Meta threatens to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe | Hacker News Reader

Meta threatens to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe

mashable.com

50 pointsChemSpider84 comments

Already discussed extensively in the past few days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30207734

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30234026

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30234444

This reads less of a threat from Meta, and more of outlining all possible outcomes in an annual report - one they have to do, else risk shareholders suing, and winning, in the extremely unlikely case they would restrict some of their product offering in Europe as a flex. This is similar to how, if you read S1 filings, they will list all possible things that could go wrong, and ways the business can stumble, for the same reason.

Meta is reasoning how they would be unable to do cross-region ad targeting with the current regulation.

None of what they write has anything to with Instagram or Facebook's ability to operate. It all has to do with how accurate and profitable Facebooks' cross-region ad targeting would be.

An underlying story not reported by Mashable is how the increasingly restrictive EU regulations do, in fact, present more cost and headaches for all companies operating globally. For any small and medium-sized business, it's increasingly not economical to implement adhering to regulations themselves: and it increasingly makes sense to use middlemen who provide these services - from payments processing to user data storage.

It feels we're entering a time when operating globally will mean investing resources and custom development to operate within the regulations in the EU, in India (also pushing for more EU-style regulations) and in China (a different beast altogether). The regions who have not yet implemented similar regulations and are more of an "operate however you want" model are the US, Canada, LatAm and Africa.

Precisely. It’s about managing investor expectations. They will never leave the European market and therefore lots of money on the table. They do feel the effects of privacy laws and tracking prevention though. It further betrays the entitled arrogance of exclusively ad-run businesses. It’s still profitable, just not as profitable as before.

It's actually USA law that is the problem here.

Specifically, the fact that USA agencies can do whatever they want whenever they want with EU citizens data and have 0 accountability to EU citizens.

Basically, we have as much rights as USA intended for terrorists.

We had "Privacy Shield" framework that was allowing to transfer data to USA, but the framework (and the one before that) was invalidated by the European Court of Justice in Schrems II ruling due to lack of protections for EU citizens in USA law.

The thing I am failing to understand is if users embeddings can be moved across the Atlantic. The regulation is really not clear about that. I mean, if my browsing habits / purchase preferences can be compressed in an array of 512 floats that is gibberish (and for all intense and purposes a 1 way function unless you have the other tower of two towers model for recommenders) does that break regulations?

If it doesn't, I am failing to see the technical problem that Meta is facing, especially considering all the resources and engineering manpower they have. A quick back of the envelope calculation for a worst case scenario tells me that assuming 1B users and 1B ads corpus * 512 * 32 bits that's around 30 TBs to move to keep US and EU users and ads portfolio in sync. Considering the connectivity that Facebook already has between US/EU and the future capacity (https://www.zdnet.com/article/nec-scores-deal-to-build-faceb...) these can be recalculated and synced multiple times per day.

And if moving embeddings outside of the EU is not allowed, they could create temporary ones for the users when they are browsing in the US. Considering that the vast majority of EU users in the US are there for holidays/short stays I would also expect the purchasing habits to change since they are in a different mood/context.

So I think this is a PR stunt to avoid doing the extra engineering work and managing investors expectations.

I believe this is exactly what the EU intended. Currently, Facebook is profiting handsomely off EU users but using every loophole in the book to avoid paying taxes.

If they make it difficult to run operations that cross the EU-US border, then that's a problem for Facebook, but EU-only startups will be just fine. In effect, it shields EU companies from US competition.

This is not what EU political bodies intended. In fact EU made agreements with USA twice to avoid this situation. And EU courts decided twice that the agreements were invalid due to lack of protections to EU citizens in USA.

EU commission wants to sign new agreement with USA, but they do not want to be found incompetent by EU courts for the third time.

So, this time EU negotiates for meaningful protections, but USA does not want to provide them.

The real title of the story is:

"Americans, get jealous: Meta threatens to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe

OK, do the U.S. now!"

People writing in this thread that FB won't be missed - yeah it won't be missed by average HN user who doesn't use FB. Meanwhile all my friends use Instagram stories, communicate on FB messenger, browse local events on FB events, we don't have good reddit clone in my country so a lot of discussions happen in FB groups.

FB leaving EU would be felt by many. There would be room for a quick copycats, but probably the experience would be subpar without ads cashcow.

FB didn't invent the internet, they are just trying to colonize it, so they can charge rent on the labour of others.

We had chat, messaging, pages. All decentralized. No ads. Just worked. Jabber, email, etc.

FB is a national security issue. If you love your country, you pray or fight for the ban of anything Mark touches.

