9 ms·

Facebook fears ruling may force it to pull social media platforms from EU

41 points by rusk 6y ago

GekkePrutser 6y ago
That would be pretty amazing. People would have to go looking for someone else and hopefully pick a more ethical platform.
- Thorentis 6y ago
  Oh sweet summer child.
blkhawk 6y ago
Oh, wow one can dream!
tadasZ 6y ago
Oh no. Anyway, lets' hope this happens, would be very interesting to see Facebook pulling out of Europe.
- anthropodie 6y ago
  I hope it does and hopefully if https://okuna.io https://okuna.io times their release properly we might finally have some sort of alternative to fb. Edit: Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGrP80GVkW4&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGrP80GVkW4&feature=youtu.be
  - rusk 6y ago
    I followed that link and was faced with a sign-up page and some fairly generic blurb. It might be the BEST SOCIAL NETWORK EVER but to get my attention I need to see what it does and what people are doing with it. The thing that facebook does, and that it needs to to better is integrate with the wider internet. What we need is geocities with apps and messaging.
    - anthropodie 6y ago
      It's in 'invites only' mode. People who have been following it since inception know they have been doing some good work. Besides they are not ready for public yet and hence not so much info on sign up page which I think is completely fine.
      - rusk 6y ago
        I'm not giving out. I'm just saying what I think needs to be done to get my interest. Maybe that's not important. Maybe as you say they're not into getting my attention just yet, and that's fine too. EDIT I suppose in the context of this discussion it is important to remember that for the first while, Facebook too was invite-only, it didn't do them any harm, but on the other hand is Orkut still around?
- scotty79 6y ago
  I hope they'll be able to continue providing Messenger. It's a successor of skype for me
  - ffpip 6y ago
    Telegram is much better than Messenger. Why don't you use it? Plus there are ton's of more features. Like so many, its hard to keep up. It's ad free and open source.
    - richthegeek 6y ago
      The answer to this question is always "network effects". No-one that I know uses Telegram.
      - ffpip 6y ago
        Why don't you be the first one? https://telegram.org https://telegram.org Once you start using it, you will never go back. It's awesome compared to Skype and messenger.
        anoncake 6y ago
        Yes, you will go back, because using a messenger alone is kind of pointless.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - mercer 6y ago
        Telegram has been picking up steam in my wide network. It's been surprising to me how easy it was, as an early adopter, to convince people to use it. It doesn't work with everyone; WhatsApp dominates around here. But in the tens of people that I care to communicate with have happily switched to Telegram for much of their chatting.
    - 6y ago
- alexmingoia 6y ago
  I like Facebook. How about we let people use the websites and apps they want to?
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    I like Standard Oil. How about we let people buy from the businesses they want to?
    - alexmingoia 6y ago
      Yeah, letting people buy from businesses they choose sounds good. Standard oil was a great company, that benefited consumers by driving down costs and improving the efficiency of oil production and distribution. Prices fell from ~30 cents to ~5 cents per gallon between 1870-1900, and when they were broken up by the government they had more than 100 competitors, and only ~65% market share.
      - cecja 6y ago
        It was a great company before or after they tried to weasel their way out of the responsibility of leaded fuel?
      - 411111111111111 6y ago
        They were benefiting shareholders and consumers of that age at the detriment of society. Slavery also invigorates the markets with cheap produce for consumers and high profits for shareholders. Shall we legalize that as well? Nothing is easy in reality and you can find positive effects to the markets in almost anything if you just look at localized effects
  - rusk 6y ago
    People are being let. It's Facebook who are saying they will exercise their liberty by exiting the EU market because they don't want to obey the law.
    - alexmingoia 6y ago
- Just1689 6y ago
  Maybe I understood that wrong. I couldn't get past the paywall so there's that too. Can't Facebook keep EU data in the EU and "deploy" ADs to the various regions? I'm not sure I understand why the data has to go the the US. The only thing I can image is that AI models are better with larger data sets. But even then it's not too awful to have an EU ML model and another for the rest of the world. Is it enough to exit the whole EU market?
- mercer 6y ago
