Nigeria fines Meta $220M for violating consumer, data laws

https://www.reuters.com/technology/nigerias-consumer-watchdog-fines-meta-220-million-violating-local-consumer-data-2024-07-19/

by skilled • 2 years ago

86 39 2 years ago

reuters.com

ilrwbwrkhv• 2 years ago

Facebook can simply not pay it? Nigeria cannot do anything I imagine.

popcalc• 2 years ago

Force their ISPs to block WhatsApp? Hello?

bgnn• 2 years ago

Happens. Happened in Turkey in the past.

Sayrus• 2 years ago

They have offices and very probably a legal entity in Nigeria. I'd imagine that if they don't pay up, and as such decide to not follow the country's law, then Nigeria will seize the assets available and issue a ban against WhatsApp and other Meta services.

aliyfarah2• 2 years ago

Nigeria will be the big loser if they ban Meta’s free and widely used services. No tech company could function if every banana republic levies hundreds of millions of fines when they don't even generate that much revenue in those markets.

aliyfarah2• 2 years ago

They likely won't pay as Meta does not pay any tax close to 200mm in Nigeria.

astromaniak2• 2 years ago

If they have heavy lawyers there. Which they do, no doubts.

extraduder_ire• 2 years ago

For reference: that's below $1 per resident.

samspenc2• 2 years ago

True, but if we look at GDP ratios instead of population, it looks different.

Nigeria's GDP in 2022 was $472B, compared to US's at $25.2T, so Nigeria's total economy is roughly 2% the size of the US.

Meta / Facebook made $134B in revenue and $39B in net income (profit) last year. Assuming 1/3 of their business is in the US, that's roughly $43B revenue & $13B profit in the US last year.

If we assume their business is proportionate to GDP, they made $860M revenue & $260M profit in Nigeria last year.

So this fine is basically the company's entire profit in the country in a year.

blackhawkC174• 2 years ago

There’s no way Meta made $860 million in revenue from Nigeria. The country’s economy is too dilapidated to deliver that kind of revenue.

biztos• 2 years ago

According to the World Bank it’s less than that, but still it’s interesting to contemplate Meta monetizing the same in Nigeria and Colombia, and more or less the same in Romania:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

I’d be shocked if the numbers were that high.

qeternity• 2 years ago

Assuming 1/3 of their business is in the US

Americans often massively underestimate the size and importance of the US.

Meta derives ~80% of its revenue from the US and Canada.

klyrs• 2 years ago

If we assume their business is proportionate to GDP...

This is a really bad approach. Megacorps like fb are happy to take a loss on small countries to maintain a worldwide monopoly. Perhaps I'd go with a power law distribution, rather than uniform? A few whales can cover a whole lot of leeches.

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

Good news, a prince needs some help getting his family inheritance out of the country. Meta can just provide its bank account and routing code numbers to receive the transfer, and will get to keep 25%. They're set.

astromaniak2• 2 years ago

Actually it was Nigerian princess for decades.

xyst• 2 years ago

Instead of a fine, Nigeria government should have just invoiced them. It (sort of) worked for one Lithuanian man between 2013-2015 [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/business/facebook-google-...

blackhawkC174• 2 years ago

I’m Nigerian, and this is my take.

This is just a shakedown move by a corrupt, extremely incompetent government looking for funding…they might have just begged Zuckerberg to donate directly.

This country has never cared about data privacy. They literally handed our entire national identity database to dubious third parties, by refusing to implement basic security practices [1].

I hope Zuckerberg tells the government to pound sand and just blocks Nigerians from Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. It’s not like Meta makes much profit from this poor country anyway.

1- https://www.thecable.ng/revealed-how-nimc-exposed-private-da...

hulitu• 2 years ago

This country has never cared about data privacy. They literally handed our entire national identity database to dubious third parties, by refusing to implement basic security practices

You are describing common procedures here. Welcome to EU. /s

snowpid• 2 years ago

What do you refer to?

pavlov• 2 years ago

The EU has the most advanced data protection laws on the planet. Sure, the competition is miserable, but at least Europe has tried.

chipdart2• 2 years ago

You are describing common procedures here. Welcome to EU. /s

You are grossly uninformed. Some EU countries even encoded in their own constitution how the state neither has the right to gather specific types of data on their population, such as race and political affiliation, but also they can't gather data that can used to track people, such as cross-referencing data across ministries.

Please provide any substance to your personal assertion.

Nigeria fines Meta $220M for violating consumer, data laws

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