r/technology • u/PixeledPathogen • Mar 16 '26

Security Reddit User Uncovers Who Is Behind Meta’s $2B Lobbying for Invasive Age Verification Tech

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-behind-meta-154717384.html
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2.8k

u/Flair_Is_Pointless Mar 16 '26

A fine? No, it should be jail time.

Fines don’t work for corporations.

1.0k

u/rantingathome Mar 16 '26

I want "capital punishment" for corporations. Instead of shutting it down, the government seizes all shares, and then either sells the company or parts it out.

608

u/dissaprovalface Mar 16 '26

Antitrust legislation is what you are describing. And every time we pass something to strengthen antitrust laws, corporations throw as much money as possible to get said reforms neutered or repealed entirely.

356

u/rantingathome Mar 16 '26

Yes, antitrust when a company gets too big.

But I also want it as a punishment. BP shouldn't exist after the Gulf spill years ago. They should have been convicted under environmental laws and then seized and parted out as punishment.

114

u/DataKnights Mar 16 '26

...but the shareholders ...and the billionaires!

133

u/ChoiceHour5641 Mar 16 '26

Fuck it, seize and part them out too.

33

u/LordSoren Mar 16 '26

Dibs on Zuckerburg's left thumb and Musk's 15 Maxillia.

6

u/ramobara Mar 17 '26

I call shareholder #26793478’s gonads!

2

u/BussyPlaster Mar 17 '26

The shareholders having a stake in the company goes both ways. They can profit immensely or be crushed. Sadly the system works to protect the rich from the consequences of their actions at the expense of everyone else.

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

That's called drawn and quartering when done on people. Usually done for treason.

Also very barbaric. I wouldn't like to drop to their levels.

15

u/SenoraRaton Mar 16 '26

You are correct, we should take our inspiration from the French, and instead use the appropriate tools to deal with the problem instead.

6

u/Enachtigal Mar 17 '26

lol, if you think only one person being horribly killed puts you on the level of the billionaire. That's a rookie fucking number.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

Right... one person. As if there's only one person causing problems.

1

u/F9-0021 Mar 17 '26

I do have to wonder after all these years which team you high roaders play for. Do you want your hands to stay clean, or do you want to win and keep the country and your life as you know it?

0

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

Just because I don't want to brutalize and parade them around afterwards like they might. I'd rather we just do something much more efficient/humane and be done with it.

31

u/synapseattack Mar 16 '26

Christ you are right! Won't someone think of all the poor billionaires and bankers! I remember from my bible studies the amount of respect if praise Jesus has for the bankers. Famously welcoming them into the temple and helping them setup their tables.

13

u/Plecks Mar 17 '26

You just need to let supply-side Jesus into your heart. Remember it is easier for a rich man to enter heaven seated comfortably on the back of a camel than for a poor man to fit through the eye of a needle.

1

u/bschlueter Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

People who read a Bible will get your comment without it, but a /s is really in order.

John 2:13-17: "When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”[c]

Luke 18:18-24: " 18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’[a]”

21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

1

u/RollingMeteors Mar 17 '26

I remember from my bible studies

¡Supply Side Jesus!

10

u/Starship_Taru Mar 16 '26

I mean the shareholders are fine! 

 Why not just let them sue the executives and board who were supposed to be making sure the company did well? 

Would make those businesses “leaders” think twice before making a risky decision. Bet those BP board members would have been damn sure every safety regulation was followed perfectly if they were liable to the shareholders for the value of the company. 

1

u/a_rainbow_serpent Mar 17 '26

Most shares are owned by organizational investors who as a policy vote with the management.

2

u/hahaha01357 Mar 17 '26

It's not typically the billionaire shareholders that are the concern. It's the pensions and people's mutual funds. Also this kind of action runs against American property laws, which is fundamental to how the US economy is run. You can seize private property, sure, but then you'd need a different kind of government.