  I so much hope this happens. For me and a surprising number of my peers (25+) Facebook is just that thing you sort of have to use. Not as bad as LinkedIn, but that's not saying much. Most of us prefer to chat via WhatsApp (yes, I know it's also FB, but I hope that'll disappear too) or Telegram. I'd love to see more people move to Telegram. Most of us preferred to use meetup.com or the like for events, but Facebook just kind of sucked all the air out of that world. Without Facebook there might be a chance for new initiatives to take over. The one thing FB still seems to do best around here is business listings and everything around that. But I'd also love to see startups take on this area when there isn't a Facebook to dominate.
coldtea 6y ago
Amen!
jondubois 6y ago
That would be great. I look forward to it. I hope EU regulators can squeeze them like a lemon on the way out... Squeeze them till their pips squeak.
- easytiger 6y ago
  This is a healthy way of thinking, ahuh
  - cecja 6y ago
    Kinda common nowadays.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    It's not like Facebook isn't a deserving target.
    - easytiger 6y ago
      It's not like <insert business i don't like> shouldn't be subject to tyranny from government imposition
keiferski 6y ago
On a long enough timeline, international megacorporations with low buy-in requirements (i.e. pretty easy to create in technical terms, like a social network, or rapidly becoming commoditized) probably have a limited lifespan. The necessary capital, expertise, and political desire to build an alternative simply hasn't built up enough to burst the dam quite yet...but it will, and I'm not sure Facebook has enough leverage over the EU (or any other sufficiently large political entity) to do anything about it.
hellofunk 6y ago
I sure hope so; the demise of Facebook (and any related business present or future) would be a positive effect on society in so many ways.
Havoc 6y ago
I just dont see that happening. The lobby crowd/fixers will prevent that.
Vespasian 6y ago
Can't read the article (paywall), but if this is in a public court filing wouldn't Facebook paint the future in the bleakest colors possible? I assume after the election in November the EU and the US will try to negotiate a new data sharing agreement. It would be in Facebooks interest to let the politicians know of their "dire" situation
coding_lobster 6y ago
A lot of people seem to be happy about the possibility here in the comments and I can't really blame them. But one thing to consider is the impact this would have. I have a client with a small-ish e-commerce website that gets about 80% of revenue from Facebook ad campaigns and promotions. They spent a lot of time tinkering with that and optimizing it to improve sales of physical goods in all the areas they can ship to. This is of course an anecdotal example but I imagine there's a fair amount of small business that rely heavily on Facebook like that. There's also businesses where Facebook is an important tool for direct communication with customers.
- rusk 6y ago
  Gosh, that's kind of sad, but platform upheavals happen all the time. I hope that whatever platform their market shifts to isn't too hard to figure out. Hopefully it will even be an improvement!
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    It is sad. This is how I see it... A platform is usually supplanted by something else. Big auto supplanted big horse drawn carriage. Jet engines pushed out propeller engines. Murdering EU Facebook with nothing is like ripping out grandma’s USA made hearing aids until & hoping a local starts a hearing aid company.
    - rusk 6y ago
      How Futurist of you. It's sad for the people who lose out in those transitions. I'm not saying we should hold back progress but we should be mindful of the impacts on society. With that said net impact in this case is probably less than zero.
- Vespasian 6y ago
  Neither online marketing nor "Social" Networks will ever be gone from this world. If Facebook is replaced by the next thing, it just means that the data is not longer officially siphoned off to the NSA but only to local agencies. I doubt much will change for (most) users or small businesses. There will be some collateral damage and for some it will indeed be devastating but the overwhelming majority won't notice much.+
Funes- 6y ago
Please, God, let this happen. And rid ourselves of Twitter, as well. Hell, make all smartphones vanish from the face of the Earth while you are at it.
- oblio 6y ago
  Smartphones have innumerable positive aspects.
  - Funes- 6y ago
    On the off chance that that was true--I don't believe it to be, and you didn't list those "positive aspects", so I can't comment on them--, I think the harm they do outweighs any benefit that could come out of using them.
    - aixi 6y ago
      Maps, for starters. Sometimes I wonder how I would have fared if I had started international travel before smartphones were a thing. Hell, my daily life would be straight up impossible.
      - AstralStorm 6y ago
