Meta Threatens To Shutter Facebook, Instagram Across EU If Data Privacy Rules Aren’t Changed
The newly renamed Meta Platforms (the company formerly known as Facebook) is once again threatening to shut down two of its most popular social media services in the European Union (a move that would be devastating for the company’s bottom line while also instigating a backlash from EU consumers) if EU regulators don’t strike a more suitable agreement on a new data privacy arrangement with regulators in Washington.
Meta said that if it couldn’t rely on new or existing agreements to shift some data back to the US using “standard contractual clauses,” then it would “likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe,” according to Bloomberg. The warning came in Meta’s annual report.
This isn’t the first time the company has threatened to cut off its services in Europe: Meta raised the prospect of pulling the plug in last year’s annual report, too. It also threatened to block news articles from being shared on its platform in Australia after a court ruling there required social media firms to pay news organizations for use of their content.
“We have absolutely no desire and no plans to withdraw from Europe, but the simple reality is that Meta, and many other businesses, organizations and services, rely on data transfers between the EU and the US in order to operate global services,” a Meta spokesman said in an emailed statement.
But Meta’s continuedthreats highlight “the increasing tension between the social media company and lawmakers over the ownership of user data” collected on Facebook’s platforms. – READ MORE
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