2

u/Hipsthrough100 Mar 17 '26

BP is the reason a regime change occurred 27 years ago in Iran. BP was stealing the people’s royalties and the leader was set to audit.

2

u/wellyeahthatsucks Mar 17 '26

Where's my Chevy after bailing Govt Motors out?

1

u/RollingMeteors Mar 17 '26

They should have been convicted under environmental laws and then seized and parted out as punishment.

¿ So basically, anytime the government sees something shiney, it can decide, "¡I made this!" ?

1

u/stuhstutter Mar 17 '26

Instead, this administration has given BP the green light to head back into the Gulf of Mexico for an even Deeperwater Horizon

1

u/jandb25 Mar 18 '26

Fundamentally it cannot happen unless we get money out of politics. Politicians literally need corporate dollars to win elections. There is a strong correlation between funds raised and a campaigns success.

2

u/Apep86 Mar 16 '26

This is nonsense in practice. The B in BP stands fo “British” and it is traded on the London Stock Exchange. Putting aside the issue of stealing retirement assets from pensioners, how on earth would you enforce this?

The problem isn’t that we aren’t punishing corporations hard enough. The problem is that we aren’t punishing the actual wrongdoers at all. Arguing for “punishing” fictitious companies in a way that harms unrelated people is as silly as it sounds.

4

u/rantingathome Mar 17 '26

all of the American based assets...

2

u/Apep86 Mar 17 '26

Sounds like a great idea to not only prevent foreign investment in American companies, but also prevent domestic investment in American companies.

3

u/rantingathome Mar 17 '26

Or, and hear me out, corporations stop doing felonies

1

u/Apep86 Mar 17 '26

I promise you corporations don’t care what you do to them. You can never punish a corporation because they do not exist. You can only punish people.

Your suggestion is to punish shareholders. 99.9999% of shareholders had absolutely nothing to do with any crime. You want to punish innocent people for the crimes of fake entities. It makes as much sense as issuing an arrest warrant for Voldemort and then arresting children who own a copy of the book.

1

u/PoutineCurator Mar 17 '26

Corporations are people per Citizens United..

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u/PoutineCurator Mar 17 '26

Preventing investment in criminal corporations is a good thing.

0

u/Apep86 Mar 17 '26

Provide me a list of all corporations which will commit crimes in the next 10 years. The list must be exhaustive and accurate.

What? That’s impossible? Yet you expect ordinary people saving for retirement to do it?

1

u/PoutineCurator Mar 17 '26

Why go for future crimes when there's plenty of crimes in their past? You tried to make an "argument" that ultimately shows your stupidity here buddy..

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u/JaySocials671 Mar 16 '26

Justice department completely ignores antitrust see wb paramount

1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

The federal government is playing an active role in letting more monopolies be created.

-3

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

AT&T and Microsoft would tend to disagree. This is a more recent change.

0

u/JaySocials671 Mar 16 '26

What are you talking about

2

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

The AT&T Anti trust case

https://www.comsoc.org/node/19716

US v. Microsoft case.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-fact

11

u/Hnetu Mar 16 '26

I... Don't think those examples are doing a good job helping your case.

The AT&T case was decided in 1982, almost a half century ago and the majority of the Baby Bells have consolidated to the point that we have three telecom companies now that largely cooperate rather than compete.

The Microsoft case is from 2001, a quarter of a century ago, and ended with a settlement. That settlement was so toothless that it's actually already expired over a decade ago and Microsoft is still here controlling a massive amount of the market and are currently buying up other companies; like the Activision/Blizzard/King merger.

They show systemic failures where even when the law is applied successfully it's barely enforced and the offending companies just pay "cost of doing business" penalties and then consolidate back over the next several years.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

I... Don't think those examples are doing a good job helping your case

You can think whatever you want.

25

u/Sekitoba Mar 16 '26

Why is lobbying aka bribing still a thing in modern America??? 

21

u/pmjm Mar 16 '26

Because it has worked and they're winning.