        There were, and still are, standalone GPS mapping and navigation devices. And also paper maps. That said smartphones being multifunction are very useful, and somewhat a security nightmare.
        oblio 6y ago
        Paper maps suck. They're bulky, unwieldy, tend to break at the seams, they only cover one specific place and you need to buy good quality ones, which isn't always easy. Ah, and it's annoying to write things down on them, since you're basically breaking them/obscuring parts of the map. GPS devices are ok, but then again, they have most of the same security (and especially privacy) issues.
        6y ago
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Can't read the full article (paywall), but based on the headline and first two paragraphs: yeah, right. There's no way Facebook would pull Facebook and Instagram from Europe. Too big of a market. I think it's a threat - "we pull out, and tell people why, and then you'll have EU-wide street protests and huge spike in anti-EU resentment; so maybe ease up on privacy protection a little, would you?".
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
This would be wonderful but obviously is not going to happen.
Zenst 6y ago
Oh this sounds like Facebook might be going for the Epic Fortnite play-book approach, or at least mooting it for social and political peer-pressure.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  Yep, it's hard to see this as more than an attempt to pressure politicians. I don't see it working though. The EU politicians don't care if Facebook leaves the EU, but they also know that Facebook wouldn't allow a competitor to use 500 million Europeans to bootstrap. Facebook don't want the expense of separating out EU data. I can't blame them, they have nothing to gain, it's just less profit and more work. I personally don't care for Facebook and I would love to see what innovations a Facebook exit would bring to Europe, but it would be rather destructive for many smaller businesses, and maybe we don't need that right now.
thefounder 6y ago
So they are too lazy to separate the data and think the EU market is not worth the effort? I hardly believe it.
- AndrewDucker 6y ago
  I am in Scotland. I have friends in America. How do you separate our data and still let us tag each other, share photos, etc?
  - thefounder 6y ago
    The fb app would have to become a bit more distributed. I believe there is a "social protocol" (i.e activity pub) already though I didn't check the details. Just as we have distributed email,chat services, search engines etc we can also have a distributed facebook. Perhaps the client app will also become smarter. I believe you could actually move a lot of data on the client if you really want but the truth is facebook wants the data in one place, on their servers for the ads/resale.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      It doesn’t solve the problem that Facebook faces, especially under the existing definition of data processing and data access. Companies may not only have to pull out of the EU market but actively block EU customers like plethora of publishers that decided that GDPR compliance wasn’t worth the cost.
      - thefounder 6y ago
        >> It doesn’t solve the problem that Facebook faces, especially under the existing definition of data processing and data access. I don't know what problems Facebook is facing and maybe I'm missing something but I'm sure there is a technical solution to provide a facebook app/experience to EU customers. Maybe they would not be allowed to sell data like they did in the past but that will only make it slightly less profitable not un-operable.
hardlianotion 6y ago
Never mind.
romanovcode 6y ago
And nothing of value would be lost!
sime2009 6y ago
This is just some exaggerated "doom and gloom" BS aimed at making the EU sound unreasonable. FB just couldn't be bothered to do the work to separate the data. That's it.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  > FB just couldn't be bothered to do the work to separate the data. Of the problems with data compliance I think this is something that sounds harder than it seems. Which data goes where? If you're in the EU and a friend from the US comments on your post, which data goes where? And vice versa? Where should the graph stay? Yeah, ok, your profile (and user data tracking) should stay local, but Fb is full of those edge cases. Edit: not saying FB shouldn't comply, my question is more in the sense of how data should be organized to facilitate compliance
  - sime2009 6y ago
    If Facebook was some little "shoestring" Ma and Pa website somewhere, then the burden of GDPR compliance might be a persuasive argument. But we are talking about Facebook, one of the biggest and richest tech companies on the planet. They can afford the legal and technical resources needed to do this.
jonathanstrange 6y ago