We even had facebook before facebook in many countries. In Poland - grono.net and then nasza-klasa. They weren't better, but at least they weren't worldwide monopolies.

1. There would be cash flow, the data just would need to stay in Europe.

2. Metas biggest advantage is the fact that social media are a natural monopoly in the sense that you really want to be in the same social network as everybody else. Hence the largest must win.

If meta were to leave Europe, there would be a short phase in which there would be several aspiring alternatives, than the market would consolidate.

All because FB happens to be there, and happens to be popular within some groups. If it disappeared, however, it would quickly be replaced. The only value it brings is "being popular".

The EU people and businesses will adapt and find other ways to communicate. Many other businesses will fill the vacuum. In a couple of years it will be all settled into a new normal state.

There is no technical solution that FB offers that couldn't be replaced easily.

FB itself seems to forget that its major asset is users and that almost everyone that uses FB, uses it simply because "everyone is there". If FB shuts down in Europe, that hurdle fixes itself.

Now imagine if this vacuum could be filled by competitors that right now don't have a chance to go against a de facto monopoly on social networking? Wouldn't it be lovely to see all the new products that could take over all these domains without the clutter of being Facebook: event scheduling/marketing, marketplaces of used goods, neighbours' community groups and so on?

Why should I feel sad that one major company isn't dominating all these spaces at the same time?

This seems like a very strange thing for them to say.

I can imagine if Microsoft, Google or Amazon threatened to stop offering services EU might at least care since their services would be missed, at least short term. (Although the threat would be obviously just as empty as Meta's.)

I don't see why should our regulators care at all to keep Meta here though.

> I don't see why should our regulators care at all to keep Meta here though.

Because there are an awful lot of small businesses that sell almost exclusively through Facebook, and the major industries of Europe (i.e. the car manufacturers) which conveniently are major donors to the political parties depend on social media for their marketing as classic ATL advertising spend is going back.

Not to mention Instagram "influencers" - a couple of them have millions of followers. What do you think will happen when even one tells their followers to blast the offices of politicians with calls and letters?

Not that I like Meta, their products and their attitude towards privacy very much, but using the "Scientology method" may get them their will in the end.

>What do you think will happen when even one tells their followers to blast the offices of politicians with calls and letters?

Probably nothing, they will go to spam folder. At least that's how democracy works in my country.

I was hoping the adults in the room would tell the influencers to do something productive with their lives rather than stoke the social fears of the teenagers that follow them.

> Not to mention Instagram "influencers" - a couple of them have millions of followers. What do you think will happen when even one tells their followers to blast the offices of politicians with calls and letters?

Nothing? Maybe a change.org petition at most?

Facebook may have shot themselves in the foot by turning their services into pacifiers for adults.

> Because there are an awful lot of small businesses that sell almost exclusively through Facebook

I have never heard of such a thing! Do you have examples?

Sure [1]. I remember that one from that big Facebook outage, when people suddenly discovered that relying on a single, third-party controlled sales channel is a bad idea.

[1]: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/389673

TIL! That's truly weird.

I don’t know why is this being downvoted my partner is an architect and pretty much her entire industry as far as residential interior design and architecture goes runs on Instagram…

This is the primary channel for her work as an independent architect and for all the companies she works with.

Instagram is a big part of small businesses today even if you might not like the lifestyle/influencer business model you can’t ignore reality.

Restaurants, hairdressers and beauty saloons, joiners and contractors and many other sectors heavily rely on it to promote their business and get exposure to potential clients.

> To which we as Americans can only say: Luckyyyyyyyyyy!!!!

I cannot believe the arrogance and insensitivity of this article, not to mention many other HN'ers in this thread, who cannot seem to understand that what they like and what other people like aren't the same thing.

Millions of people happily use Facebook and Instagram every day, myself included. The fact that you don't use it is not a reason to think down on the people who do, or to wish that something that they like would no longer be available to them.

The lack of empathy towards other people on display here is ridiculos.

Jeez, HN is vicious. Reminds me of the two minutes hate. Who would’ve guessed it’d be for a company and not a person? We even have the tribalism thing going on where if you think Facebook is fine, you’re a suspicious outsider.

It’s one of the most popular services in the world. I guarantee you society would react strongly to the sudden absence of it, no matter how much you wouldn’t. We are all outliers. And that doesn’t make us better.

What?

You wanna have a discussion about what FB did to the world? FB's actions are way more heinous than what any forum post would be.

So?

People are acting like shutting it down has zero consequences. That's crazy.

I still fail to see said consequences. All I see are consequences of FB's continued existence.

There's a quote I heard recently you may enjoy when one of the conservatives told off PM Johnson.

"You've sat there too long for all the good that you've done. In the name of God, go."