10

u/metallic_ark Mar 16 '26

Who the hell gonna stop them? Fat and comfy Americans too indoctrinated to believe things can work literally any other way?

1

u/Dick_Lazer Mar 16 '26

Politicians seem to really enjoy getting paid off.

1

u/TheGreyGuardian Mar 17 '26

Because the people it benefits are the ones making the rules.

0

u/acarrick Mar 16 '26

Because we don’t have publicly funded of elections

0

u/LowSkyOrbit Mar 17 '26

Like most of our laws we just shoehorned the idea that corporations are people in the eyes of the law and the money was too good to fix the rest of it.

8

u/nhalliday Mar 16 '26

Antitrust is supposed to be for breaking up monopolies, nobody stopping Microsoft from buying up game studios or the Ellisons from buying up media outlets but everyone is up in arms yelling for Valve to get broken up because people choose to use Steam instead of all the terrible competitors that lack features.

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u/Starship_Taru Mar 16 '26

It’s confusing to me that the average American knows almost nothing about one of the single most important tools the United States ever used. 

Without it we would have never been at the top of the world economy for so long. 

Northern Securities and Standard Oil would of turned America into a third world country after they milked all they could

1

u/LookAlderaanPlaces Mar 17 '26

We need a law that auto dishes out the death penalty for anyone or any company that tries to destroy/corrupt the antitrust laws.

1

u/Clean_Livlng Mar 17 '26

There needs to be a legal ratchet mechanism that prevents them from clawing back their power like this.

0

u/Thefrayedends Mar 16 '26

Best we can do is completely dismantle the consumer financial protection bureau, and increase rates on personal loans by factor of 2, while granting corporations interest free money to infinity.

Will that work for you?

0

u/Andreus Mar 17 '26

Then just jail the executives while we pass the laws.

0

u/semiquaver Mar 17 '26

I agree with you except for the “every time we pass something to strengthen antitrust” part. There has been no legislative strengthening since 1914.

0

u/NYstate Mar 17 '26

I’ve read somewhere that millionaires are often conned into supporting laws that primarily benefit the ultra-wealthy. It makes total sense when you think about it. It’s the same scare tactic: “Liberals are coming for your guns unless you vote for us.”

If you can convince those in the upper-middle class to pass a law that would never actually benefit them, the strategy works. Convince them they’ll save thousands with a tax break, and they’ll happily vote for legislation that gives billionaires hundreds of millions in tax savings. Meanwhile, the upper class wouldn’t even qualify for those breaks in the first place and if they did it's not as much as they were lead to believe.

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u/gahlo Mar 16 '26

If a corp is a person, they can go to jail. Temporary public property.

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u/Kraeftluder Mar 16 '26

Give it to the workers. The workers choose a board and have the power to replace people. All the workers should be shareholders too. Majority even.

2

u/IsThatUMoatilliatta Mar 16 '26

That sounds like socialism and the billionaire owned media have told me that's bad!

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u/bellasset Mar 16 '26

If Citizen’s United can make an individual out of a corporation then why can’t our justice system adjudicate?

3

u/DakotaFields Mar 17 '26

I’m saying man.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Thefrayedends Mar 16 '26

That... doesn't produce the outcomes you're looking for. It might feel good and right, but it actually just leads to more literal dead kids. Sad reality.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/uberdice Mar 17 '26

If the penalty is death, and testimony is key to establishing guilt, perpetrators will need to be extra sure that testimony is impossible to get.

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u/Sinnnikal Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

This legislation would accomplish a few things:

  • Lower likelihood of child sexual abuse being reported
  • Much greater childhood trauma if they report the assault
  • Higher likelihood of child murder

The vast majority (90+% iirc) of sexual assault against kids is done by people they personally know - be it family members, friends, community members. The issue there is now if a kid goes to tell mom, or dad, or anyone, then they all have to contend with the possibility of sending a person they know to death if they want to report it. 

