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If Facebook has physical servers / datacenters in the EU, they're clearly subject to EU regulations: If they get fined by European courts, that stuff could be
by csense 5y ago
If Facebook has physical servers / datacenters in the EU, they're clearly subject to EU regulations: If they get fined by European courts, that stuff could be seized / sold to pay the fines, or employees on European soil could be arrested.
How does it play out if Facebook thumbs their nose at EU regulators and just says "We'll do what we want anyway"?
What if they just shut down their servers / datacenters on EU soil, lay off all Europe-based employees, and set Facebook's DNS to IP's of US-based servers (or otherwise non-EU)?
Could EU courts order European ISP's to block Facebook at the DNS level or blackhole traffic to Facebook IP addresses?
Could the situation reach a point where Facebook executives -- or even rank-and-file employees -- risk being handcuffed and sent to a European jail if they go on vacation to Europe?
- 2000UltraDeluxe 5y agoTo begin with, it would be prohibitly expensive, as in fines at the level of 4% of Meta's global revenue. Further consequences could be repeat fines. Not paying the fines would most likely result in actions like preventing European advertisers from paying for Meta's services. I suspect it would also open up for outright censorship in some individual member states. There's a lot of politicians who would be happy about limiting their more SoMe-savvy colleagues from using Meta's services to reach voters, or to stop fake news as well as legitimate opposition media.