Does This Even Qualify as a Slap on the Wrist for Amazon?

Someday companies will take the privacy of children, or their customers, seriously. Today is not that day.

$25 million is lost in the noise of Amazon. Amazon agrees to $25 million fine for Alexa children privacy violations

The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that Amazon has agreed to pay a $25 million fine to settle alleged children's privacy laws violations related to the company's Alexa voice assistant service.

Amazon has offered Alexa voice-activated products and services targeted at children under 13 years old since May 2018.

First they kept recordings of children. Then they kept transcripts of those recordings even after the parents requested deletion. Why? Because they are Amazon and the rules are for little people.

So the .gov hands down a $25 million dollar fine. I didn't look for the quarterly reports, but at the end of the last fiscal year in December, Amazon had cash-on-hand of about $54 billion. That is billion, with a "B." $25 million is nothing against that. That is about 0.05% of their cash on hand.

Oh, and the double-dog-swear to never do anything bad again, cross their heart and hope-to-spit. Or something.

This is low by even government standards.

In March 2022, the FTC slapped Fortnite maker Epic Games with a $245 million fine (down from a proposed $520 million penalty) for breaching children's privacy laws and employing deceptive tactics, known as dark patterns, to manipulate millions into making unintentional in-game purchases.

So how about we get some real penalties for corporations violating privacy laws. Like a couple of years in prison for the CEO. Not some low-level scapegoat, but punish the guy in charge. See how fast privacy becomes the #1 item on the to-do list of corporations.

I guess it pays to have friends in low places.