As someone who just had to use their "ads manager", I can only hope they disappear from the EU. First of all, it's creepy as hell how detailed the target group can be chosen. Second, the ads manager itself is a violation of human rights. I'm not kidding, I was flagged for "suspicious behavior" for trying to launch an innocent ad campaign for my German fantasy novel and their "support representatives" (named "Mary", "Amy", "Pat"...) weren't able to tell me what could have gone wrong in a total of 3 hours of chatting. If there is anything like algorithmic discrimination, then it's definitely to be found in this bizarre software they are using and cannot explain themselves. It's amazing that Facebook still exists. Ironically, however, a previous campaign for one of my novels did work so somehow all the data collection does work for targeting potentially interested people. I guess that's the reason why they still exist despite all those deficiencies and rights violations.
- jondubois 6y ago
  True. Also, it's about time the EU got its own Facebook, its own Google, etc... Just like the US, China and Russia. Right now the EU is getting juiced. The fiat economy is attention driven and fully controlled by the government so it makes no sense that EU industry should operate under the thumb of the US Federal Reserve Bank. If we're going to continue with the current government driven fiat economy, at least make sure it operates under our own government.
  - AstralStorm 6y ago
    We used to have one in Poland until Facebook ate it essentially whole. It still exists in vestigial form, called Nasza Klasa. (designed for class reunions)
    - jondubois 6y ago
      It's pretty clear to me now that Facebook likely received a lot of help and special treatment from the US government because they saw it as a tool for global control. The US, China and Russia understood this. The EU did not. That's why the EU tried to fight back with small regulations, but it just wasn't enough. Foreign media companies need to be regulated out of existence if the EU intends to keep its sovereignty and competitive edge. On the plus side, I think this ordeal has toughened EU industry. It's been a massive stress test. Now we have a very resilient and robust industry which is ready to receive its fair share of eyeballs.
blackbear_ 6y ago
"While the threats posed by TikTok and Facebook are not identical, they are similar. Each collects vast swaths of data from users, including network activity, location data, and browsing and search histories." From [1], slightly edited. Facebook should be considered a national security threat as well, especially for us europeans. [1]: https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2020/09/commerce-department-prohibits-wechat-and-tiktok-transactions-protect https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2020/09/commerc...
zxcb1 6y ago
Speaking of influence; to understand the effects better, perhaps we should coordinate a Facebook free month per year?
raverbashing 6y ago
I don't think it would be a good idea to shut it down, and I think the resulting strongarming wouldn't be very favourable to the EU (as much as I see people are becoming very worried about Fb as well)
newbie578 6y ago
I fear that in a globalized world we are becoming more and more divided. Each country/continent (EU, China, USA, India) is trying to eject foreign platforms and place their owns, I guess when you see on the news how much money tech companies are making, you also want a piece of the pie, although in this case you want your own separate pie (can't say that I blame them, I assume I would do the same thing).
Woodi 6y ago
> Oh, wow one can dream! > That would be pretty amazing. > Amen! > That would be great. So much optimism ! On the internerts !! What a rush... But realy: > This would be wonderful but obviously is not going to happen. Yea. But, pleas, someone explain to me why it is such imposibility to global corporation to have servers/datacenters per country ? Some contacts will obviously break. If it is such profitable business then whats a problem ? ;) IRC did this in 90's. Also DNS works somehow, magically it seems... Why not have opensource protocol named FB ? ;)
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  It's not about data centers, it's that they have to comply with data processing and merging requirements. This includes specifying who will have access to the data. Plain "3rd parties" will be illegal. Which means they cannot sell it willy nilly. Plus they have to ask every EU user for proper consent and inform them of any changes in data processing policy.
  - rusk 6y ago
    GDPR in general isn't about Data centres but the current specific hot-topic of data-sharing agreements between US and EU is ... there was up 'til now a gentlemans agreement that data could be transferred to the US under the promise they wouldn't do anything naughty. Courts have rightly ruled this is as silly as it sounds.
- mtberatwork 6y ago
  > Why not have opensource protocol named FB ? That already exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
dariusj18 6y ago
We need companies to feel this fear. It works better than actual regulations.

