Hacker News Reader

> I can't see a significant cohort that would be unhappy that their governments stood the ground on their data not being sent to the US.

There are >400 million monthly active Facebook users in Europe today [1]. It is pretty absurd to think that a substantial amount of them would prefer losing access to Facebook over an EU mandate, especially considering most people are likely aware at this point that Facebook is using their data.

I don't think this issue is as clear cut as you and many other posters here see it. I find that the EU's decision can overwhelm legitimate services that may not be able to comply with this regulation, and I also see it as part of their intention to build a China-like firewall eventually - they are already trying to shutdown Telegram, for example.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/745400/facebook-europe-m...

> especially considering most people are likely aware at this point that Facebook is using their data.

I would contend most facebook users are not, as they are broadly either poorly informed or very old.

When I tell people 'But Facebook is already breaking your privacy laws right now' I usually get something along 'then why does the EU not block it?'

So imho this can not happen soon enough, people think the EU is actually protecting them when it isn't. I hope more countries join as well

And what percentage of those have abandoned or switched off from Facebook upon learning about their practices?

I doubt a majority of Facebook users would agree with it being prevented from operating in European Union due to their servers being in the US. This is a precedent that can and will lead to undue internet restrictions in the future. So while I share your concern that we should do more regarding data protection, I'm not sure this is the way to go.

The ones that believe the gov is protecting them? Probably none?

> what percentage of those have abandoned or switched off from Facebook upon learning about their practices?

The far majority of my social circle doesn't use Facebook and removed their accounts with all the bells and whistles years ago

Imo DNS banning software that is breaking privacy laws is not to much to ask to. Anyone can use a different DNS, nobody cares.

I am usually against banning, but we ban other dangerous scam things too in order to protect customers because sorrily this is the best we have.

>There are >400 million monthly active Facebook users in Europe today [1]. It is pretty absurd to think that a substantial amount of them would prefer losing access to Facebook over an EU mandate, especially considering most people are likely aware at this point that Facebook is using their data.

Most people who rely on it are business, and they stay in to compete with businesses who are also in it. If nobody has access to it they will just rely on other means, their own personnal website, other social medias that would fill the gap...

Most individual would be annoyed at first as well, but then all end up migrating to the another thing once the dust settle. More than facebook, this would be more the loss of instagram and whatsapp that would annoy them but they would easily move to telegram and signal. Many non-tech people already have a telegram account for example but don't move out of whatsapp because they are all on it already. Nobody wants to be that guys asking anyone else to abandon the group and move to somewhere else just for the heck of moving. As for instagram, they would quickly switch to tiktok, snapchat or something else that fills the gap.

I'd like to think open source and decentralized tool would have en edge but I am very doubtful it would happen. It is always easier to migrate to a single jail cell than being free.

Anyway, Facebook/Meta has just filled a form to cover their ass. They aren't threatening to leave EU. If they have to keep and manage the data in EU they will find a way. It will just be costly and hurt their finances hence the obligation for them to mention the riskier route.

> Many non-tech people already have a telegram account for example but don't move out of whatsapp because they are all on it already. Nobody wants to be that guys asking anyone else to abandon the group and move to somewhere else just for the heck of moving. As for instagram, they would quickly switch to tiktok, snapchat or something else that fills the gap.

Telegram's servers are in Russia, and Tiktok's are in China. If shutting down Facebook in the European Union means people are going to switch to those other apps, that would defeat the purpose of this initiative. I would also disagree that they are equivalent, I cannot imagine my mom migrating to any other social media if Facebook ceases to be available. She would likely go and protest this measure actually.

I agree this is likely a bluff, I just disagree that we should not seriously consider the actual costs of blocking over 400 million people from doing what they want to do. Also note that ultimately this could be viewed as a protectionist measure, so Europe-based social media companies would have a big advantage. I'm not sure I'm ok with that either.

