This is a trend not only among banks but more and more among big tech - just include the (future) fine into your product price, then settle (if they investigate at all). No harm, nobody goes to prison, everybody happy.
> The settlement, announced Tuesday, does not act as an admission of guilt and Meta maintains no wrongdoing.
> In 2011, Meta introduced a feature known as Tag Suggestions to make it easier for users to tag people in their photos. According to Paxton’s office, the feature was turned on by default and ran facial recognition on users’ photos, automatically capturing data protected by the 2009 law. That system was discontinued in 2021, with Meta saying it deleted over 1 billion people’s individual facial recognition data.
> The 2022 lawsuit
> We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers
Each statement makes it increasingly harder to view it as a fine than a tax. An offence that lasted 11 years and got prosecuted a year after it ended can be explained in no other way than being an excuse dug out of the ground to make a ransom
$1.4B is serious money though. You can't be paying that out left and right, and there's no way Meta made more than $1.4B on doing facial analysis of photos uploaded by Texans. This was an actual loss by them, and thus an error.
The right figure to compare against is their annual profit, which is around $45B. A single state in the US in a single enforcement action against them taking off over 3% of their entire profit for the year is a big deal.
Also feels like a trend among states to end-run the commerce clause. Want to tax imports despite the Constitution? Just pass regulations that only affect out of state industries and fine them for non-compliance.
It should really be flipped. Wickard should be overruled, as a result reducing the federal power to regulate intra-state affairs, but state power better circumscribed by the Commerce Clause: no one state should be able to dictate nationwide commerce terms on account of its economy's size. Whether that would prevent Texas from regulating Meta as in this case is not clear -- the courts would have to figure that out.
> speeding on the highway, driving in the HOV lanes
This seems like it's apples to oranges. The people choosing to do these things aren't doing so because they consider it to be a cost of business, expecting that they'll generate more in revenue, but because they think the likelihood of being caught and the gravity of the offense are relatively low. This practice of disregarding regulations because the fines can be factored as a cost is fairly well confined to large corporations.
(I guess someone being paid per mile driven from advertising decals on their car would get a business benefit from the speeding; they may even factor in the probability of being caught with the amount of the fine to determine their speeding decisions. That's nobody I know, though.)
Time is money in the end. Speeding reduces time spent on the road and allows more time being spent elsewhere. The analogy still holds, just more abstractly.
Which is the reason why around here your license is void (for a certain time, as in years terms) if you speed too much (plus you can show up for a behavioural course which not only costs quite a bit for people with less money but also takes three days for those who can afford it).
And no chauffeur is going to risk that since it will void the means of living.
edit: I do not see any reason to not apply "license of cooperation in [state/country]" void in case of continued breaking of laws.
The trick (at least in the USA) to use an out of state licence which isn't connected to the DMV system of the state you're driving in. Sure you'll get fines, but your licence won't be revoked.
> So it seems to me that there’s a fundamental human trait (“what can I get away with” ??) that warrants thinking about as well.
Idk, I suspect many "crimes" like jaywalking and speeding are more around, this rule errs too hard on safety, but I know I can do this safely, and if it's not safe enough I'll get to pay the consequences (fines, accidents, dying).
That's nothing like violating the privacy of other people for profit and no real penalty (actual jailtime for those involved, not just a --fine-- tax on the profits)
> this rule errs too hard on safety, but I know I can do this safely, and if it's not safe enough I'll get to pay the consequences (fines, accidents, dying)
The analogy here is that people, like corporations, are frequently very bad at assessing where the appropriate line for safety actually is, doubly so when the appropriate line personally inconveniences them. Some rules are perhaps too stringent, but frequently, the guidelines are akin to safe working loads, with safety margins built in, rather than do-not-exceed limits. Anyone who has to understand either of those things will tell you that if your operational envelope exceeds the safe working limit, you will eventually fail, catastrophically.
It's certainly true that traffic fines are not similar to corporate fines in the sense that you don't lose your chemical manufacturing license after committing 15 points worth of chemical safety infractions, but for other kinds of infractions, the fine for people is also frequently just part of the cost of doing the thing.
All of that said, I 100% agree that company leadership should see jail time for a variety of infractions, with a sort of inverted burden of proof as it pertains to determining who is at fault in an offending organization: you can only pass the buck down as far as the highest person who you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt deliberately hid information from those above them.