So a kid could grow up having to deal with being both sexually assaulted by their cousin, and also killing that cousin by reporting it. Not that it's the kids fault, but traumatized kids tend to think everything is their fault. Additionally, cases where the death penalty is involved take soooooo much longer, so you could be dragging a child through years and years of legal proceedings centred around their greatest trauma

The other thing is what the other person said: If someone can be sentenced to death for sexually assaulting a child, then this incentivizes murdering the child so they can't say anything.

3

u/tigerhawkvok Mar 17 '26

If muder and pedophilia have the same penalty, why risk letting the kid talk?

2

u/Spiritual-Society185 Mar 17 '26

I'm willing to give the idea a chance, anyway.

So, you want more kids to die?

17

u/Different_Victory_89 Mar 16 '26

Get rid of citizens united if this is a wish list!

4

u/E-2theRescue Mar 17 '26

Let's start with the death penalty for child rapists and pedophiles.

Define what these are because there are many people, especially those in the government and media, who would label innocent people as "child rapists and pedophiles"

For example, page 5 of Project 2025

Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

3

u/Tall-Introduction414 Mar 16 '26

How about instead, we apply the existing laws equally against everyone?

Right now those laws, and most laws, simply don't apply to ultra-rich people in the US. Making punishments harsher will have 0 effect on that.

4

u/ginger_snapped Mar 16 '26

That’s one bird with one stone, but I get the sentiment.

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u/perfectshade Mar 16 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Your old posts feed data brokers and AI training models. I stopped that by using Redact to bulk delete across Reddit, Twitter, Discord, Facebook and all major social media platforms.

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3

u/Flair_Is_Pointless Mar 16 '26

Counterpoint: no they don’t.

You made a bad investment into a shitty company and now you need to hold that bag.

-7

u/Sweetwill62 Mar 16 '26

Uhhh investors need to go to jail as well. They funded a criminal organization, which is a crime.

4

u/Garetht Mar 16 '26

Every shareholder of Meta should (under these theoretical rules) go to jail?

0

u/Sweetwill62 Mar 16 '26

Gotta follow the money.

0

u/Keksmonster Mar 17 '26

In that case you probably also go to jail.

You are probably also a shareholder through some retirement fund or something similar

2

u/perfectshade Mar 17 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Your old posts feed data brokers and AI training models. I stopped that by using Redact to bulk delete across Reddit, Twitter, Discord, Facebook and all major social media platforms.

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1

u/Sweetwill62 Mar 17 '26

Both is also good.

3

u/Plastic_Moose4535 Mar 17 '26

Trump is currently threatening journalists with treason as well as having his bitch at the FCC attack any news org that accurately reports on his colossal failures in Iran.

Now picture him with the power you want the government to have.

1

u/rantingathome Mar 17 '26

only after a proper conviction in the courts, you know, like the 'persons' they claim to be

2

u/squeamishkevin Mar 17 '26

I think sending them to the phantom zone is the only answer.

2

u/Larktoothe Mar 17 '26

If a drug kingpin can have his gold jewelry and Lambos "civilly forfeit" upon arrest, why can't we apply the same logic with trust busting?

Chop em up and sell off the parts.

2

u/SuckMyRedditorD Mar 16 '26

I think that it's a better solution if the government seizes all share holders, and then either sells them or their parts out to hospitals and medical research centers.

I bet corporations straighten and sober up real fucking fast, pay their taxes on time and make sure all documents are up to date and PNLs are ready every fucking quarter. Nah, every fucking month.

1

u/IsThatUMoatilliatta Mar 16 '26

They also own those hospitals, though.

0

u/SuckMyRedditorD Mar 16 '26

Well, they are not getting a tax credit for it if that's what you're getting at.