> Telegram's servers are in Russia

AFAIK they are not, they are spread between a couple of data centers

You can find in this [reddit post](1) the list of ip's and locations from (2) with the geo-ip location

1) https://www.reddit.com/r/Telegram/comments/q81kg8/comment/hq...

2) https://core.telegram.org/getProxyConfig

I'm not sure why anyone would draw the conclusion that they are losing Facebook because of an EU mandate, when all other competitors continue to work for them.

And if they dig into it even slightly they will probably be even more horrified at Facebook once they find out they lost Facebook because it considered transferring their data to the US more important than having them as a user.

I agree Facebook loses, but I think maybe we differ on how. For example, I have no confidence that humans would behave as logically as you do in your post. I'd expect them to fully blame the government for any number of reasons but primarily because they don't care about their data, and they now can't interact with their friends/memes as they did before. Even if you tried to explain, I don't think most people would care.

That said I also think they'll forget about Facebook in a week or two and move to tiktok or where ever their friends/memes go.

I'm being misanthropic but I really do think this is how it would go down.

Facebook isn't "playing games" that much IMHO, Facebook is merely trying to make sure it doesn't get sued by stockholders because it "hid material information from them". Thus, Facebook puts a worst-case scenario in their SEC filing so no stockholders can later sue them because "If I had known Facebook has regulatory issues in Europe I'd have invested differently! They didn't tell me, that's securities fraud!" (Cue Matt Levine on "everything is securities fraud")

Of course it's a big claim, but I don't quite see why this is suddenly over all the media for such an obvious stock disclaimer.

> I can't see a significant cohort that would be unhappy that their governments stood the ground on their data not being sent to the US.

There are pretty significant cohort in Russia that slaps our government for LinkedIn ban. For exact same reason.

This risk of losing business in the EU due to regulations around data is also acknowledged by google in their recent filing.. this isn’t specific to Meta despite all the articles that have popped up about it… https://twitter.com/SMalikjo/status/1490938883760033792?s=20...

Their Q4 earnings had some conservative projections and higher expenses due to investments in building out their VR teams, and this was enough of a catalyst that the short sellers were able to create a panic.

Fine to hate the company and management, and their politics, but following the money, this seems to be a wildly successful effort to manipulate sentiment and cause retail investors to panic and benefit short sellers in the market. There’s huge money to be made by hedge funds in shorting Meta on the way down, and then buying it again on the way up.

Or maybe they’re really going down to $0 … which is more likely?

> There are many alternatives that could fill their social media addictions.

That's a very limited view on FB. Here are some uses I know of:

- FB group where company directors meet discuss business issues

- FB groups used for planning local sport/activity groups

- FB Marketplace which displaced the original eBay concept where Gumtree is not popular

- groups for organising conferences

If you're looking at FB users and see only social media addicts, you're ignoring a large variety of users.

yes, but alternatives for those groups exist. the biggest pain is the necessary regrouping on a different service. this is not about the loss of functionality that doesn't exist elsewhere, compared to say something like google streetview which is rather unique

>FB group where company directors meet discuss business issues

Forums

>FB groups used for planning local sport/activity groups

Forums

>FB Marketplace which displaced the original eBay concept where Gumtree is not popular

Craiglist

>groups for organising conferences

Forums

Moving those discussions into a searchable website/forum would benefit everybody.

Depends on how it's framed. Imagine something like "fuelled by nationalistic sentiment, German/French government makes unreasonable demands that would force social network to reengineer their networking solution at a massive cost".

Personally I just don't see why an average user would care about FB not complying with this regulation. Once you type in your data into FB - FB has it, it really doesn't matter where FB's servers physically are, you're no longer in control. The only winning move is not to play, er, not to use social networks at all.

> I suspect that people would be split between

(e) blame the local politicians for destroying their internet.

Especially with the crowd that uses Instagram or Facebook, data protection laws are not something they consider, they want their little bubbles to continue working. Politicians risk alienating the young (who will most likely start sending their data to some Chinese company instead) and the mid-aged-to-elderly, low-educated, which is their main election pool.

What if FB came up with this response based on the data from German and French users?