If you think big fines work on #BigTech, think again.
Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft generated enough revenue in the past 7 days to pay off their fines for 2023.
Taking advantage of your privacy is so lucrative, that these fines are nothing more than the cost of doing business.
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Big tech fines in 2023 totalled $3bn for breaking laws on both sides of the Atlantic.
Here's a breakdown of long it took them to pay off their respective fines:
Google: $941 million – 1 day 4 hours
Amazon: $111.7 million – 2 hours
Meta: $1.72 billion – 5 days 13 hours
Apple: $186.4 million – 4 hours
Microsoft: $84 million – 3.5 hours
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It's you, the consumer, that's losing out – it's your privacy that's at risk when #BigTech puts their profits first. That means higher prices, less choice, and no privacy.
Fines paid by Proton in 2023: $0.
End-to-end encryption makes it impossible for us to access or collect your data with Proton Mail, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive, Proton VPN and Proton Pass.
@protonmail like and appreciate what Proton is doing, but the Android app in particular is woefully feature poor and forward progress is glacial.
@arw Hi there, we have a rewritten android app currently in beta.
This shows how much power we have as users to make these guys really hurt just by not using their products or by using alternatives.
e.g.:
Healing from your own consumerism will not only make you happier, it hurts Amazon.
Meta is mostly addiction-ware. Work on your inner self and you wont need it. Again life gets better. OK Whatsapp is good.
Block ads and tracking = hurt Google.
I never use Apple. It is nice tho 
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Microsoft makes nothing of value. Just use Mac or Linux 
@protonmail
Disclosure: I'm a FastMail customer
Proton Mail and Fast Mail are in neck and neck race with me. Will Proton Mail get an employee union first? Or will Fast Mail add effortless End-to-End Encryption to their service? Whichever wins the race possibly has a lifetime customer in me. I would switch from FastMail to Proton Mail if you had an employee union already.
ALSO, that's probably a x2 offer since husband asked me 3 days ago to help him switch from "Big Mail" to another offering and decided on Fast Mail since that's what I picked in 2023. I got lucky that I picked the one that would later start to unionize.
Do better, Proton Mail! I believe in you! You're so close!
All of these companies claimed they couldn't afford pay equity.
https://hired.com/blog/highlights/hired-releases-2023-state-wage-inequality-tech-report/
https://www.wired.com/story/exec-google-trial-sexist-pay-discrimination/
@protonmail Thank you! I have been telling people for over a decade that many of these amounts only equate to hours and in some cases, their shareholders expect these fines as the price of doing business.
@protonmail
I see it this way: the base modifier on fines should rise (automatically, codified) for each company by the amount how fast they made back the fines, and the maximum cap to match the top earner.
F.e.:
Google's base modifier should go up 312.86 times (365×24/(24+4)).
Maximum cap: Amazon made 55.85/h. So the cap should from this year be 489.246×10³ billion (yep, almost 500 trillion US unfunny-money).
P.S. Do check my math, just in case.
CC: Europarlament
@protonmail It's a problem that media reports these fines in absolute numbers. They sound so big, they risk getting people to sympathize with the tech companies and turn against the governments, much like that famous McDonald's coffee incident. They should report them as percentages of income or, as you, as time.