$5B FINE A YAWN

Facebook shares shrug off FTC punishment

For Facebook, a $5 billion fine looks not only paltry, but fit for poultry.

That, at least, was Wall Street’s reaction on Friday as reports that the Federal Trade Commission has slapped Facebook with a $5 billion fine over its privacy lapses sent the social network’s shares up nearly 2 percent .

The record-setting penalty was approved on a 3-2 partyline vote with Republicans supporting it and Democrats — who have previously called for tougher oversight — voting against it.

The Facebook fine dwarfs that of the previous record holder, Google, which in 2012 was fined $22.5 million by the FTC for misleading users on how they could limit online tracking tools.

For Wall Street, however, the figure looked like chicken feed after months of fears that the regulator would impose an even harsher penalty.

Facebook shares finished the day up 1.8 percent, at $204.87.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has a net worth of $78.5 billion, and could pay the fine out-of-pocket without losing his spot as the fifth-richest man in the world, according to Bloomberg.

Other possible remedies, analysts say, included pressing for a possible breakup of the company, reversing its wildly successful acquisitions of Instagram, WhatsApp, or both.

“They were one vote away from this being a Pandora’s Box situation,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said. “It’s a relief for the Street, which was fearing the FTC situation was going to become a much broader inquiry with ramification beyond just a fine.”

In late April, Facebook told investors it was expecting a fine of $3 billion to $5 billion over its privacy scandals. At the time, Facebook said it had already set aside $3 billion toward the potential settlement last quarter.

“They ripped the Band-Aid off back in April,” Ives said. “For a change, they got ahead of this from an investor perspective and did a better job of hand-holding that a fine of this size was potentially on the way.”

The FTC opened its Facebook probe in March 2018, following reports that Cambridge Analytica had hoovered up the personal data of nearly 90 million Facebook users to better target them with political ads during the 2016 presidential election.

The investigation sought to determine whether Facebook violated the terms of a 2011 consent decree it signed with the FTC, which restricted the ways it could share users’ personal data.

Facebook is not done with Washington just yet, however. The tech giant is getting hauled back to Capitol Hill next week and will have a representative testify at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee’s top antitrust panel.

The tech titan is facing scrutiny of its allegedly anti-competitive business practices by government regulators.

Both Facebook and the FTC declined to comment.