How many billions can Meta’s Facebook pay the EU? And does it even matter?

You know what’s a big number? A billion dollars! I don’t know about you, but I can’t even imagine such a huge sum. If I had it, I’d definitely use it to get myself one of the best phones on the planet — like the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

But you know what’s even bigger? Facebook’s net worth. According to EarthWeb, the Meta-owned social platform is worth quite a pretty penny. And a huge one at that, over $911 billion. That’s like over a billion Galaxy S23 Ultras!

But the EU has fined Meta again! Naturally, this is for wrongful handling of user data, because at this point, it’s almost always that. And this time around, the fine is bigger than ever before! And it totals up at… 1,3 billion.

Do you see what I mean?

So, why does Meta have to pay this astounding insignificant amount of billions to the EU? To cut things short: the EU requires all handling of EU resident data to be handled within the EU. man, those are many EUs So after an investigation, Facebook was found to be exporting user data outside of the region. Hence: violation = fine.

The investigation will go on, and the EU’s suits will work together with Facebook’s in order to find out if any user data has actually been leaked or endangered. Which, in turn, might lead to another fine.

Did Facebook do this intentionally? Of course not. Even though it is a financially stable company, it wouldn’t want to go around throwing cash at random institutions. The reason behind this mishap is that laws in the US aren’t as strict regarding handling of user data, so it seems like this kind of, sort of just happened.

But given that this is just the latest in a series of fines for Facebook, by the EU and regarding user data, does it even matter? And given the company’s net worth, is it just a formality at this point? Food for thought.