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| Economy |
| Meta (FB) fined $24.7M for campaign violations |
| 2022-10-28 |
| Maybe pocket change to Z-Burg, but META stock took a big hit. [AyPee] A Washington state judge on Wednesday fined Facebook parent company Meta nearly $25 million for repeatedly and intentionally violating campaign finance disclosure law, in what is believed to be the largest campaign finance penalty in U.S. history. The penalty issued by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North was the maximum allowed for more than 800 violations of Washington’s Fair Campaign Practices Act, passed by voters in 1972 and later strengthened by the Legislature. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the maximum was appropriate considering his office previously sued Facebook in 2018 for violating the same law. Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Washington’s transparency law requires ad sellers such as Meta to keep and make public the names and addresses of those who buy political ads, the target of such ads, how the ads were paid for and the total number of views of each ad. Ad sellers must provide the information to anyone who asks for it. Television stations and newspapers have complied with the law for decades. In 2018, following Ferguson’s first lawsuit, Facebook agreed to pay $238,000 and committed to transparency in campaign finance and political advertising. It subsequently said it would stop selling political ads in the state rather than comply with the requirements. Nevertheless, the company continued selling political ads, and Ferguson sued again in 2020. Ferguson described the fine as the largest campaign finance-related penalty ever issued in the U.S. Meta, one of the world’s richest companies, reported quarterly earnings Wednesday of $4.4 billion, or $1.64 per share, on revenue of nearly $28 billion, in the three month period that ended Sept. 30. YAHOO-NEWS "Investors wiped more than 67 billion dollars off the market value of Facebook's parent company Meta on Wednesday." |
| Posted by:NN2N1 |
| #1 Hopefully, someone is blasting the Warren Zevon album, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School over the corporate intercom. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2022-10-28 11:55 |