41 points by rusk 6y ago

That would be pretty amazing. People would have to go looking for someone else and hopefully pick a more ethical platform.

Thorentis 6y ago
Oh sweet summer child.

blkhawk 6y ago

Oh, wow one can dream!

tadasZ 6y ago

Oh no. Anyway, lets' hope this happens, would be very interesting to see Facebook pulling out of Europe.

anthropodie 6y ago
I hope it does and hopefully if https://okuna.io https://okuna.io times their release properly we might finally have some sort of alternative to fb. Edit: Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGrP80GVkW4&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGrP80GVkW4&feature=youtu.be
- rusk 6y ago
  I followed that link and was faced with a sign-up page and some fairly generic blurb. It might be the BEST SOCIAL NETWORK EVER but to get my attention I need to see what it does and what people are doing with it. The thing that facebook does, and that it needs to to better is integrate with the wider internet. What we need is geocities with apps and messaging.
  - anthropodie 6y ago
    It's in 'invites only' mode. People who have been following it since inception know they have been doing some good work. Besides they are not ready for public yet and hence not so much info on sign up page which I think is completely fine.
    - rusk 6y ago
      I'm not giving out. I'm just saying what I think needs to be done to get my interest. Maybe that's not important. Maybe as you say they're not into getting my attention just yet, and that's fine too. EDIT I suppose in the context of this discussion it is important to remember that for the first while, Facebook too was invite-only, it didn't do them any harm, but on the other hand is Orkut still around?
scotty79 6y ago
I hope they'll be able to continue providing Messenger. It's a successor of skype for me
- ffpip 6y ago
  Telegram is much better than Messenger. Why don't you use it? Plus there are ton's of more features. Like so many, its hard to keep up. It's ad free and open source.
  - richthegeek 6y ago
    The answer to this question is always "network effects". No-one that I know uses Telegram.
    - ffpip 6y ago
      Why don't you be the first one? https://telegram.org https://telegram.org Once you start using it, you will never go back. It's awesome compared to Skype and messenger.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        Yes, you will go back, because using a messenger alone is kind of pointless.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - mercer 6y ago
      Telegram has been picking up steam in my wide network. It's been surprising to me how easy it was, as an early adopter, to convince people to use it. It doesn't work with everyone; WhatsApp dominates around here. But in the tens of people that I care to communicate with have happily switched to Telegram for much of their chatting.
  - 6y ago
alexmingoia 6y ago
I like Facebook. How about we let people use the websites and apps they want to?
- deathgrips 6y ago
  I like Standard Oil. How about we let people buy from the businesses they want to?
  - alexmingoia 6y ago
    Yeah, letting people buy from businesses they choose sounds good. Standard oil was a great company, that benefited consumers by driving down costs and improving the efficiency of oil production and distribution. Prices fell from ~30 cents to ~5 cents per gallon between 1870-1900, and when they were broken up by the government they had more than 100 competitors, and only ~65% market share.
    - cecja 6y ago
      It was a great company before or after they tried to weasel their way out of the responsibility of leaded fuel?
    - 411111111111111 6y ago
      They were benefiting shareholders and consumers of that age at the detriment of society. Slavery also invigorates the markets with cheap produce for consumers and high profits for shareholders. Shall we legalize that as well? Nothing is easy in reality and you can find positive effects to the markets in almost anything if you just look at localized effects
- rusk 6y ago
  People are being let. It's Facebook who are saying they will exercise their liberty by exiting the EU market because they don't want to obey the law.
  - alexmingoia 6y ago
Just1689 6y ago
Maybe I understood that wrong. I couldn't get past the paywall so there's that too. Can't Facebook keep EU data in the EU and "deploy" ADs to the various regions? I'm not sure I understand why the data has to go the the US. The only thing I can image is that AI models are better with larger data sets. But even then it's not too awful to have an EU ML model and another for the rest of the world. Is it enough to exit the whole EU market?
mercer 6y ago
I so much hope this happens. For me and a surprising number of my peers (25+) Facebook is just that thing you sort of have to use. Not as bad as LinkedIn, but that's not saying much. Most of us prefer to chat via WhatsApp (yes, I know it's also FB, but I hope that'll disappear too) or Telegram. I'd love to see more people move to Telegram. Most of us preferred to use meetup.com or the like for events, but Facebook just kind of sucked all the air out of that world. Without Facebook there might be a chance for new initiatives to take over. The one thing FB still seems to do best around here is business listings and everything around that. But I'd also love to see startups take on this area when there isn't a Facebook to dominate.

