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Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines (proton.me)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by testeronious@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] kirklennon@kbin.social 121 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This is advertising. It's not the most worst example, but it's still fundamentally an ad.
Revenue is absolutely the wrong metric to use. If you had $100 of revenue and $99 in costs, you have only $1 left to pay your fines. Amazon did not earn enough to pay its fines in 1 hour and 50 minutes because most of that that money was used to buy and deliver the products, plus various other expenses. The blog post is misstating the numbers by over an order of magnitude for some of the companies. If you're going to do it, do it right at least. The profit numbers are just as easy to come by as revenue.

[-] Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 79 points 10 months ago

Oh no, with Amazon only having a 3,5 % margin (after fines), it would take them all of 48 hours to make up the losses.

The point still stands: the fines are ridiculously low for these companies, and they have no incentive to change based on current fines.

[-] Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 37 points 10 months ago

Intentionally misrepresenting facts is not how one should try and make a point though. It just makes people cynical and distrustful.

[+] Brainsploosh@lemmy.world -7 points 10 months ago

Baselessly ascribing malicious intent is moreso a way to sow distrust and kill off discussion.

And besides, unless local regulations expressly forbid it, the income statements of those companies are after any fines and after any profit reducing measures (e.g. Amazon famously use investment schemes to reduce taxation), they do make the money to cover them in the shorter interval, or even shorter.

[-] Gamoc@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

It is astonishing to me that, in explaining why "baselessly ascribing malicious intent" is bad you have, in fact, baselessly ascribed the malicious intent of sowing distrust and killing of discussion to the person you are responding to. Incredibly quick hypocrisy turn around there.

Arguably it doesn't matter if its maliciousness or incompetence, the result is the same.

[-] residentmarchant@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago

The fines are part of their outgoing expenses, though, so at least some of that $99 in your example is going to pay these very fines

[-] Devdogg@lemmy.ml 16 points 10 months ago

These companies are terrible at being responsible.

this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024

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