Zuckerberg considers to switch off FB and Instagram in Europe

[Skybird]

Yes, please!

Der Tagesspiegel writes:


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Meta considers shutting down its services in the EU

Tech giant Meta is considering shutting down its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms in Europe. The reason, it says, is data protection rules here.

European data protection rules are a high priority in Germany and the European Union. For the U.S.-based tech company Meta, that standard has not fit well for some time. An annual report from the tech company to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) now reveals that the company is considering shutting down certain services in Europe.

It states, among other things: "If we are unable to transmit, process and/or receive data between the countries and regions in which we operate, or if we are prevented from exchanging data between our products and services, it could affect our ability to provide our services, [...] which could negatively impact our financial results."

In the report, the Facebook group describes the problems that arose for it in the EU: the exchange of user data between meta-servers in the EU and the US. Thus, the group relied on the EU-US Privacy Shield when transferring data from the European Union to the United States, Meta writes.

The so-called EU-US Privacy Shield agreement regulated the use of data away from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, in July 2020, this was declared invalid by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

At the time, the ECJ ruled that personal data could no longer be transferred to the U.S. without verification. In concrete terms, this means that if the standard of protection for personal data in third countries does not meet EU legal requirements or can be guaranteed by other means, then the transfer of the data must be suspended or prohibited, according to the ECJ.

This was preceded back in 2014 by a complaint filed by Austrian data protection activist Max Schrems with the Irish data protection authority. As a result, the ECJ ruled for the first time that the U.S. data protection standard was not equivalent to that of the European Union. The U.S. was no longer considered a so-called "safe haven" in data matters.

Schrems complained at the time, referring to the revelations of former NSA employee Edward Snowden, that the law and practice of the United States did not offer sufficient protection of data transferred to that country from surveillance activities by the authorities there, he told ECJ.

If there is no "new transatlantic framework for data transfer," Meta "is unlikely to be able to offer a number of our key products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe," the group now wrote in its report.

Recently, the bad news around the Facebook Group accumulated. For the first time, the social media platform hardly gained any new users in the past quarter. The number of daily active members even fell. In terms of monthly activity, there was a meager increase of two million by Facebook standards.

Combined with disappointment over revenue guidance for the current quarter, the numbers sent investors fleeing: Shares in Meta, the umbrella company, lost nearly 23 percent in a spectacular plunge in after-hours trading Wednesday. (with dpa)
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Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)