Will Europe Force a Facebook Blackout?
upstart writes:
Facebook faces trouble in Europe-and Meta wants you to know about it. Every three months since June 2018, the company has used its financial results to warn that it could be forced to stop running Facebook and Instagram across the continent-potentially pulling its apps from millions of people and thousands of businesses-if it can't send data between the EU and the US.
Whether Meta's bluffing will become clear soon enough.
Data regulators are on the verge of making a historic ruling in a years-long case, and they are expected to say Facebook's data transfers across the Atlantic should be blocked. For years, Meta has fought against European privacy activists over how data is sent to the US, with courts ruling multipletimes that European data isn't properly protected and can potentially be snooped on by the NSA and other US intelligence agencies.
While the case focuses on Meta, it has widespread ramifications, potentially impacting thousands of businesses across Europe that rely upon the services of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and more. At the same time, US and European negotiators are scrambling to finalize a long-awaited new data-sharing deal that will limit what information US intelligence agencies can get their hands on. If negotiators can't get it right, people's privacy will remain at risk and billions of dollars of trade will be put in jeopardy.
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