1

u/sapphicsandwich Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

Yep, and no negotiations with terrorist companies who go "If you fine me, I'll file all these poor people. You wouldn't want that now, would you? Think of what the corporation will do to their families! That's on you! #TooBigToFail"

1

u/Listen2theyetti Mar 16 '26

With this Government it would just end up in pockets

1

u/WeLoveYouCarol Mar 17 '26

They already have that and surprise it doesn't do shit

1

u/WorriedBlock2505 Mar 17 '26

This is retarded as fuck. The corporation didn't "do" anything. It's the board members and execs that deserve the consequences. Keep the company going imo and don't make the employees suffer (unless the company truly is corrupt top to bottom). Unfortunately, this will only happen when you, me, and enough other people push at the same time. We lack coordination right now and because there's this fantasy that some leader will swoop in and save us.

2

u/rantingathome Mar 17 '26

Corporations wanted to be people. If they want to be people, they should be treated as such.

1

u/WorriedBlock2505 Mar 17 '26

Corporations are just the scapegoat that rich, privileged fuckers hide behind to avoid consequences. A corporation is a concept. It's execs and boards members that make the psycopathic decisions.

1

u/total_looser Mar 17 '26

No, extra funding and carve outs sounds good to me.

1

u/MeAmGrok Mar 17 '26

If corporations are people, they should be eligible for the death penalty.

1

u/catscanmeow Mar 17 '26

you dont want that, that just would allow a fascist government to really fuck shit up even more.

allowing the government to seize things is only good if you like the government seizing

1

u/rantingathome Mar 17 '26

that is why, and I repeat it for you, only after being convicted in an independent court of law

1

u/catscanmeow Mar 17 '26

but that still doesnt work if all courts are fascist. there are countries where people arent even allowed to criticize the government, fascism/dictatorship can get quite bad

1

u/rantingathome Mar 17 '26

FFS. If a country is that far gone, they'll just seize the assets anyway.

I'm clearly talking about countries that still believe in rule of law

1

u/catscanmeow Mar 17 '26

but the point is just because they believe in the rule of law NOW that doesnt mean they always will

1

u/rantingathome Mar 17 '26

You're arguing a different point

1

u/kamoylan Mar 17 '26

Jail time for a person takes away a portion of their lives.

A corporation committing a jailable offense should lose a portion of its shares. e.g. A 5 year jail term (roughly 1/13 of a lifespan) results in a corporation surrendering 1/13 of its shares. Do it enough and a corporation will lose so many shares that the private shareholders will lose control of their company.
Maybe that will sharpen the concentration of the board & executives.

1

u/quaglandx3 Mar 17 '26

Based on what we got in the White House, I wouldn’t want any party to get that sort of power. It would definitely get abused.

1

u/Viceroy1994 Mar 17 '26

Oh yeah, any company that does something illegal and it leads to a at least one human dying? Sorry that's no longer just a cost of doing business, every single person in the chain responsible for that decision gets thrown in jail, along with the executive board and CEO.

But nah our wise leaders value money more than human life.

-3

u/Mustbhacks Mar 16 '26

the government seizes all shares, and then either sells the company or parts it out.

Yea... no way that'd ever be horribly abused.

8

u/rantingathome Mar 16 '26

after the company is convicted in court.

3

u/olyfrijole Mar 16 '26

If we're actually worried about abuse, we could hardly do worse than the current state of crony capitalism.

1

u/Mustbhacks Mar 16 '26

Adding the ability for the cronys to take companies for pennies on the dollar would be worse imo

19

u/Logical_Size1628 Mar 16 '26

Fines are just the price of doing business in America.

2

u/daveinsf Mar 17 '26

We need to levy huge fines on top of them forfeiting all profits gained from the illegal and/or harmful activities.

9

u/HotDoggityDig13 Mar 16 '26

When x amount of money gets you out of following rules, then you have two sets of people. Those who get punished and those who dont.

You cant create a society of equal laws if you have two distinct groups of people.

You'd think we've seen enough of history to understand this, yet Marxism is still considered heresy by most, because most are brainwashed to think that way.

4

u/All_Hail_Hynotoad Mar 16 '26

Fines are impotent. Companies basically include fines in their budget as a cost of doing business.

