We’re fine without Facebook, German and French ministers say
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Addendum: why does meta.com redirect to [1]?
Of course there's some "hull" called "Alphabet" who legally owns Google, but what more than a hull is it? Don't know whether it's for tax reasons, spreading the risk, trying to decouple the image in case of failed products, everybody knows that Alphabet == Google. Same goes for Facebook and Meta: There might be a Meta hull but that hull is quite packed with Facebook, so it does not really matter what the hull is called (or does).
I don't understand Facebook's name change. It is still Facebook. It wants to stay as a cohesive unit and share data across products. It isn't like Facebook will ever voluntarily give up whatsapp or instagram.
I can't quite explain it but I am willing to disassociate the stock ticker Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) from Google but not Facebook (NASDAQ:FB)
These arrangements also make it easier to close things down if needed: it simplifies redundancy (“why can't you offer me a replacement role over there?”, “that is a separate company”) and so forth, though this is more a concern of smaller organisations than Meta & Alphabet. A company I've worked for once had a significant rearrangement with people signing contracts for specific parts where they had previously been employed by the larger group entity, shortly before “divesting” some of those parts. Shady, but legal.
I can mostly agree, but there will be large and interesting practical effects. For example, everyone I know in Prague uses Messenger on a daily basis. I think this is true in many places. I also wonder about where small businesses, who have come to rely on FB for one thing or another, will migrate.
If this story applies to Messenger, this would lead to the biggest DAU migration in history![1] Kind of interesting.
[1] In the areas affected.
I think there is a good chance Meta is not bluffing. It could be viewed as a way to slow or quarantine the spread of data regulations. Pull out of Europe and let Europe develop its own competitor that will have control over Europe, but won't be able to compete abroad. Satiating European want for data regulation and privacy laws in Europe would, hopefully in Meta's view, dampen the broader push for these regulations (a push being led by Europe). Essentially let Europe isolate themselves. This will probably be followed by Meta and other corporations pushing propaganda and marketing highlighting any mistake or failure of European replacements.
Pulling out of Europe would hurt, but at the end of the day Europe's population is small and already developed. In 10 years are there going to be a lot more Europeans spending a lot more, requiring more advertising? Doubtful.
But this could also backfire if other countries look at new European competitors with jealousy and want to emulate it.
It is a sword of Damocles hanging over all US companies doing business in the EU and it is something that needs to be solved by the US side, as European courts have shot all attempts by the EU down.
I hope this is a beginning for the US to finally tackle their due process deficiency.
Facebook doesn't give European politicians and regulators any arguments that speak for them:
- (Basically) No jobs in Europe
- (Basically) No taxes in Europe
- Easily replaceable (aka no major economic consequences when they disappear)
- Considered as dividing the population and fueling conflict for profit
- In a position to block meaningful local competition
- Facebook flipped them off in the past when they could get away with it
- Facebook delivers the data of EU citizens directly to foreign secret services. Even if you don't care about privacy, this removes a potential bargaining chip for future transatlantic contracts.
As a citizen I am in general still supportive of the EU, in fights like this for sure, but some of the criticisms that came out of Brexit were fair.
- [1] https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9609...
- [2] https://deliveroo.es/en/
Perhaps use the funds to lower taxes and improve the regulatory environment to at least stop hindering the growth of the economy instead?
Why's that the answer? It wasn't how the US did it.
Anyway, however you disguise it it's called "stimulus". I think the will and vision now exists in Europe for 50 year horizons (but not in the UK under our present prize cockwomble Johnson govt who can't see past investing in booze for the next Westminster piss-up).
For Example: When GDPR went into effect many companies here in Germany were not really surprised and did not have to change much (if anything).
Why? Because it has always been like this. Some of the specifics changed but in the grand total, things stayed the way they were.
We have our own equally twisted take on "socialist cybernetics", but that's another story.
Although maybe Europeans are slightly less inclined to want to exit at the first financially interesting opportunity? Although investors will probably have a lot to say about that.
I totally agree. Fundamental changes in the nature of the corporation need to occur. How Articles of incorporation function as instruments to enable, but also _exclude_ future M&A is something I'm working on. This is curiously something that "smart contracts" might solve - to create entities that cannot, even in principle, be resold or diluted.
Because they want to protect themselves from investors suing them in case things go bad in Europe. They’re saying to their investors "I’ll do my best with your money, but if things go really bad you need to know that this could maybe happen".
My elderly parents are still hooked on it. Mom is full on anti-vax because of the echo chambers Facebook creates. I’m sure she wouldn’t be as extreme if she didn’t have a daily dose of this shit delivered to her steam.
It’s ruining my parents. Who grew up if a different era and still think there’s someone like Walter Cronkite is personally screening every “news” article. “They wouldn’t be allowed to print it if it wasn’t real…” Oof.
We can all do without Facebook.
Then again, something else will come along. As long as the public and business are flexible. We saw the printed newspaper, "Yellow Pages" replaced.
Getting a login wall when I try to check your working hours or menu is the surest way to lose me as a client.
Oh, and I might even tell the business how and why they're not getting my money... if the only way to contact them wasn't through messenger.