coldtea 6y ago

Amen!

jondubois 6y ago

That would be great. I look forward to it. I hope EU regulators can squeeze them like a lemon on the way out... Squeeze them till their pips squeak.

easytiger 6y ago
This is a healthy way of thinking, ahuh
- cecja 6y ago
  Kinda common nowadays.
- r00fus 6y ago
  It's not like Facebook isn't a deserving target.
  - easytiger 6y ago
    It's not like <insert business i don't like> shouldn't be subject to tyranny from government imposition

keiferski 6y ago

On a long enough timeline, international megacorporations with low buy-in requirements (i.e. pretty easy to create in technical terms, like a social network, or rapidly becoming commoditized) probably have a limited lifespan. The necessary capital, expertise, and political desire to build an alternative simply hasn't built up enough to burst the dam quite yet...but it will, and I'm not sure Facebook has enough leverage over the EU (or any other sufficiently large political entity) to do anything about it.

hellofunk 6y ago

I sure hope so; the demise of Facebook (and any related business present or future) would be a positive effect on society in so many ways.

Havoc 6y ago

I just dont see that happening. The lobby crowd/fixers will prevent that.

Vespasian 6y ago

Can't read the article (paywall), but if this is in a public court filing wouldn't Facebook paint the future in the bleakest colors possible? I assume after the election in November the EU and the US will try to negotiate a new data sharing agreement. It would be in Facebooks interest to let the politicians know of their "dire" situation

coding_lobster 6y ago

A lot of people seem to be happy about the possibility here in the comments and I can't really blame them. But one thing to consider is the impact this would have. I have a client with a small-ish e-commerce website that gets about 80% of revenue from Facebook ad campaigns and promotions. They spent a lot of time tinkering with that and optimizing it to improve sales of physical goods in all the areas they can ship to. This is of course an anecdotal example but I imagine there's a fair amount of small business that rely heavily on Facebook like that. There's also businesses where Facebook is an important tool for direct communication with customers.

rusk 6y ago
Gosh, that's kind of sad, but platform upheavals happen all the time. I hope that whatever platform their market shifts to isn't too hard to figure out. Hopefully it will even be an improvement!
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  It is sad. This is how I see it... A platform is usually supplanted by something else. Big auto supplanted big horse drawn carriage. Jet engines pushed out propeller engines. Murdering EU Facebook with nothing is like ripping out grandma’s USA made hearing aids until & hoping a local starts a hearing aid company.
  - rusk 6y ago
    How Futurist of you. It's sad for the people who lose out in those transitions. I'm not saying we should hold back progress but we should be mindful of the impacts on society. With that said net impact in this case is probably less than zero.
Vespasian 6y ago
Neither online marketing nor "Social" Networks will ever be gone from this world. If Facebook is replaced by the next thing, it just means that the data is not longer officially siphoned off to the NSA but only to local agencies. I doubt much will change for (most) users or small businesses. There will be some collateral damage and for some it will indeed be devastating but the overwhelming majority won't notice much.+

Funes- 6y ago

Please, God, let this happen. And rid ourselves of Twitter, as well. Hell, make all smartphones vanish from the face of the Earth while you are at it.