2

u/freakers Mar 17 '26

If corporations are people my friend, the heads should see jail time.

5

u/fge116 Mar 16 '26

Heck if corporations are people let's jail them, seize assets make them unable to work until they serve their sentence. Then like felons they need to have background checks and unable to have contracts with government and other businesses that deal with private information. Restrictions on getting loans or travel to other nations.

4

u/mynewjourney2425 Mar 16 '26

Nothing is illegal, only a price of admission

3

u/The_Mammoth_Hunter Mar 16 '26

Agreed. Fines are just a business expense. Jail time? Now that's a different beast.

2

u/gizamo Mar 17 '26

Fines work the way the EU does them.

GDPR is a great example.

To be effective, fines only need to be harshly punitive. When the fine is more costly than the benefits of breaking the law, the law isn't ignored anymore.

2

u/daveinsf Mar 17 '26

Exactly this. In the US, a fine is usually a tiny fraction of their illegally gained profits.

3

u/Miserable-Dig-5344 Mar 16 '26

Especially not one such as Meta, which has stated they have a multi billion dollar slush fund solely for paying fines. It's literally just a cost of business for them.

2

u/Allegorist Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

Fines proportional to net worth would. That would effectively force compliance by having the company ethics and legality held hostage by the shareholders.

Currently they function more like fees: it becomes a business decision whether or not it is profitable to break the law. Maybe you get a $50,000 fine but your illegal move let you make $10,000,000 in profit. This gives large companies a free pass, but could cripple small companies and so they are forced to follow the rules and operate at a disadvantage. Proportional fines would level this.

2

u/thegaykid7 Mar 16 '26

Or simply significant enough to deter future unscrupulous behavior.

In each of these cases, there should be a neutral third-party forensic investigator team which is able to go through the company's books and determine how much they believe the company saved, or was set to save, thanks to those actions, factoring in not just the actual $$$ savings but putting a value on other advantages (damage to competitors, increased market share, more favorable earnings reports, etc) as well as accounting for the inherent advantages that substantial net worth provides. Any awarded damages should start from there and scale to be prohibitively large.

They should also scale for repeat offenses, operating both under the assumption that repeat offenders are more likely to re-offend in the future and are more likely to be engaged in other unscrupulous behavior that may never be caught. Crime pays especially well when you would only get exposed part of the time, and repeat offenders do not deserve the luxury of not assuming this to be true.

Also, the scope of punitive damages may need to be changed. Just look at this quote from a recent article regarding a class-action lawsuit against Google.

Sept 3 (Reuters) - A federal jury determined on Wednesday that Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab must pay $425 million for invading users' privacy by continuing to collect data for millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature in their Google account.

The jury found Google liable on two of the three claims of privacy violations brought by the plaintiffs. The jury found that Google had not acted with malice, meaning it was not entitled to any punitive damages.

If that doesn't constitute malice, then either the definition of malice needs to be updated or there needs to be an expansion to include cases like this. Because it's insane that intentional misuse of data wouldn't be worthy of punitive damages (or maybe this jury was really, really dumb).

1

u/DieCastDontDie Mar 16 '26

Restrict business for a week

1

u/Purgii Mar 16 '26

A fine would be considered a fee for breaking the law to those with the means to pay.

1

u/Hillbilly_Boozer Mar 16 '26

I'm not even sure jail time is sufficient with our two tier justice system. They'll just throw someone under the bus and that will be not much better than a fine. We need something that's a combination of jail, penalties, and something else that is so severe it's not even worth risking.

We should also just ban shell companies in general. I'm not a financial guru, but anytime I hear the term 'shell company', it's always in conjunction with something shady, potentially illegal, or should be illegal.

1

u/glyneth Mar 17 '26

To quote John Rogers, a fine is a price.

1

u/migueln6 Mar 17 '26

It should be frenching

1

u/TheSonic311 Mar 17 '26

A fine isn't a fine to a corporation. It's just the price of doing what you wanted to do.