It seems like Meta, Oculus and such notwithstanding, had essentially focused exclusively on #1. Then they ran out of humans on earth. Folks rarely "churn" in the conventional sense (unless their government bans use!), so #3 became irrelevant.
So now what?
Facebook, and all other advertisers, sell the attention of their users to third parties called customers. If this customer base is growing, and the amount of user attention is growing, it seems like there is plenty of greenfield to prospect to me.
(Of course you could then also draw the conclusion that a company in maintenance mode doesn't need 45,000 people earning half a million a pop, but can make do with paying half as much to half as many -- but that might be a bridge too far for a corp that is still on course to earn $60 billion EBITDA a year...)
To be honest: a european wide poll of whether europeans decide to allow or ban meta (with its current practice) would probably not give the desired result.
They say they cannot - so current legislation is threat of a ban. And the imaginary poll would probably give very different results, depending on the wording:
"Should a exception for meta be made?"
vs.
"Should meta be banned fron operating in europe, for not following regulations"
People do not like exceptions for big companies, but they also do not like extra work and they usually do not like regulations from the EU, either
I feel like there's a whiff of discrimination in people who call for Facebook to be shut down. I'm sure it's easy for young people in cities to switch. Not everyone is as mentally nimble.
There are of course folks older than me who use Facebook but they all got to adulthood before Facebook even existed.
I can't imagine any of my peers being overly worried about facebook going away. We figured out how to communicate with our friends before facebook. We'll figure out how to do it again.
No I mean people in their 80s, 90s. Many of them isolated, and slowly learned Facebook, but probably not able to learn new things now.
Not because I hate Facebook or anything, but because it would be "a good thing (TM)" in the first place!
partly because the word "migrated" isn't the most suitable here. "expanded" might be a better one.
e.g. many of my friends "migrated" to telegram and/or signal around that time, but are also still technically on whatsapp since they never actually closed their whatsapp accounts. I am one of those people, since I'm not about to teach my elderly parents something new.
But do I text any of my "migrated" friends on whatsapp? No, I text them on signal/telegram.
Whether or not FB (or any other social platform) is a net negative on the world, helping fake-news stuff and empowering nazis, it is an actual fact that large chunks of the political discourse in open societies now lives there. Because the platform is relatively open, it often tips the balance of power away from established interests and into the hands of the otherwise-disenfranchised.
Does Zuck need to clean up his act? Sure. Is privacy-oriented EU legislation right, to clamp-down on the current wild-west? Totally. But beware of people using these excuses to provoke denial-of-service attacks on services that help more direct democracy, because they are using our good intentions to pave a shiny new road to a hell they can thoroughly control.
There’s no such stink. In a SEC filling, Meta said that if they had too much trouble with EU data laws, the worst-case scenario would be that they would leave Europe. That’s all. That’s "if these things go to far, we might have to maybe do this if really we can't do anything else". Some medias changed this into "Meta is threatening to leave Europe", and here we are.
I understand that without WhatsApp, in some European countries, it can be hard to even get a doctor's appointment or coordinate with one's university. The extent to which these centralized systems have infiltrated our business processes and societies cannot be understated.
I realize the price that we have to pay for this convenience, but as of now I'd rather not think about it. I am not proud of my laziness and cowardice.
I have an Oculus Rift, thankfully bought I had to tie my Oculus account to my Facebook account, but it is still Facebook.
If Facebook is gone, my hardware which I bought in Europe stops working.
My device is well out of warranty but what about people who just bought a Quest? Will Facebook recall all their headsets? I am pretty sure you can't break hardware like that in Europe, where a 2 year warranty is the law.
I know a lot of people are fine walking away from that but I would be seriously saddened to lose access to a lot of people.
Conversely, a lot of journalists nowadays are just Twitter copy-pasters.
>“After being hacked I’ve lived without Facebook and Twitter for four years and life has been fantastic,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters at an event alongside French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire in Paris on Monday.
Doesn't sound like the kind of technically competent person we should be taking advice from.
It wouldn't even have to be an EU company just one that followed the rules willingly.
I'd better that even worse than the loss of business neither Twitter or Facebook/Meta would like to see a competitor have access to a protected market of the size of the EU.
Not really sure what Meta's angle is with this 'threat'.
[1] https://www.quad9.net/service/service-addresses-and-features...
On the other hand, everyone I know who doesn't use Facebook/Instagram hate it.
I am sure the establishment will be more than happy to get rid of it, but further down the social pyramid? There will be lamentations.
Of course not; in France Facebook has 40M MAU for a population of 67M (50M if you take only people from 15 to 75 years old). Tons of small shops and restaurants rely on it for their own "website". It’s massively used by people of 40-50 y/o who often don’t use any other online social network. Politics use it as well to announce stuff to their supports.
Don’t forget that a lot of them use Facebook because it’s easy. For a restaurant owner, what’s the easiest way to have a public page on the Internet with your open hours and your menu? A Facebook page (or a Google Maps location).
Although unfortunately, people would just move to some other similar network to post their fake perfect lives or get depressed about the others'.