The indomitable empire of Facebook is being assailed by a volley of arrows from Europe. The latest struck on Thursday: a £94m fine from the European commission for providing misleading information in 2014 when the commission was doing a merger review on Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp.

In August 2014, Facebook said it was unable to reliably match Facebook and WhatsApp user accounts. But in August 2016, it started doing just that. This fine recognises that Facebook lied about its technical capacities in 2014, a point the company seems to have accepted. The acquisition also allowed it to get a further identifier on its users: their phone number. Extremely valuable as today your phone number is your primary key.

Politicians such as Theresa May seem incapable of seeing the irony of Facebook being fined for lying, just as she accelerates demands to deputise Facebook as an arbiter of truth by enlisting it in the fight against child abuse, terrorism, hate speech, copyright infringement and other ills.

Nowhere in these proposals is there any plan for how effectively to oversee and monitor Facebook in this function or to pull it back if it goes too far.

The maddening reality is that lies, whether by or facilitated by Facebook, have proved to have no impact on the company’s bottom line.

The commission should have seen the permeability of Facebook and WhatsApp accounts coming and adopted a more proactive stance, at the very least by insisting on the firewalling of WhatsApp user data from Facebook. Instead, a spate of privacy and consumer protection cases is now running across Europe, trying to retrofit solutions at the national level.

There is a European ban on linking Facebook and WhatsApp for the purpose of advertising (but not other uses) until these cases are resolved, but the fines are so small that they look like a mere operating cost for lucrative data-driven business.

Equipping competition law for the formidable task of properly tackling data-rich behemoths is a fertile area of research and policy, but still awaits enforcement. Challenges include market definition, accurately valuing data assets and dealing with the particular modes of virtual competition.

If the value of data were more appropriately considered, the commission might not have waved through the Facebook/WhatsApp merger so easily.

Careful but increasingly proactive competition enforcement, data protection investigations and a groundswell in consumer protection concerns from Europe are providing the most significant pushback to companies such as Facebook. Institutions are also looking from the US and will remember and be wary of claims of technical inability in connecting datasets the next time they come along. But it is still hard to see this as an effective counter to Facebook when a quarter of the world is in its pocket.

The essential issue is that companies are able to graze on, and observe, our data assets with abandon. Yet this situation is neither natural nor inevitable.

If we are really to change the dynamics of the modern data economy, it is going to take more than just targeted arrows and small-fry fines. The true response to Facebook is to see it as a company that ruthlessly monetises every aspect of our everyday lives.

Just like Facebook’s capability in connecting data assets, there is no absence of technical capability to interoperate with, and replicate, Facebook and WhatsApp’s services.

New European regulations make the strongest demands yet for meaningful rights to data portability, interoperability, transparency and accountability.

For the future to offer anything more than resignation to the power of Facebook and its ilk requires dedicated finance for sustainable, civic-oriented technology, strategies to incentivise growth and for people to vote with their feet. How many lies will it take until we hit that point with Facebook?

Dr Julia Powles researches technology law and policy at Cornell Tech and at the University of Cambridge