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.
> 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
> 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.
EU (Europe in general) has an enormous bureaucracy, that wants to know everything about its citizens e.g. you have to register after every move. Then on top of requiring the state knows, you have an expectation of privacy.
> EU (Europe in general) has an enormous bureaucracy, that wants to know everything about its citizens e.g. you have to register after every move.
You are painfully uninformed. In the most charitable interpretarion of what you're mindlessly saying, at best you're talking about things like in which town you pay municipal taxes and where you vote. Neither have anything whatsoever to do with privacy.
And you are still yet to provide any substance to your personal assertion.
> Then on top of requiring the state knows, you have an expectation of privacy.
You are throwing wild unsubstantiated claims. Either you add specifics or you're just spewing disinformation.
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.
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:
> 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.
Yeah I was also going by their quarterly earnings reports since they're a public company. Though that only breaks down the revenue by continent, but was using it to approximate US revenue at 30% of worldwide.
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.
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.
No, the truth is that the people of Nigeria will be the big winners if Nigeria bans Meta's widely deceptive, manipulative, and harmful amalgamation of spyware, malicious and unethical secret psychological manipulation experiments, and socially destabilizing engagement-farming algorithms. Instagram is very nearly a biological warfare agent against the mental health of young women - Meta hires a surprisingly large number of neuroscientists and behavioral psychologists to make their products as addictive as possible, with no concern for the mental health ramifications for Meta's victims.
None of the positive capabilities Meta offers are unique to Meta products - there is not a single capability in Meta's entire lineup that cannot be met by competitors with a less malicious and untrustworthy past.
Meta's conglomeration of psychological poison truly is the "cigarette makers" of our generation.
I am looking for people in europe to view it like this & want to change how things are.
If you, or whoever reads this, wants to join a broke startup but have a shot at truly changing things for the better, let me know how to reach out.
Aaaalso, as always, everyone... please stop calling them the M-word. It's still the greedy, creepy facebook. Don't let them claim this awesome word & get away with making people forget who they truly are.
Any way for folks outside of Europe to help or donate?
You make a great point on namewashing, but to be clear, my issue is with the morality of the whole company, not just the individual product going by the same name as the company before their rebrand.
It’s much lower than what we have in Nigeria and Africa at large.
The worst EU leader is far better than the average African leader. Then it gets worse with civil service agencies over here…they’re corrupt to the point of being almost irredeemable.
I am from India, and I often see again and again, how good the Western people have it in terms of corruption.
Countries like India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan are corrupt to the very skeleton, for the lack of a better expression.
But, I also think people have lesser appreciation of their situation.
You might see corruption everywhere there in Nigeria. But maybe it’s much better than Sierra Leone or Somalia.
Indians see India as fully corrupt. But we have to pay bribes for making passports and recording our lands after a purchase or inheritance. Bangladeshis have to pay bribes to police for all of the above, as well as minor things like- if someone needs to drive a car at night. Police stops you, and asks you your purpose for driving at night and demands bribes. Just like that. No violation needed. That's in Bangladesh. But you won't see it in Mumbai or Delhi.
Western people have no darned idea about total ubiquitous corruption and incompetence in third world. They just self sensor and argue for the fear and risk of sounding racist and prejudiced.
Seconded! Pakistani living in the States. Have been pulled over by cops many times at night because they're bored and/or want a bribe. Bribed a guy to get my passport made. Corrupt ranger tried to squeeze cash out of my dad's startup office space.
It's very difficult to explain to Westerners how deeply corrupt our societies are relative to the rule of law we/they enjoy in the West.
Corruption has traditionally been difficult to quantify. There is the Corruption Perceptions Index, which uses perception as a (clever but tricky) proxy for actual corruption.
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.
Nigerian is not a race, it doesn’t need to be a race for this to be a racist trope. Reacting to this story with a Nigerian scam email joke is racist. As it is completely irrelevant to the topic being discussed and it is used to dismiss the claims made in the article.
If the Israeli government imposed a fine and then someone on here decided to respond with a joke on how much interest the Israeli’s would make on the fine or whether the fine would be paid in gold coins. That would be racist trope. Whether it happened in the past or not is not important.
It is up to you to remain educated, but I would be careful making Nigerian scam jokes especially around black people. If you want to say racist things, endeavor to do so in private.
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...