The amusing thing is: Schrems2 basically established that any US based company storing EU citizen data is not allowed because US agencies have access without any due process, even if the data is stored in the EU.<p>It's just that the entire industry has decided to ignore the implications and go on like that ruling never happened.<p>Well, almost. There is a serious effort by some companies to move off of AWS/GC/Azure and various other SaaS services.
I doubt this would end well for the EU if it actually got banned. Social media platforms like FB, Instagram, TikTok..., are too ingrained in people's daily lives for them to just accept it without causing a massive backlash for politicians (who likely also use it, as well as their families).<p>Not to mention WhatsApp is used by a lot of mid-sized companies as a method of rapid communication (for whatever weird reason), as well as small local businesses that rely on it to directly communicate with their customers (the same type that uses gmail for businesses purposes). And just used in general by everyone is most of the EU region.
This would be a good move for the EU. If they faithfully clone a competitor, especially one more utility-focused (i.e. taking public funding) than marketing-focused, Americans would ditch facebook faster than people left Digg.<p>I have doubts about the EU's ability to execute on that, but all they need to do is give people the exact same shit without the contamination of Meta, and make data import from facebook seamless.
Wow, overblown headline.<p>Facebook is not "being banned", Facebook is simply being required to protect EU citizen's information the same way every other company is.<p>Part of that means not subjecting them to warrantless surveillance, since the US government has repeatedly and aggressively said that the data any company has from anyone not living in the US has no such protection. If this hurts Facebook's business they should go and talk to the US government about why it has decided to cause such harm.<p>Obviously this makes the US government (and gruber and similar tech pundits) complaining about TikTok complete bullshit. TikTok is literally doing exactly what Facebook is doing, why should that data be any less accessible to the PRC gov than Facebook's data is to the US?
nah, Facebook is never going to literally go offline as it would be too disruptive, but it'll hopefully accelerate the push towards processing all European user data on the continent itself.<p>The lesson from this should be that regulation should be proactive. Privacy frameworks and safeguards to make sure EU citizens have EU protections ought to have been in place 10 years ago when these platforms were going global.
Imo it feels like the start of a trade war. Until Russia and China stepped in, EU US relations have been progressively declining. If both of our adversaries were more patient, relations would have eventually weakened NATO.
I think a lot of this discussion, ignores geopolitics.<p>If the EU really causes serious pain to the likes of Facebook/Google all that money spent on lobbying will come into play. Especially now, the US holds a lot of cards with respect to the EU, especially Germany.<p>My guess is that this issue will resolve with an agreement with some cosmetic changes, but will still, in actuality, allow the US to get at the data it wants.
Clickbait.<p>Schrems 2 is old news [1]. And my guess is a new US-EU deal will be struck[2] because US currently is in stronger position (geopolitically) than EU.<p>But if that fails - we would still have Facebook EU, Whatsapp EU, Instagram EU etc. Which IMHO is worse than current state.<p>[1]: <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/09/facebook-told-it-may-have-to-suspend-eu-data-transfers-after-schrems-ii-ruling/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/09/facebook-told-it-may-have-...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-us-strike-preliminary-deal-to-unlock-transatlantic-data-flows/" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-us-strike-preliminary-dea...</a>
GDPR 49/1a explicitly states possible workarounds (<a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/art-49-gdpr/" rel="nofollow">https://gdpr-info.eu/art-49-gdpr/</a>):<p>"In the absence of an adequacy decision pursuant to Article 45(3), or of appropriate safeguards pursuant to Article 46, including binding corporate rules, a transfer or a set of transfers of personal data to a third country or an international organisation shall take place only on one of the following conditions:<p><pre><code> a. the data subject has explicitly consented to the proposed transfer, after having been informed of the possible risks of such transfers for the data subject due to the absence of an adequacy decision and appropriate safeguards;"
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Does someone here know why does this apparently seem not to apply? Couldn't FB just ask for a consent?
Just after Russia did it, so they'll be in a good company. Why do politicians always have to decide this kind of stuff for people? I view it as basically because they are evil. If an adult consents to have their data accessible to FBI or whatever, in exchange for being able to post selfies and click the cow, let them. Nope, Putin/EUtin think they know better than you.