eli5 Where did money collected from Facebook fines go?

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Hey, I’m middle European guy and I watched the Facebook trial few years ago. They lost also because they sold user data illegally and was fined accordingly. That’s cool, right. But those data were also of european citizens, some of that, also mine probably, but I didn’t get any money from Facebook and also nobody I asked get any soo.. we are victims but and the Facebook was convicted of the crime and had to pay a fine to.. someone else? To who?

Thanks for explanation

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Keep in mind a fine and restitution are not the same thing. 

For that, you would need a class action against Facebook. Proving you had damages, and getting restitution. These sometimes happen, but are very complex. 

Meanwhile the threshold for the fine is much lower. EU court just have to prove they didn’t respect the law. The fine doesn’t have to be proportional to the money they made by selling the data. It could be 1000x that amount if the law is written that way. 

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