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I sometimes wonder if social media companies think threats like this hold weight the way it would if a car factory threatened to leave. I just see “Europe” shr
by gameswithgo 5y ago
I sometimes wonder if social media companies think threats like this hold weight the way it would if a car factory threatened to leave. I just see “Europe” shrugging at this one.
- mantas 5y agoWhy would it just shrug? Lots of people here looooove FB :( Twatter in europe is much smaller than in US. At least in my country all the cool stuff seem to happen on FB. Telegram is slowly gaining speed though. But it would a lot for the regular non-IT people to move over.
- ricardobayes 5y agoCool stuff? All I see is old people arguing. No one I know shares any meaningful updates/content regularly on fb who's under 40.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mantas 5y agoCool stuff as in politics/influencers/business/entertainment drama.
- bitwize 5y ago> Why would it just shrug? Lots of people here looooove FB :( Sure, but if Meta is going to continue being a pratty American company with no respect for how things are done on your side of the pond, where not leaving people open to naked predation by bigcorps is a fundamental principle, I don't think most Europeans would miss it that terribly much. Homegrown alternatives would emerge and most people would just use those and get on with their day.
- mantas 5y agoHopefully people would move to Telegram or similar stuff. Rather than locally brewed FB style behemoth. And I sure hope it wouldn't be vkontakte moving in :/ If that'd allow to emerge multiple regional networks that'd be interesting too. Maybe draugiem.lv would make a comeback!
- Avalaxy 5y ago> Twatter in europe is much smaller than in US. At least in my country all the cool stuff seem to happen on FB. Where? Eastern Europe? Because where I live it's entirely the opposite.
- marcosdumay 5y agoTake FB from them and they will make noise for a week before they adopt something else.
- pingou 5y agoI suspect it is more likely that they are pressing the US government to repel the law that give them the rights to access any data of non US persons, so they can continue to operate in Europe. After all, it is not in the interests of the US government to have big tech fail in Europe.
- dylan604 5y agoSo then rather than it being the EU that shrugs its shoulders, it'll be the US that says "meh", and continues on its merry way of surveiling any and all it feels necessary.
- retrac 5y ago"Don't threaten me with a good time!"
- marcosdumay 5y agoA SEC report is something you quietly (hopping they'll ignore it) tell investors so they can't sue you. If they were threatening something, they would have made noise about it.
- NoboruWataya 5y agoIt's easy to say this in the HN bubble where most of us probably don't use Meta's services and dislike what they stand for (walled gardens, pervasive tracking, etc), but in the "real world" Meta's services are still hugely popular in Europe. Depressing as it sounds, EU residents losing access to Facebook and Instagram due to EU regulations would probably materially increase levels of Euroscepticism in certain countries. That's not to say the EU wouldn't shrug at it anyway. EU institutions are notoriously slow to react to basically anything, which can be both good and bad. That's probably the bigger difference - if a car factory threatened to leave, it might be able to convince a local authority to grant it planning permission or whatever small thing it was asking for. But expecting the EU to overhaul its flagship privacy regulation to keep your business is a very, very big ask. (For the record, I don't actually think this is a threat - as others have pointed out, these filings are very conservative when it comes to disclosing potential risks.)
- onemoresoop 5y agoUntil some time passes and realize it was a blessing in disguise. I doubt it will happen anytime soon though
- piaste 5y ago> Depressing as it sounds, EU residents losing access to Facebook and Instagram due to EU regulations would probably materially increase levels of Euroscepticism in certain countries. As much as I'd love to dream that my fellow Europeans could be weaned off the social media poison by a simple court ruling... realistically, they would move to some new EU-based Insta clone in under three months.