Facebook threatens to shut FB down in EU
Mark is playing hardball with the EU, as he thinks their GDPR regulations are making it impossible for them to do business there. I know everyone wants to hate on Mark, but I don't think this time it's valid. I'd like to see him be the villain, but this time it's the EU who is being maniacal. They are frankly making it difficult for Mark and Facebook to make profit there, so I'm not surprised to see him threatening to leave.
That's because he knows he is doing wrong and his business model won't work here.
I hope they figure it out, I use it to promote my Saas and have been building a nice community thanks to their relatively affordable lead generation ads.
Just FB or also Whatsapp/Insta?
GDPR isn't making it impossible for FB to do business. They would have to establish infrastructure and clone their applications in the EU and not transfer data back to the US. Other companies are doing it. FB just doesn't want to. If doing this breaks FB's model, then FB has a flawed model that rejects what a lot of the world considers a basic right to privacy.
The Australian govt last year tried to shake-down Facebook to prop up old media requiring that Facebook pay news corp when someone clicked on a link to an article on an “offical news outlet” website 😂 (yes the Australian govt ARE morons).
FB said nope, not gunna happen(thankfully). The AU govt threatened legal action so FB deleted all links to AU news outlets when posted to ensure they complied with the AU law.
It took less than a week before the same news sites to started crying about having zero traffic.
This was portrayed in the media(who had everything to lose and to gain) as evil FB threatening AU govt and the “real news outlets” 🙄 by being too powerful.
The fact is tonnes of people love and use FB for business related stuff and get a lot of value from it. FB had no viable choice but to remove the links to news sites.
I don’t see it as a threat to leave the EU, but as FB being given no real viable choice.
I’m not a FB user, I have no skin in the game, but I do think they’re an easy target these days, and it’s cool to shittalk Facebook if you’re super woke or trying to extort them for money, but if you look at the reality of it, they do serve lots of people very well.