The fun thing about hacker news is that for all you know I may be directly involved in these issues and speak from direct first-hand, but highly confidential, knowledge.
Or I’m just some moron, posting opinions with absolutely no basis in fact.
I am assuming that the parent poster worked in Google’s ad tech or analytics unit. Perhaps another FAANG. Perhaps Facebook.
Still: that doesn’t make the assertion about the size of Facebook’s FTC settlement and all GDPR settlements as significant as they think, for a bunch of important reasons that start to be obvious once you break it down.
The parent poster could be posting from a FAANG C suite, and it wouldn’t change that it’s an apples and oranges comparison.
This isn't anywhere near as significant a point as you think.