Let's say a train ticket costs $10. If you board without a ticket, the probability of getting caught and having to pay a fine is, let's say, 10%. Do you see why the amount of the fine must be greater than $100? Otherwise the optimal strategy is to never buy a train ticket, and just always pay the fine when you get caught.

That's a slap on the wrist: it's cheaper to pay the fine than to follow the law. The correct amount of money for a fine is a multiple of the amount of revenue gained from ignoring the law. I don't know what that is in this case, but I'm fairly certain it's at least an order of magnitude larger than $1.3B.

I can’t tell if you’re trolling.

A fine of even 20% of revenue would basically kill any company, big or small.

And we are talking revenue, not profit.

I'd want to see a fine of 20% of revenue if around 5% to 10% of its revenues came from illegal activities. If that's the case, maybe the company should be killed. The fine must be a multiple of the gains or there's no benefit to following the law.

> big or small

That's exactly the point. Flat fines (not saying $1.3B is a flat fine, in this case) only kill small companies and act as a small "break the law fee" for big companies.

> And we are talking revenue, not profit.

Right, you cannot fine based on profit, because profit is a gameable number (Hollywood Accounting).

I'm not actually saying $1.3B is the wrong number: it's possible that's 3x to 5x of the revenue they gained from brazenly and wantonly breaking the laws of the country in which they operated. I haven't done enough research to say. What I was responding to was this:

> I do not think there is any amount of money that could be fined that HN commentators would not call a slap on the wrist.

Most fines for most offenses against most companies are slaps on the wrist, because they are less than the gain. This is why.

> I can’t tell if you’re trolling

This is a bad-faith attempt to dismiss an argument without considering it.

If I break a law I go to jail.

If a company breaks the law, it gets to continue to break it by paying some money. And claim that doing wonderful technological development and innovating shit.

I mean, if I have the option to get a get-out-of-jail card for 20% of my income I'd probably take it.

20 days of profit is a ton and I doubt they made that much from doing it.

Even beyond that though, it needs to be enough to make them actually care.

A few % of revenue would make any company care, even a company the size of Meta.

Reading the comments on this thread makes me wonder how many commenters have been close to real company operations in the past.