Don’t believe the hype.The undeniable fact is that the FTC has racked up a long list of victories over corporate abuses, like busting a nationwide, decades-long fraud that tricked people into paying for “free” tax preparation.The wheels of justice grind slowly, so many of the actions the FTC has...

The undeniable fact is that the FTC has racked up a long list of victories over corporate abuses, like busting a nationwide, decades-long fraud that tricked people into paying for “free” tax preparation.

The wheels of justice grind slowly, so many of the actions the FTC has brought are still pending. But these actions are significant. In tandem with the Department of Justice, it is suing over fake apartment listings, blocking noncompete clauses, targeting fake online reviews, and going after gig work platforms for ripping off their workers.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    13·
    4 months ago

    Companies that abuse our privacy and trust are being hit with massive fines: $520 million for Epic’s tricks to get kids to spend money online, $20 million to punish Microsoft for spying on kids who use Xboxes, and a $25 million fine against Amazon for capturing voice recordings of kids and storing kids’ location data.

    I’m glad the FTC is doing something but like with all of these, if the punishment is a fine, and the fine isn’t larger than the profit the company made from breaking the law, it’s just essentially a “cost of doing business” fee. If the laws are not changed to start dissolving or nationalizing such businesses for such practices, the practices will simply continue unabated. We’ve seen that non-stop for forty years in the USA. Corporations have teams of lawyers whose entire aim is to use loopholes to get around every new instance of regulation there is. When the best a regulation can do is a fine that is less than the profit made, you’re literally not doing anything to disincentivize this behavior.

    Further, we have several court cases aimed directly at dismantling the Administrative State, and you can kiss the weak ass pussy shit from the FTC goodbye entirely as now to get justice about these issues you’ll have to go to the already packed and overwhelmed courts, where you can count on a judge who has no knowledge about Soil Science or whatever important issue you’re bringing to court. Get ready for the US government to somehow be even more useless to anyone but giant corporations. Get ready for idiot judges with no knowledge of the things they’re judging to make the stupidest decisions they can, because Fuck US Citizens, I guess.

    If there’s one thing government fucking hates it’s having to listen to expert opinion that undermines the Government Narrative.