Meta is not threatening to leave Europe

No one in my circles cares about Facebook leaving Europe. Until they realize that Facebook includes Instagram and WhatsApp and they do actually use those other services.<p>Point being: to all the commenters saying no one cares, a lot more people care than you think.

Meanwhile, CIA collecting bulk data without oversight: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;cia-collecting-bulk-data-on-americans-without-oversight-senators-say&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;cia-collecting-b...</a><p>Between this, CLOUD act and EARNIT, why would anyone consider any privacy statement from any US company credible?

This was fake news since day 1. There was never any source which pointed back to Facebook implying any such thing. Just tech bloggers&#x2F;clickbait journalists doing what they do best.

&gt; Much like 70 other EU and US companies, we are identifying a business risk resulting from uncertainty around international data transfers.<p>Funny how they try to spin it like there&#x27;s some &quot;uncertainty&quot;, the regulations are very clear, they just need to apply them.

&gt; To help personalize content, tailor and measure ads, and provide a safer experience, we use cookies. By clicking or navigating the site, you agree to allow our collection of information on and off Facebook through cookies. Learn more, including about available controls: Cookies Policy<p>How am I supposed to read the cookies policy without clicking or navigating?

&quot;We are not leaving because our stock just dropped by an effective 200B and we need you now more than you need us&quot;

To be fair seems like a backoff, but the problem is - nobody cares. Millions of man-hours saved a day. On a serious note - that market would be filled in a month...

Meta does not want to understand. People are not happy that their data is Meta&#x27;s business and that, as a result, Meta keeps socially engineering them to milk more of their time.<p>People are not even mad about ads, they are mad at the waste of time and general sense that FB brings the worst out of you.<p>They need to shift their business, changing the landscape (metaverse) will not change anything or trying to convince people that what they offer is great is a long term losing proposition, imh.

I don&#x27;t think that Facebook needs to address the fear in people from leaving Europe. If nothing else, they&#x27;ve definitely heard feedback that people wouldn&#x27;t mind at all if they left.<p>&gt;But the simple reality is that Meta, like many other businesses, organisations and services, relies on data transfers between the EU and the US in order to operate our global services<p>Yeah.. The reality is you don&#x27;t really have to transfer anything out of EU in order to keep your service running. Liars

That&#x27;s a pity, we were looking forward to it.

&gt; Meta Is Absolutely Not Threatening to Leave Europe<p>But then in the body of their post...<p>&gt; EU-US data transfers mechanisms poses a threat to our ability to serve European consumers and operate our business in Europe [and] we have absolutely no desire to withdraw from Europe, of course we don’t, But the simple reality is that Meta relies on data transfers between the EU and the US.<p>I mean, that sounds like a threat to leave to me? If you can&#x27;t operate your business in Europe? Talk about mixed messaging and double-speak!

I have no interest in any of Meta&#x27;s products or services. They could have left Europe months ago without me or my family &#x2F; friends noticing.

Why does this sound like a series of Tweets? I cannot believe an SVP wrote this and thought it was a professional enough tone to publish. It reflects doubly bad on Meta because not only do Europe’s (or Apple’s or Google’s or whatever enemy du jour) privacy laws limit their ability to execute (as seen from their latest quarterly results), but they don’t even have the maturity to address the situation without more whining about how user privacy means they can’t harvest their data to make billions of dollars. This sort of tone might fly for a start-up but not one of the largest companies in the world. Doubly true since Meta just identified a huge downside in their prospects and this does nothing to assuage investors. Rather than say “we are looking for ways to continue to provide our services while remaining compliant with privacy laws” and a bunch of marketing speak about it, they throw in the towel and say “boo hoo, if Europe wants privacy, we just can’t have Facebook there.”

People are definitely tired of hearing or caring about Meta.

The problem isn&#x27;t EU law but US law.<p>The EU doesn&#x27;t care if Meta gets the data of its users but that there is no possibility to prevent that the intelligence services get them too. That killed Safe Harbour.<p>So blame Patriot Act and Cloud Act not GDPR.

The headline is accurate. Even a company as tin-eared as Meta knows their reputation is deep down in the septic tank, and the threat would be as credible as the black sheriff in Mel Brook&#x27;s &quot;Blazing Saddles&quot; pointing his gun at his own forehead and saying &quot;Or the N*** gets it&#x27;s&quot;

&quot;we did not threaten to leave Europe&quot;<p>Yup, you did. Annual report, page 9, and it backfired.<p>Everybody knows you won&#x27;t leave but that&#x27;s what you suggested point blank. You put this there to put pressure on Europe to surrender its citizens data to the US unconditionally.<p>Own it.

Headline: We are not threatening to blah.<p>First paragraph: We don&#x27;t want to blah.<p>Second paragraph: But if we don&#x27;t get what we want, we will have to consider blah.<p>I guess it&#x27;s time for an update to Betteridge&#x27;s Law: The more emphatically a press-release headline denies something, the more likely it is to be true.