Now that the thread is wiped, want to talk more about those consequences? May as well be candid.

I think there would be a relatively violent (in online terms, not literally) reaction as people try to figure out where to go. Not only would Facebook not go away, but even if they did, the replacement wouldn’t be better.

Sure, let's start with the testimony of whistle blower Frances Haugen:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/05/technology/facebook-...

There's a lot to unpack, but the NYTimes does a pretty good job of it.

Then there's the ugliness of Rohingya:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-...

Then there's the ugliness of Russian Trolls.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook...

Then there's the whole if you're not paying for a product, then you are the product.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/facebook-10-billion-appl...

There was cambridge analytica:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/25/facebook-ignored-staff-war...

There was the Iranian Trolls:

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-twitter-eye-iran-fake-a...

Then there's the NFT crap they're pushing:

https://www.ft.com/content/2745d50b-36e4-4c0a-abe0-e93f035b0...

FB Misled Congress in their role in the insurrection:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/business/january-6-insurrecti...

FB treated celebrities one way and regular people another

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-files-xcheck-zuckerber...

When employees approached Mark Zuckerberg the algorithm was making people angrier, he refused to make changes because engagement was critical above all else.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-algorithm-change-zucke...

When employees alerted management about human trafficking, FB did little or nothing to stop it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-drug-cartels-human-tra...

FB explored ways to get pre-teens hooked on the platform.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-instagram-kids-tweens-...

Finally: here's a good article about FB. They shut down the facial recognition software after China used it to identify the Uyghurs from their population. US law enforcement used it to arrest people who just looked like the people they were going after. Still bad, but you know it only took 10 years of complaining about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/technology/facebook-facia...

And I'm pretty sure there's maybe at least another 2x of where that came from.

Edited to add:

> Not only would Facebook not go away, but even if they did, the replacement wouldn’t be better.

This is not a perfect analogy, but hopefully you get the point.

If you clean up trash in your town, does that mean the trash that replaces it is worse? No. It's just more of the regular old trash.

But the question is, what signal does it send to those that want to dump blocks worth of trash in your town if you don't clean up the trash in your town?

> If you clean up trash in your town, does that mean the trash that replaces it is worse?

Hopefully the new trash wont stink as much.

It is a bit much. Millions of people will feel it, should Meta opt to leave the EU.

The question will of cause be: Would the EU be better for without Facebook and Instagram. Some of believe so, personally, not having any interest in any Meta products, I just want to see what will happen if they leave. It might be good for European companies, as Facebook has seriously hurt small website bureaus, but it might also be a disaster for other businesses.

The comparison is unfair. The two minute hate was for promoting group-think and outing free-thinkers, whereas the hatred for Facebook comes from actual grievances.

Companies like Facebook are everything that's wrong with the world, and people know this deep down which is where all the hatred is coming from. They divide, promote hatred and silo thinking, promote breadth in place of depth, cause depression, I could go on for a while here.

Imagine if they disappeared overnight. All the small players could have a go again. Yes in time we'd have the same issues that acquisition and shutdowns bring, as one company grows bigger than the others, but at least for a while we could breath and innovate again.

As a EU citizen this would roughly be the best thing that could happen in terms of Facebook/Instagram.

And I say that although I use instagram.

What I find interesting here is it reminds me of MS at the height of anti-MS sentiment where they would release statements that sounded like, frankly, they don't understand how much they are hated or they wouldn't be giving everyone such easy ammunition to load.

If I were Europe and this were a poker game, I would call Meta's bluff.

And hope they weren't bluffing (not from the slightest worry over the absence of these services, which would be a boon, rather their continuance despite being called and need to waste time regulating them.)

If your annoying in-law threatens to move out of the house, bet that he won't.

In either case it's a win.

For the record - I don't have and never have had a FB account, but - do "ordinary people" (who are a vast majority of users) really hate Facebook? I feel like it's bit of a echo chamber and most people don't really care.

I believe yes, they really do. From what I can tell they may have even before us nerds even realised what was going on, because they understood intuitively that their emotions and attention were being gamed

Exactly, the Cambridge Analytica scandal really did irreversible damage to Facebook's brand amongst non-techie people.

From my experience most people in the EU absolutely do hate Facebook and Instagram, but keep using them because that's what their friends are using for messaging and social media. Quite a catch-22.

I created a FB account a while ago because I needed to reproduce a bug in Firefox (which I was never able to reproduce). Anyways, I haven't used that account other than that... until covid times made me nostalgic amd made look for people from my childhood in southern France. I found a lot of accounts, but none of them appeared active. I didn't engage, but if these people are using Facebook, it's not in way visible to the public (Edit: IOW, either they are privacy-conscious, or they stopped using FB altogether). Put here a disclaimer about anecdata...

