Facebook fined £50m in UK for 'conscious' refusal to report info and 'deliberate failure to comply' during Giphy acquisition probe

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has smacked Facebook with a £50m ($68.7m) fine for "deliberately" not giving it the full picture about its ongoing $400m acquisition of gif-slinger Giphy. The move – fingered by the CMA as a "major breach" – comes just weeks after the antisocial network dismissed the UK's …

[jonathan keith]

So...

... when are the CMA going to forbid the merger then?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: So...

If I read the articel correctly it can't. All it can do is forbid integration, whatever that means.

[lglethal]

So by being d%&ks, Facebook just added an extra 1/6 of the value of the merger on top. Well done that team...

($67.5 million on a $400 million purchase. Well done on that self-inflicted premium!)

[Anonymous Coward]

And $50m is how many minutes profit?

[Arthur the cat]

A quick back of the envelope says ~14 hours. (And it's £s not $s.)

[Valeyard]

"This should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law."

The fact that this sounds like a comfortably familiar bit of furniture on facebook articles probably means no

[Anonymous Coward]

Orange jumpsuits all round!

So if Facebook don't pay up, is Cleggy going to prison? Pretty please?!

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Orange jumpsuits all round!

Please CMA, make it happen.

[BenDwire]

Re: Orange jumpsuits all round!

Unfortunately the CMA don't have big enough teeth for that. The best they can do is give Clegg a mild bit of gumming ... which conjures up an image that requires mind-bleach to erase!

[DevOpsTimothyC]

Concious decision / deliberate failure

Perhaps if the fine was a noticeable percentage of the parent companies turnover (in this case 10 to 100 times the fine) with failure to pay the fine (for any reason within 28 days, even disputing the fine) being an instruction to ISP's etc to balckhole their traffic until the issue is resolved, then these sorts of companies would pay attention.

I doubt £50m is more than a minor cost of doing business and a sizeable portion of the £50m would have been how much it would have cost to comply with the conditions in the first place

[alain williams]

Re: Concious decision / deliberate failure

Give FB a month to comply, then double the fine. Wait another month, double again, ...

Eventually it will cease to be loose change down the back of the FB corporate sofa.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Concious decision / deliberate failure

Too soft. It's not as if FarceBook doesn't have cash on hand.

Double it every 24 hours until it is electronically transferred.

[chivo243]

50 mil? small slap on the ass!

I bet Zuck pays that much to get spanked... and likes it.

[MiguelC]

Re: 50 mil? small slap on the ass!

I'm sure a lot of people would volunteer to spank him free of charge

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 50 mil? small slap on the ass!

With a spiked mace!!!

[Doctor Syntax]

It seems all regulators have problems with fining multi-national corporations. It needs a bit of international cooperation. Perhaps the agreement on minimum corporation tax needs a rider to agree that fines should be set in terms of percentages of global annual turnover applied annually as long as the corporation is out of compliance. A corporation that's accumulated several fines of several percent each is going to start acting a bit more carefully, otherwise the shareholders and bonusocracy are going to start getting twitchy.

[Gordon 10]

Not sure why you got downvoted. GDPR seems to be working well along these lines.

[Someone Else]

Or...

Or we could use the same approach that the Tejano SB8 uses: Allow anyone with knowledge of the offense to sue the "offender" for at least $10,000 (wtrh all court costs being paid by the defendant, regardless of who eventually prevails).

[Huw L-D]

I didn't realise the Christian Motorcycle Association had that much power!

[jonathan keith]

Don't fuck with the Christian Motorcyclists Association. They'll forgive you.*

* (with extreme prejudice)

[Anonymous Coward]

"fell off the back of a motorcylist, more likely"

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't, but the Canadian Mental Health Association might have something to say...

[Someone Else]

Well, the Country Music Awards could withhold any and all platitudes, and not let him appear on their annual show (which is coming up soon...)

[Anonymous Coward]

What is that? 5 seconds revenue nowadays? 10?

[Pascal Monett]

"an unreasonable compliance burden for a global business"

Right.

Because it's such a bother to conform to local laws when you're sitting on billions of dollars.

I weep for you, Zuck.

NOT.

P.S. : I can't recall you complaining so much in China, eh Zuck ?

[MiguelC]

Re: "an unreasonable compliance burden for a global business"

Your comment about China is a bit disingenuous, seeing as FB is blocked to users behind the great firewall of China

[X5-332960073452]

Re: "an unreasonable compliance burden for a global business"

I see that as a reason the emigrate to China ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

£50m

and did they now do what they're punished for not doing? If not, this proves the fine was too low...

[Anonymous Coward]

Far too small a fine

Should have added a dozen zero's or better still, close them down for good.

The world will raise a cheer if that happens.

Zuck is a sleazy individual of the highest order. The man child needs to be taught a lesson.

[elsergiovolador]

CMA

That's $40m less to donate to organisations in swing states. Well done CMA for helping democracy.

[binary]

Facebook reeks despite the name change

In the U.S., it's a common practice of failed companies to change their name in times of failure and hope that business will keep running as usual. The problems with this, though, as I see it, if they decided to call "sh*t" a "rose," the "rose" will still smell like "sh*t," so why bother?

How about Bacefook? Zucfook? Zucwhimp? Zucwuss?

Whatever it ends up being, it will always smell like a rose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Facebook reeks despite the name change

A rose isn't exactly what comes to mind...

[AW-S]

Re: Facebook reeks despite the name change

I'll refer to them as WindscaleBook from now on.

[Slacker1452]

Re: Facebook reeks despite the name change

I think you mean SellafieldBook :)

[Snowy]

Low fine

The question for me is are they going to pay or just appeal it and if they do pay any in the end it will be a lot less.

[MJI]

Need a reall punishment

Like blocking at national firewall level

[Version 1.0]

"This should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law."

Facebook believes that it is the law - when I tried to sign up and create a Facebook account in 2007 it rejected my attempts so I called them to try and sort out the problem. I was told that Facebook would prosecute me if I tried to create an account again - I was using my real name but they told me that I was a faker tried to create a fake account because my family name was not a real name.

I was pissed off at the time but now I'm happy that social media rejected me.

[Martin Summers]

Re: "This should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law."

You should have told them that you could trace your lineage all the way back to 0.1. That would have shown 'em.

[Potemkine!]

That's harsh. Zuck will have less bank notes in his gold plated toilet to wipe his arse.

[Winkypop]

£50m Fines

I’m good with that.

Keep fining the bastards.

Give all the fine money to children’s health/hospitals.

[John Brown (no body)]

"fundamental errors"

"fundamental errors" in the case against them, say Facebook. Well, that can happen when one is lacking the requested information and what has been provided is incomplete to the extent of even being misleading.