Meta has threatened to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if the social media empire cannot continue transferring user data back to the United States.
Regulators in Europe are currently drafting new legislation that will determine how European citizens’ user data is transferred to the U.S.
Meta issued the warning within its annual report, saying that if a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and the company is unable to continue to rely on standard contractual clauses or on other alternative means of transferring the data, it will be unable to offer products like Facebook and Instagram.
The threat seems hollow considering just last week Facebook announced its first-ever drop in daily active users in its 18-year-history, which immediately triggered a fallout in stock prices by more than 20 percent for Meta. The stock drop wiped out $230 billion from Meta’s stock market value.
With users dropping in Africa and Latin America, cutting off all of Europe from the social media app sounds like an empty warning.
The EU has not appreciated the threat. European lawmakers said that Meta cannot simply blackmail the European Union into giving up its data protection standards and that if Meta wants to leave, it’s their loss.
A spokesperson for Meta said that the company does not have a plan nor a desire to withdraw from Europe, but that it relies on data transfers to operate global services.
In July 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled that the transatlantic data transfer does not protect citizens’ privacy in the EU. The court, which is the highest legal authority in the European Union, said that citizens in Europe had no effective way to challenge American government surveillance. The court then restricted how American firms could send European user data back to the
In August 2020, Ireland’s Protection Commission sent Facebook a preliminary order to the company to stop user data transfers from Europe to America. The Commission launched an inquiry and found that the SCCs in practice could not be used for transatlantic transfers. The final decision for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is expected in the first half of 2022.
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