proportional to the company’s recorded value.
So, small company making a privacy infraction can get fined $1m, but if Facebook does the same they get fined $1B.
The decision about magnitude shouldn’t be up to humans because big numbers are hard to comprehend.
But it’d prevent huge companies from considering fines a cost of doing business.
@Em0nM4stodon Our economical systems are built the wrong way. Bigger fines wouldn't change that. :/
@Em0nM4stodon @mariejulien I’m still in shock from the corporate lawyer telling me from their PoW there is no such thing as breaking the law, just a long gray gradient of increasing “legal exposure”.
@Em0nM4stodon
In Switzerland, certain fines for driving offenses are calculated based on income and can sometimes reach extraordinary amounts. The same thing should be done everywhere, for everything.
@Em0nM4stodon There ought to be a tax penalty rather than a fine, meaning, the more money they make from the infraction, the greater the cost.
@Em0nM4stodon fines don’t deter management, they are paid by the shareholders. Neither do fines for management, they will have D&O insurance or their board will “” loan“” then the money.
The only thing that gets senior executives to pay attention is jail time.
@Em0nM4stodon When Google StreetView was first to Germany, they illegally recorded phone data from every neighborhood their car drove through, because opportunity makes the thief and Google couldn't possibly refrain from it, because that's the very basis of their business practices. Long story short: The court couldn't fine Google higher because the law under which Google was fined had an upper limit (I don't even know why) and no other company harmed people in these dimension in Germany before.
@Em0nM4stodon I'm also a fan of treating corporations like people ALL THE WAY.
Jail them. The corporations, I mean. Not the workers in them. We'd have to get a bit creative about what "jailing" means, but something along the lines of house arrest (freezing all assets is a good start) would be where I'd begin.
@Em0nM4stodon Fines should hurt so much they'd rather just comply. Slap personal liability on execs too.
@Em0nM4stodon indeed, but maybe let's also put some of those responsible - i.e. the C-suite in prison, paying fines only affects the stockholders, the C-suite are responsible and need to be inprisonned
@Em0nM4stodon In the event of a serious infraction, whether deliberate or not, companies directors should be disbarred (up to & including permanently) from holding executive office in a company.
@Em0nM4stodon @NaClKnight Fine should be an order of magnitude greater than the profit.
@Em0nM4stodon this!
The fines are laughable when you are a big corp.
The fines should also be recurring until the underlying infraction is resolved.
Like llm and gen AI tech using stolen data.
@Em0nM4stodon
For get the level of the corporate fine, make the executives personally liable, including criminal responsibility.
@Em0nM4stodon Corporations should get prison sentences. Which in the case of a corp, means all their profits go to restitution for that number of years.
@Em0nM4stodon the consequence needs to be a stop work order (or whatever would be equivalent for the industry).
@Em0nM4stodon This is literally a scam. It's a farce. It's to placate the angry while allowing the rich to continue.
@Em0nM4stodon
The punishment needs to be commensurate with the crime. If you kill >100 000 people, no fine is adequate.
https://www.clientearth.org/latest/press-office/press-releases/124-000-premature-deaths-in-eu-and-uk-so-far-linked-to-illegally-high-dieselgate-emissions-new-report-reveals/
There are criminal actions that need to break the corporate shield. Life in prison with all assets confiscated still doesn't seem to reflect the severity of the crime.
This only works with strong regulation. Revolving door corruption must be eliminated.
@Em0nM4stodon fines should be based on a percentage of your net worth rather then an arbitrary amount that only disincentivizes the working class
@Em0nM4stodon My favorite way to fine would be "percentage of global turnover" during the period covered by the infraction. Say the company put in a year conning unsuspecting customers out of extra money. So the fine would be money-taken-from-customers + some percentage of your total sales for that year. The money-taken-from-customers would be returned to customers.
@Em0nM4stodon Capital punishment for corporations. Dissolve their charter, liquidate all assets.
Pay back in this order - customers, non-executive employees, other creditors, shareholders, executive employees. When the money runs out, it runs out.
The investors who talk so much about taking on risk should be the ones taking losses and executives shouldn't get anything at all from failure.
@Em0nM4stodon You screw a company out of existence often enough, people stop hiring you to manage their stuff.
Executives shouldn't get to be executives forever based on seniority or whatever. They need to prove they can get results without abusing the public, the employees and the shareholders.
The LLC as currently conceived is morally and ethically a dumpster fire. Executives should be legally liable for anything happening on their watch.
@Em0nM4stodon Governments love big corporations, so that will never happen.
@jairajdevadiga We must change that then.
@Em0nM4stodon Indeed. Fining corporations after the fact hasn't worked
We need deeper changes to the market structure, such that they cannot do bad things to begin with, and to make the bad things unprofitable.
The challenge is to get rid of the monopolies and oligopolies (which governments love because it gives them more control).
@jairajdevadiga I could not agree more 
@Em0nM4stodon No, there needs to be jail time for executives. Nothing else will get their attention.
@timbray @Em0nM4stodon like Iceland did with bank execs after the big crash in 2008-2009.
@timbray @Em0nM4stodon we used to drag oligarchs into the streets and take their heads. A Constitution with checks and balances was the compromise made with the populace to stop that. They've dismantled their checks and balances. The contract is broken.
idk but anyone who does that is one of "us" in my book
@timbray I strongly support this
@Em0nM4stodon We do have the power to choose where our dollar is spent. Politicians can be bought over with a toaster. Don't expect fines to hold corporations accountable and only so many Mangione's in the world.
@x41h
Nah that's nonsense. Individual action will never change corporate behavior because the incentives and power structures are all wrong. You don't have the option of buying from the corp that's doing things right because it has no reason to exist.
Only way we're going to get corps to not fuck up the world is through collective action - which basically means government, whether it's in a similar shape to today's states or not.
@Em0nM4stodon
That’s just the cost of doing business to them 😡
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