Facebook's $ 5 billion FTC fine is an embarrassing joke.

Facebook shares uploaded after news broke today of a $ 5 billion fine from the FTC for various privacy violations.

That, as Mike Isaac of The New York Times is the real story here: the U.S. government spent months punishing Facebook's long list of privacy-related misbehavior, and the best it could do was so weak.

And $ 5 billion is a lot of money, no doubt . It's just that, like everything else that comes in contact with Facebook's scale, it's still too small:

Facebook earned $ $15 billion in revenue in the last quarter alone and $ $22 billion in earnings last year.

The FTC's largest fine in the nation's history represents essentially one month of Facebook's revenue, and the company made good job of telegraphing it to investors that the share price rose.

Here's another way of saying it: the largest FTC fine in the history of United States increased Mark Zuckerberg's net worth.

when they have negative consequences for bad behavior. But Facebook has done nothing but misbehave since its inception, and has only been slapped on the wrist by authority figures and rewarded by the market.

After all, Facebook now was under a prior consent decree from the FTC for privacy violations imposed in 2011 and that didn't seem to stop any of the company's recent scandals from occurring. As Kara Swisher has written, it must add another zero to this fine to mean something.

Facebook gets away with it again.

Members of Congress already oppose this deal: Rep. David Cicilline calls it a "Christmas present," while Sen. Ron Wyden says that the FTC has "failed miserably".

Senator Richard Blumenthal says that the decision is "inadequate" and "historically hollow." "And Senator Mark Warner says that "It is time for Congress to act".

Strong statements and condemnations from the FTC in the coming weeks as the deal goes through DOJ review and inevitable approval.

But words are just words, really. If our government is going to hold Facebook for his reckless and irresponsible behavior, he has to make it really , and in such a way that Mark Zuckerberg discover that actions have consequences.