Ruario's Journal [extract]
2022-02-07
10:15 +0100
So Facebook claims it is going to have to leave Europe. Before we all celebrate, let's just be clear that is an outright lie.
The population of the EU (which is what we are talking about here, rather than 'Europe' which would include the 'Brexited' UK) is estimated at 447 million people. As a capitalist business, you don't just drop a potential 447m users because you will make less money, when there is still some good money to be made.
Likely they would either go with less/un-targeted ads or a paid service that few (but some) would sign up for as a way to retain some profits for this vast pool of users. Now granted outcomes like those would still be a big win but my point is that one way or another Facebook is not going to just shut down all European operations.
Look at the situation with the Apple and iOS privacy changes that cost them $10b, which they claim to have predicted. They didn't leave Apple when the privacy changes were announced because the money they made (even with such a giant drop) was better than no money from Apple users. It is the same situation here.
So why are they claiming this? They just want to scare EU regulators and politicians in the hope of getting a special deal where they can still fuck over as many as possible. I hope that those with the power to enforce these rules stick their ground.
Data transfer issues could see Instagram, Facebook vanish from Europe
Demographics of the European Union (wikipedia)
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