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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 [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 121 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[+] [email protected] -7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[+] [email protected] -11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Ah, but you're just saying that as a professional troll.

Now compare that to: I think you're mistaken, intent matters, and I believe extending trust that both parties want to convey something, rather than just dismiss others, is necessary for a discussion, and also for a communal discourse. If we're just shouting into the void, no trust is needed, but for interactions and building a sense of community, we will need both trust and norms of collaboration.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

You've just ascribed malicious intent to me, further demonstrating your own hypocrisy.

If you believe you second paragraph, why do you keep contradicting yourself?

The second paragraph also sounds like manipulative bullshit coming from someone who's misrepresenting facts. The spirit of collaboration and communal discourse that you're paying lip service to is smothered by lies and mistruths. You need to rethink how you do things, you're a walking anachronism.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Discourse is dead. It's amazing that anyone who disagrees with you is labelled a troll.

[–] [email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

These companies are terrible at being responsible.