If there is no Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, what will replace it?<p>Already it seems using Google Analytics is illegal in some countries at EU.<p>What about Microsoft Teams, Windows 11, etc? How can I prevent those sending any telemetry data etc to outside of EU? Will Microsoft Teams, Windows 11 etc be illegal too?

Seems pretty clear that Facebook is putting this statement out because they&#x27;re sweating their big stock slide and looking to staunch the bleeding whereever possible. If they were in a stronger position they would be sticking to attempting to strong-arm the EU.

that bluff failed spectacularly. How out of touch does management have to be to not realize FB needs europe a lot more than europe needs facebook?<p>the reaction in my circles has been almost universally &quot;don&#x27;t let the door hit your ass on the way out&quot;

Too bad for the Europeans then... a lot of them were looking forward to that.

&gt;&quot;<i>If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and we are unable to continue to rely on SCCs (standard contractual clauses) or rely upon other alternative means of data transfers from Europe to the United States, we will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe.</i>&quot;<p>Compared this to Apple.<p>&gt;<i>Apple&#x27;s position is it should indeed be able to reflect on the terms and decide whether commercially it is right to accept them or to leave the UK market. There may be terms that are set by the court which are just commercially unacceptable.</i><p>I will let HN decide which one of them is really a threat.<p>While Apple haven&#x27;t said anything similar to the Dutch, I think they just gave them the middle finger.

Love how many people refer to them as Facebook, unlike Twitter and the news where they even refer to past activities as coming from Meta which sounds incongruent.<p>Like “in 2016, Meta did xyz…”

is it possible that if they go through with it, it might open up the entire continent to an alternate &#x2F; competitor, which can then threaten them globally ? thinking a bit more, it seems that there might be a fine acceptable line of action between the scylla of share everything (which mean no privacy) and charybdis of share nothing (which means no internet), and it might (unfortunately !) be upto the politicians to draw it...

Such as PR fluff post by Meta, and it doesn&#x27;t even mention one of the main problems EU has with US privacy laws: the CLOUD act.

&gt;but not confined by national borders.<p>Store everyone&#x27;s data in Europe then and do your data transfers in the other direction.

What a shame. Would love if they left.

Meta&#x27;s user base shrank and share price fell, what would happen if all EU users were gone?

What many people in this thread get wrong is that the problem is not and never has been posts, photos or messages shared with the public or a person that can reasonably be expected to be in the US. This data is mad explicitly public, and by posting, the user grants consent to distribute - worldwide. The problem is, however, with tracking data facebook runs it’s advertisements on. This data is compiled from a number of things, but must be orderly protected. That is - in my opinion - only possible in a federated service model. Anything that is explicitly shared and needs to be delivered in the US (or anywhere, for that matter) still will be. The GDPR and the concerns over the SCC only concern the ad path. Federating facebook will likely hurt their ad business, and, to make it worse, they still need to ensure the US has no jurisdiction (even if they would like to have it). This seems only possible by making the federated company 100% independent, which brings its own problems.<p>The reality is that Facebook (and meta, for that matter) very well could do that. But they probably won’t, because it would hurt their bottom line.

The only thing I can see is:<p><pre><code> bad URL NSURLErrorDomain</code></pre>

serious question, why isn&#x27;t facebook still dying? please god, I think we have the right to see this in 2022.

They should have written this a week ago.

when there is a “but” in a sentence, the part before it automatically gets assigned as false.

Meta should leave Europe. The EU has been anti tech but pro China, why does these rules only apply to American companies?

now count the upvotes versus the &quot;original&quot; posts about this

Can someone please explain exactly what data is the issue here? Is Facebook being targeted just because of their scale or is anyone who runs an online service expected to keep any data from their European users on EU servers? Is there a TLDR of the laws applying to transatlantic data transfers anywhere?

Too bad.

And you ask why Britain left EU. Some old jerks think they represent the whole EU population and can easily forbid something for everyone.

&gt; International data transfers underpin the global economy and support many of the services that are fundamental to our daily lives. For many years, the legal framework supporting the transfer of data across the Atlantic has faced severe disruption.<p>Huh, if I were a Facebook investor I&#x27;d be pretty disappointed to hear that they&#x27;ve known this was an area of active disruption for years but haven&#x27;t managed to rework their business model to avoid it.

I am as certain as one can be without any capacity to prove it, that fb and meta and Mr. Zuck.. are subject of some sort of attack for the past 2 years (the intensity&#x2F;frequency of critical opinion pieces went up within the last 2 years).<p>It&#x27;s entertaining albeit unfruitful to wonder who could be behind. FB&#x27;s reputation has been tarnished specially in the USA (which hints that it&#x27;s an interest originating in the USA).<p>I&#x27;m not saying all criticisms are without merit, I&#x27;m saying that&#x27;s very interesting that so many &#x27;different&#x27; outlets have begun to directly criticize Facebook.<p>I like stratechery&#x27;s opinion that a lot of FB&#x27;s problems (legitimate concerns under scrutiny) aren&#x27;t really FB&#x27;s but the Internet&#x27;s (given that FB is a large portion of the internet, and for certain users it&#x27;s really most of the internet).<p>tl;dr; it sure seems like a lot of FUD about facebook these days.