Meta said it is considering shutting down its major products and services in Europe because it can’t mine its European users’ data from the United States. Enough to put pressure on the authorities who scrutinize these data exchanges.
A few days ago, in Austria, Google Analytics was accused of violating the GDPR. In question, data transfers between Europe and the United States which, without a legal framework, must be secured in an irreproachable manner, which is not currently the case. Indeed, without Safe Harbor or Privacy Shield, these international data transfers are not regulated and may become illegal depending on the legislation of each country. This is the basis of a problem that increasingly worries American digital giants offering their services in Europe, while personal data has become the “black gold” of the industry.
So much so that in his annual report to the authority of the financial markets in the United States, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), Mark Zuckerberg called for the rapid establishment of a framework contract on data exchanges with Europe, under penalty of considering the withdrawal of its most popular services from the Old Continent, such as Facebook and Instagram. A way of putting pressure on the American authorities, but also and above all on their European counterparts, to speed up the process.
“The sharing of data between countries or regions of the world is crucial to offer our services and targeted advertising”, recalls Meta, adding that he would stop “probably” to offer its main services and products without an agreement. The main concern comes from the fact that the United States still does not have legislation as protective as the GDPR in terms of personal data, yet it is on this criterion that the Privacy Shield was invalidated. Therefore, to transfer data from Europe to North America, Meta relies on specific agreements which, precisely, are particularly scrutinized by the regulators of the European Union. The company refuses to stop data transfers outside the EU to process them on European soil.
An unthinkable closure
The question that should be asked is therefore whether Meta could really close Facebook or Instagram in Europe? Obviously, this seems unlikely, if not downright impossible. Especially since the Facebook ecosystem includes countless companies that the closure of these platforms would seriously impact. Meta knows this and plays on it, of course, as part of his pressure move: “Without safe and legally regulated international data transfers, the growth of the companies to which this data is useful would suffer in many sectors, at a time when everyone is trying to recover from the Covid crisis.” And while Meta has just fallen on the stock market after announcing, for the first time, a drop in the number of Facebook members, it is hard to imagine it depriving itself of its European outlets.