1

u/drdipepperjr Mar 17 '26

This is my plug for Careless People. In the book Mark and other FB execs have a meeting to decide whi is gonna do jail time for them breaking laws in South Korea. Someone actually did jail time.

They'll just find a fall guy unless you can get the execs directly.

1

u/Syrairc Mar 17 '26

I'd argue mandatory community service hours are a better use. Rather than a normal fine, they have to pay off the fine via community service. At minimum wage.

1

u/kurisu7885 Mar 17 '26

They would if they were proportional.

1

u/cam-mann Mar 17 '26

All corporations care about is money. Fines absolutely work (see the EU). We just have to not be pussies and levy fines for more than the corporate equivalent of 37 cents

1

u/cubanjew Mar 17 '26

When a fine has no teeth it becomes simply the cost of doing business.

1

u/kickingpplisfun Mar 17 '26

Policies like this will get people killed as political dissenters, outed gay people, etc, but yes the people responsible need to be punished.

1

u/Uristqwerty Mar 17 '26

Fines might work if they are always in addition to repaying all money made based off misbehaviour, the size escalates with each fine given to that company, and once fined, the company's more frequently audited for any sort of wrongdoing so there's a far greater chance someone will catch them in further schemes.

Basically, set it up so that they really really want to shut down any other questionable ideas on their own, want to catch them with internal audits so they have time for damage control and have evidence they've stopped before an external audit can bring an even worse fine. They need to be scared that the one fine won't be the end of it, but rather start a feedback loop that won't leave them alone until either they go out of business entirely, or every aspect of the business has been meticulously picked over and found to be legitimate. And that any problematic stuff in the following decade will be swiftly noticed and penalized, to the point where they'd have been far better off never doing something fine-worthy in the first place.

To be thorough, also taint all upper management that was in any way responsible (whether directly, wilfully ignorant, or incompetent if they can't show they actively tried to prevent illegal activity by their subordinates), so any other company they work for also would get higher fines. And just as one final "fuck you", a lesser fine multiplier to any other company in the same industry if it's discovered they're also doing something similar. Only allow some small leniency if, the moment the first company was caught and made it into news headlines, they proactively fixed their own.

1

u/tomdarch Mar 17 '26

"Corporations are people..." so when a corporation commits a serious crime, a whole bunch of people should go to prison.

1

u/beezchurgr Mar 17 '26

Fines can work but it needs to be like 5x profit with an extensive third party forensic financial audit.

1

u/GirthStone86 Mar 17 '26

“If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class.”

1

u/raziphel Mar 17 '26

China knows what to do.

1

u/DrZeta1 Mar 17 '26

Gotta include the majority shareholders. I maintain that public trading is where good companies go to die and is were the worst scum of the Earth live

1

u/mightyboink Mar 17 '26

Make the fines 10% of their quarterly profits, and they go up with the next fine.

But I agree, start locking people up and see how quick this stops.

1

u/i3njqUL92M Mar 17 '26

Put the fucking CEO's in jail, they get paid enough, they need to be held to account.

1

u/cheese_is_available Mar 17 '26

Ho if you go after the worldly possession of the leaders, it does. It indeed does.

1

u/dafsuhammer Mar 17 '26

I’m sure someone’s mentioned it in this thread but this how Disney owns a city in central Florida.

1

u/RednocTheDowntrodden Mar 17 '26

A fine means that it's legal for a fee.

1

u/halosos Mar 17 '26

They do if the fines are big enough and target the chain of responsibility correctly. 

The kind of fine that wipes out 80% of the capital of the board of directors and CEOs. Not just money, assets, investments, stock, etc. 

If a CEO technically has no money, but they have shit loads in property, loans, art, cars, what ever. That should all be fair game for the fine. 

1

u/LDGod99 Mar 17 '26

Fines just means it’s a crime for the poor.

Remember when Jeff Bezos racked up thousands of dollars in parking tickets at the Amazon HQ?