Europe Faces Facebook Blackout

politico.eu

12 points·M2Ys4U··5 comments

Oh no... anyway.

They make it sound like it's a bad thing.

I've said it before here, but Facebook is pretty damn well-integrated into society in many European countries. People scoff at it for being boomer-tech these days, but truth be told, I had to check what parts of FB I regularly use, and here's the list:

- Messenger to communicate with people

- Hobby groups

- Buy / sell. Both individual groups/pages, and the FB marketplace

- Community (my hometown) historical groups, for pictures, stories / research, etc.

- Community / town information page. Basically the town bulletin board.

- Community groups for events, concerts, and similar.

And sure, there are alternatives for most of those things - but many of the alternatives from yesteryears migrated to FB and similar platforms, because running a forum was too tedious, and what not. And there are lots of older people that prefer to just use FB, now that they're so invested in it.

In short, FB has become a one-stop shop for many things these days.

And, I guess this will sound weird - but it is probably the only place I can still find pictures and stuff of the people I knew that have passed away.

Is there anyone who knows why facebook thinks the GDPR doesn’t apply to them? I can guess why they would like to be exempt but how is it justified?

They rely on the (so far correct) assumption that a lock-out from the EU isn't politically intended. Cf Safe Harbour, Privacy Shield, which were both intended to prevent exactly that but failed to do so. (IMHO because the US and EU legislation on privacy are so fundamentally opposed that truly reconciling them will be impossible)

Edit: in the meantime the occasional slap on the wrist by regulators is just the cost of doing business in the EU

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