oblio 6y ago
Smartphones have innumerable positive aspects.
- Funes- 6y ago
  On the off chance that that was true--I don't believe it to be, and you didn't list those "positive aspects", so I can't comment on them--, I think the harm they do outweighs any benefit that could come out of using them.
  - aixi 6y ago
    Maps, for starters. Sometimes I wonder how I would have fared if I had started international travel before smartphones were a thing. Hell, my daily life would be straight up impossible.
    - AstralStorm 6y ago
      There were, and still are, standalone GPS mapping and navigation devices. And also paper maps. That said smartphones being multifunction are very useful, and somewhat a security nightmare.
      - oblio 6y ago
        Paper maps suck. They're bulky, unwieldy, tend to break at the seams, they only cover one specific place and you need to buy good quality ones, which isn't always easy. Ah, and it's annoying to write things down on them, since you're basically breaking them/obscuring parts of the map. GPS devices are ok, but then again, they have most of the same security (and especially privacy) issues.
      - 6y ago

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Can't read the full article (paywall), but based on the headline and first two paragraphs: yeah, right. There's no way Facebook would pull Facebook and Instagram from Europe. Too big of a market. I think it's a threat - "we pull out, and tell people why, and then you'll have EU-wide street protests and huge spike in anti-EU resentment; so maybe ease up on privacy protection a little, would you?".

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

This would be wonderful but obviously is not going to happen.

Zenst 6y ago

Oh this sounds like Facebook might be going for the Epic Fortnite play-book approach, or at least mooting it for social and political peer-pressure.

mrweasel 6y ago
Yep, it's hard to see this as more than an attempt to pressure politicians. I don't see it working though. The EU politicians don't care if Facebook leaves the EU, but they also know that Facebook wouldn't allow a competitor to use 500 million Europeans to bootstrap. Facebook don't want the expense of separating out EU data. I can't blame them, they have nothing to gain, it's just less profit and more work. I personally don't care for Facebook and I would love to see what innovations a Facebook exit would bring to Europe, but it would be rather destructive for many smaller businesses, and maybe we don't need that right now.

thefounder 6y ago

So they are too lazy to separate the data and think the EU market is not worth the effort? I hardly believe it.

AndrewDucker 6y ago
I am in Scotland. I have friends in America. How do you separate our data and still let us tag each other, share photos, etc?
- thefounder 6y ago
  The fb app would have to become a bit more distributed. I believe there is a "social protocol" (i.e activity pub) already though I didn't check the details. Just as we have distributed email,chat services, search engines etc we can also have a distributed facebook. Perhaps the client app will also become smarter. I believe you could actually move a lot of data on the client if you really want but the truth is facebook wants the data in one place, on their servers for the ads/resale.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    It doesn’t solve the problem that Facebook faces, especially under the existing definition of data processing and data access. Companies may not only have to pull out of the EU market but actively block EU customers like plethora of publishers that decided that GDPR compliance wasn’t worth the cost.
    - thefounder 6y ago
      >> It doesn’t solve the problem that Facebook faces, especially under the existing definition of data processing and data access. I don't know what problems Facebook is facing and maybe I'm missing something but I'm sure there is a technical solution to provide a facebook app/experience to EU customers. Maybe they would not be allowed to sell data like they did in the past but that will only make it slightly less profitable not un-operable.

hardlianotion 6y ago

Never mind.

romanovcode 6y ago

And nothing of value would be lost!

sime2009 6y ago

This is just some exaggerated "doom and gloom" BS aimed at making the EU sound unreasonable. FB just couldn't be bothered to do the work to separate the data. That's it.

raverbashing 6y ago
> FB just couldn't be bothered to do the work to separate the data. Of the problems with data compliance I think this is something that sounds harder than it seems. Which data goes where? If you're in the EU and a friend from the US comments on your post, which data goes where? And vice versa? Where should the graph stay? Yeah, ok, your profile (and user data tracking) should stay local, but Fb is full of those edge cases. Edit: not saying FB shouldn't comply, my question is more in the sense of how data should be organized to facilitate compliance
- sime2009 6y ago
  If Facebook was some little "shoestring" Ma and Pa website somewhere, then the burden of GDPR compliance might be a persuasive argument. But we are talking about Facebook, one of the biggest and richest tech companies on the planet. They can afford the legal and technical resources needed to do this.

