I see where he is coming from. I believe his point is not that tobacco companies never paid anything (they paid over $206 billion in the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement to cover health costs, according to my quick searches). What he is calling out is the disparity in how the state punishes these harms today. The reason Meta's penalty hit $25 billion is not because ad-data misuse is worse than giving people cancer anyways, it's just a quirk of software-era consumer protection laws (which I should be responding to him, but hopefully he reads this comment). In New Mexico every single automated digital interaction was counted as a separate statutory violation which multiplies a basic fine into an astronomical sum. His point is that state governments are aggressively leveraging anti-tech outrage and these statutory math tricks to extract billions for state coffers whereas deadly industries like tobacco were allowed to negotiate structured settlements over decades while continuing to sell. I think... Well, this is how I interpreted his comments.
TL;DR: I think he already put it this way, but if Meta gets hit with $25B for ad-data tricks then why are we fining social media far more aggressively per user than companies that literally gave (and continue to give) people cancer? The answer is partly in my first paragraph but I still do not find it particularly reassuring.
TL;DR: I think he already put it this way, but if Meta gets hit with $25B for ad-data tricks then why are we fining social media far more aggressively per user than companies that literally gave (and continue to give) people cancer? The answer is partly in my first paragraph but I still do not find it particularly reassuring.