I'm not sure I'm not an ordinary person, despite being on HN, I live in a well to do suburban area, with 2 kids and a wife.

I got an account back when Facebook was OK. More recently when I posted that I was deleting my account a relative said they would miss me. I hadn't even used Facebook for 5 years!

I think the whole community thing is a mirage.

Don't threaten us with a good time.

not to rain on the parade, but this has already been posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30234444

ah screw it. these guys suck, keep ripping on 'em.

>Meta says the ability to process user data in between countries is crucial for its business both operationally and for ad targeting

And yet there's Amazon Japan.

And off they go and will not be missed!

I hate FB as anyone else here, but I'd be worried of whatever will take its place. All this anti Meta sentiment is only helping even worse competitors like Tiktok to grow. And to be fair I have the feeling that this anti FB campaign that has been going on for years is probably well funded and orchestrated by some competing interest.

How is TikTok even worse than FB?

Similar business model but Chinese?

Right, I would also add that being fine-tuned to manipulate the younger generations is also a big minus.

Are we talking about facebook or tiktok here?

I guess this is disputable, but my point would be that the whole model should be taken down, not just its main representative.

I call your bluff Meta, and raise you pay some tax as well.

Previously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30234026 (which also links to an article with a more professional tone than Mashable)

Oh no!

Anyway…

I hope they do. It should send a pretty obvious message that it’s hard to operate a business trading in user data. And it should be.

I wish some official would come out saying what we are all thinking: “is that a promise? Is there anything we can to to expedite this?”

I shouldn't but I continue to be surprised by the levels of clickbait and lies that journalists will stoop to. Rather ridiculous to pretend a typical disclosure of risks to investors actually constitutes a threat.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, because it is 100% correct - the statement is a risk disclosure, not a threat

As others have pointed out, this isn't a real threat. There is no way Meta would allow competitors to have a market of 500 million Europeans for themselves.

If the "threat" is something Meta is required to write in their SEC reports, because EU regulations might be an issue for their profitability, then it's a little weird that they don't have to specify that pulling out of Europe might be an even greater threat.

Well, they are already not selling the Quest 2 in Germany because of privacy reasons. I'm aware that the ad revenue they make in EU is several orders of magnitude larger than what they would make with the Quest 2. However, Germany for sure is (relatively seen) an important market for the Quest 2.

Still, I don't believe that they will follow through with this "threat" (even though I would welcome it).

Is it even a threat, if no one is afraid?

Yes please, it's going to be good for the mental health of a lot of people. We'll find new ways of communicating, people always did. In five years we'll be like "do you remember when we had Facebook? How could we do [something new I can't foresee] back then?"

Could be nice for most individuals but I see the point about businesses. Especially smaller ones. Personally I would love to be able to see business opening hours without having to log I to Facebook, but it’s a “free” place to run your business site from.

Google Maps, click business name, see opening hours. Only businesses that matter. Online-only businesses should have hours published on their web page.

You mean the same google maps that claims that outdoor trails and statues have been closed for business since 2020? It’s completely unreliable in some markets

Good riddance.

Yes, some things depend on facebook. In vast majority of cases they really shouldn't.

Facebook, Google, Amazon, all these companies can only get away with their worldwide monopolies for so long. Eventually they will get regulated. It's a good thing.

Please do, that will help getting rid of it completely in the future..

is it possible that if they go through with it, it might open up the entire continent to an alternate / competitor, which can then threaten them globally ?

thinking a bit more, it seems that there might be a fine acceptable line of action between the scylla of share everything (which mean no privacy) and charybdis of share nothing (which means no internet), and it might (unfortunately !) be upto the politicians to draw it...

Great! Can't they do Whatsapp as well?

I hope they do.

I would miss Meta as I use messenger frequently and greatly enjoy using my oculus/meta quest 2.

Oh please do. We can collectively have our mental health back from this contagion. Thanks!

We don't need Facebook in Europe, we prefer to visit our friends in person to talk to them without surveillance capitalism.

"Oh no!"

That’ll do their share price alot of good!

Obvious bluff.

Good news. Perhaps I can return the shitty oculus thing. It's more useless than a bag of dicks without a handle.

I wish meta dissapears from EU

Europe: did I stutter

That would lead to a huge influx in money from VCs wanting to fill the vacuum and jobs as advertisers suddenly have a harder, less scalable job to get an outreach.

European countries can and should take them up on that. Thanks to GDPR people can export their data to a new network pretty easily, but I expect most won’t even care/expect to keep the old data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com