jonathanstrange 6y ago

As someone who just had to use their "ads manager", I can only hope they disappear from the EU. First of all, it's creepy as hell how detailed the target group can be chosen. Second, the ads manager itself is a violation of human rights. I'm not kidding, I was flagged for "suspicious behavior" for trying to launch an innocent ad campaign for my German fantasy novel and their "support representatives" (named "Mary", "Amy", "Pat"...) weren't able to tell me what could have gone wrong in a total of 3 hours of chatting. If there is anything like algorithmic discrimination, then it's definitely to be found in this bizarre software they are using and cannot explain themselves. It's amazing that Facebook still exists. Ironically, however, a previous campaign for one of my novels did work so somehow all the data collection does work for targeting potentially interested people. I guess that's the reason why they still exist despite all those deficiencies and rights violations.

jondubois 6y ago
True. Also, it's about time the EU got its own Facebook, its own Google, etc... Just like the US, China and Russia. Right now the EU is getting juiced. The fiat economy is attention driven and fully controlled by the government so it makes no sense that EU industry should operate under the thumb of the US Federal Reserve Bank. If we're going to continue with the current government driven fiat economy, at least make sure it operates under our own government.
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  We used to have one in Poland until Facebook ate it essentially whole. It still exists in vestigial form, called Nasza Klasa. (designed for class reunions)
  - jondubois 6y ago
    It's pretty clear to me now that Facebook likely received a lot of help and special treatment from the US government because they saw it as a tool for global control. The US, China and Russia understood this. The EU did not. That's why the EU tried to fight back with small regulations, but it just wasn't enough. Foreign media companies need to be regulated out of existence if the EU intends to keep its sovereignty and competitive edge. On the plus side, I think this ordeal has toughened EU industry. It's been a massive stress test. Now we have a very resilient and robust industry which is ready to receive its fair share of eyeballs.

blackbear_ 6y ago

"While the threats posed by TikTok and Facebook are not identical, they are similar. Each collects vast swaths of data from users, including network activity, location data, and browsing and search histories." From [1], slightly edited. Facebook should be considered a national security threat as well, especially for us europeans. [1]: https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2020/09/commerce-department-prohibits-wechat-and-tiktok-transactions-protect https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2020/09/commerc...

zxcb1 6y ago

Speaking of influence; to understand the effects better, perhaps we should coordinate a Facebook free month per year?

raverbashing 6y ago

I don't think it would be a good idea to shut it down, and I think the resulting strongarming wouldn't be very favourable to the EU (as much as I see people are becoming very worried about Fb as well)

newbie578 6y ago

I fear that in a globalized world we are becoming more and more divided. Each country/continent (EU, China, USA, India) is trying to eject foreign platforms and place their owns, I guess when you see on the news how much money tech companies are making, you also want a piece of the pie, although in this case you want your own separate pie (can't say that I blame them, I assume I would do the same thing).

Woodi 6y ago

> Oh, wow one can dream! > That would be pretty amazing. > Amen! > That would be great. So much optimism ! On the internerts !! What a rush... But realy: > This would be wonderful but obviously is not going to happen. Yea. But, pleas, someone explain to me why it is such imposibility to global corporation to have servers/datacenters per country ? Some contacts will obviously break. If it is such profitable business then whats a problem ? ;) IRC did this in 90's. Also DNS works somehow, magically it seems... Why not have opensource protocol named FB ? ;)

AstralStorm 6y ago
It's not about data centers, it's that they have to comply with data processing and merging requirements. This includes specifying who will have access to the data. Plain "3rd parties" will be illegal. Which means they cannot sell it willy nilly. Plus they have to ask every EU user for proper consent and inform them of any changes in data processing policy.
- rusk 6y ago
  GDPR in general isn't about Data centres but the current specific hot-topic of data-sharing agreements between US and EU is ... there was up 'til now a gentlemans agreement that data could be transferred to the US under the promise they wouldn't do anything naughty. Courts have rightly ruled this is as silly as it sounds.
mtberatwork 6y ago
> Why not have opensource protocol named FB ? That already exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub

dariusj18 6y ago

We need companies to feel this fear. It works better than actual regulations.