“Hackers deprived me of my Facebook and Twitter accounts for four years. Facebook Instagrammable, ” said German economy minister and vice chancellor Robert Habeck in response to the news that Facebook and Instagram could end up in Europe.
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Similarly, the French finance minister Bruno Le Maire sees the whole matter. “We live very well with Facebook, but we would also live very well without it,” the minister was quoted by the 9to5Mac server.
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French minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire
Photo: Sarah Meyssonnier, Reuters
“Large technology companies must understand that the European continent is sovereign and that it will resist. The European Union has such a large internal market and such economic strength that if we act together, we will not be intimidated by something like this, ” Le Maire added.
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Reuters recalled that Zuckerberg’s threats may not be at all idle. A year ago, his company blocked Australians from sharing and viewing news content on Facebook. It was a reaction to a forthcoming law to make digital platforms pay media houses for the use of their news content.
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German minister for Economic Affairs and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck
Photo: Sarah Meyssonnier, Reuters
But after a few days, in agreement with the government, Facebook returned everything to its original state. And this despite the fact that the law on payments to the media was finally approved.
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Fight for user data
User data is the main source of income of the company. Facebook Instagram and other services are able to track people’s behavior on the network and target advertisers ‘ ads precisely to them. So Zuckerberg wants to have his “digital gold” in the form of user data completely under control, but this can be quite problematic in the territory of another state, even if we are talking about democratic countries of Europe.
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The EU has long pushed for the most transparent rules for the protection of personal data, which is why the general data protection regulation, known as the GDPR, was adopted in mid-2018.
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Sending data of European users to the US is in violation of the GDPR. In July 2020, the court of justice of the European Union declared invalid an agreement between the EU and the United States, according to which companies could transfer personal data of European users to the United States.
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Of course, this applies not only to meta platforms, but also to other companies that work with the data of European users outside our continent. So the main reason why Zuckerberg is threatening to leave Europe is obvious.
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“Unless a new transatlantic data transfer framework is adopted and we can no longer rely on standard contractual clauses or other alternative means of transferring data from Europe to the United States, we will probably not be able to offer a number of our most important products and services in Europe, including Facebook and Instagram, “reads meta platforms’ published report to the US securities
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