I think Facebook is wrong to blame the EU or the GDPR on its faltering status in Europe. The GDPR is certainly making people more aware of what privacy means,

I think Facebook is wrong to blame the EU or the GDPR on its faltering status in Europe. The GDPR is certainly making people more aware of what privacy means, and I think that’s a good thing, but it’s also came into existence because the people asked for it. It’s not really a new thing, in the public sector we’ve had stricter regulations for many years, but we’ve had them individually, and we’ve had the because people voted for them. The EU simply gathered all these things as a centralised ruleset, that also happens to apply to the private sector. Slowly more and more people are waking up to find that they have and want the power to make demands on how their data flows. And I think a lot of American tech companies are having a hard time to adapt. There is an old saying, that the US typically has good governments that are not trusted by its people and terrible companies which are trusted. Well, the EU is the exact opposite of that, and I think it’s hard to be Facebook in a world where people genuinely don’t want their photos used for facial recognition software that will eventually be used for evil, have their feeds flooded by probaganda or see their data used to overturn democracy itself. Facebook isn’t really struggling yet though. But they’ve basically become like climate change, everyone knows they have to quit eating social media to save the planet, but knowing is easier than doing. Facebook hasn’t done a single thing to help themselves though, so the comparison to Augustus, who did indeed build an empire and who was so popular that many historians consider him the root of the emperor cult, is a little ridiculous.