>> If an EU user sends the US user a message it cannot leave the EU. I think you got this wrong. That's how mail, email, chat, phone calls and pretty much all

>> If an EU user sends the US user a message it cannot leave the EU. I think you got this wrong. That's how mail, email, chat, phone calls and pretty much all the "standard" communication services are working. The message can surely leave the EU. It's user's data (i.e profile info) that shouldn't leave the EU. >> To claim that this is about monetization is laughable, this ruling doesn't prevent monetization it just prevents data flowing out of the EU. This is about data protection which includes privacy rules among other things. Nothing stops US corporation from operating datacenters in the EU. They developed datacenters in the EU before all this anyway. The "issue" is that the data stored within the EU is subject to EU law so legally the foreign corporations cannot share/resell the data with 3rd parties(e.g adv publishers, gov agencies such NSA etc) in a way that breaks EU law. The EU just tries(nicely) to tighten the screw a bit... just look at the US-China-Tick-Tock-Oracle saga. Governments want exclusive access/ownership/control of theier citiens's data for obvious reasons. >> This pretty much breaks any data driven business model you have into two distinct ones, and if your EU and US datasets are too small individually when then though luck. How could EU and US dataset be too small individually? Too small for an inter-planetary marketplace? Here on earth they are quite big and valuable if not the most valuable. If your concern is user's privacy/data protection you shouldn't be worried. You will try to store less data on your servers and give more power/ownership to the user anyway. In the end the data should be owned by the users.