Will Europe Force a Facebook Blackout? | Hacker News Reader

Will Europe Force a Facebook Blackout?

wired.com

32 pointsdonohoe19 comments

A guy once asked to be released from jury duty so as not to miss work. The Judge warned "don't give me the story that your workplace cannot survive without you for a week." He replied, "Oh, they can survive fine without me. I just don't want them to find that out"

> Meta Is Absolutely Not Threatening to Leave Europe

Europe will survive fine without FB, and FB will promise anything to keep them from finding that out. And then they will break every promise they can get away with breaking.

If FB goes out of EU, people will just move to another social network on the list. ( There are many social networks out there )

Personally, when I left Facebook I never looked back. My social media phase is over.

All contact with friends is now via IM apps like Whatsapp and Telegram. Yes I know the former is owned by Facebook but it's not Social Media really.

Most of my friends aren't on any social media anymore with the exception of LinkedIn which is kinda necessary for work. But I don't really use it like social media. I never post or read on it, just use it to look and apply for jobs.

Before I left Facebook I thought I still needed social media and I backed OpenBook. But that was a mistake. They changed their name twice to ever dumber and forgettable names and have since shut down their service for over a year because they're working on something new, which they refuse to say anything about.. I consider it a scam now.

The fediverse is more interesting but really I realized I don't need it anymore.

I don't think people care for definition of "social network" or "social media" . In case of "no more FB" they will just migrate to another application that allows them to communicate with each other, share photos, videos, etc.. Any app that can handle half billion of new users without crashing too much will do.

Facebook handing over a teen's messaging history to law enforcement so they could prosecute her for seeking an abortion is more likely to end Facebook.

While I personally am appalled by this, I would guess that there will be virtually no repercussions

My guess is that making obeying a legal (I don't agree that it should have been, but it was) subpoena by a us judge punishable in the EU is setting incredibly bad precedent.

Nobody suggested anything of the sort. I'm just hopeful that enough people now see Facebook (and everything Meta) for the spyware that it is, that they'll delete it.

It should end, but people are to use to just eat every piece of crap that Meta drop on them. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp... neither of these services are the best of their class (some aren't even minimally usable when you know the alternatives), but social inertia and peer pressure is a big issue and non-technical people just give up.

What are the alternatives that you recommend?

Telegram/Matrix, PixelFed, Mastodon.

> but people are to use to just eat

* but people are too used to just eat

Sorry, I typed this quicker than I should ...

I hate Facebook MUCH MORE than the average HN user, but I don't think Facebook can be blamed for this specific instance. If law enforcement asks for data, you have to comply or find yourself in a very tight situation.

However, if this situation can teach us anything, is how important e2e encryption is so important. If a company cannot read your messages, they cannot share them with third parties like in this case.

Of course, I've been saying this for years, but people claim it's fine since they have nothing to hide. You don't have anything to hide, until abortion, contraception, or fornication becomes a crime. Before your religion is banned, or any other similar situation.

Can we please start learning for repeating the same mistakes over and over for decades?

time to actually stop the US government to access data in europe at all. It always has been and always will be a slap in the face to the rest of us, that it is accepted and allowed at all. fuck the NSA

Betteridge's Law of Headlines continues to hold:

    So, how likely is it that Meta will actually pull its services from
    Europe? In reality, the chances are probably pretty slim. Meta has
    said it has “no desire” to leave the continent, going as far as
    publishing a blog post titled “Meta Is Absolutely Not Threatening to
    Leave Europe.” Europe’s 30-plus countries are a large market for
    Meta, and stopping services, even temporarily, could be costly. (A close
    comparison is when the company briefly banned news posts in Australia in
    early 2021, following a row with publishers.) While Meta may not leave
    Europe, it may have to make changes to how it stores and transfers data
    once the final decision from the Irish regulator is published, although
    there is no set timeline. It may also face a fine.

Exactly my thought. For wired, the headline is really bad click bait.

The bigger concern is that some European decisions here are bordering on saying that American companies cannot handle European's data at all, since even if they silo the data to remain only in Europe, if the US Government insists on access the data, the American company pretty much has to give it to them.

This sounds like a net positive considering the data governance, security, and privacy issues around data handling by US firms.

One can hope.

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