The denial to market by vetoing is working, but its not a long term strategy. To push that back, the eu would have to push its own social network alternative, that undermines Metas growth in those fields.
I can not see that yet-
Why?
A thing it seems like a lot of people are missing is that European companies are taken to the same (if not a higher) standard for compliance with EU law.
The EU regulates to ensure that market participants work fairly - these rules are generally not about trading barriers (if they were, they'd do it poorly)
Most parts of Europe long moved away from any social media dependency all that's left is IM/chatting.
Where only WhatsApp is a somewhat popular American software, the rest isn't.
Edit:// to clarify I am not saying people aren't using Instagram or even Facebook. My point is they don't use it to socialize anymore
Everyone I know is tired of the concept and tired of the tracking and profiling it entails.
Glancing at people's phone screens while riding public transport, I beg to differ. Doom scrolling everywhere. Though much of it is arguably not really 'social network'-like, as most posts appear to be from strangers half a globe away.
they are just doomscrolling ad platforms not social media in my opinion. It didn't replace anything it just invented a new thing, social is stell well and alive in IMs, slack, discord, ...
I know a lot of people with children quasi depend on WhatsApp for their children activities, when in other circles Telegram or Signal would be way more common and the obvious choice.
Edit:// also do they use it as social media or to consume media/ads? If they don't use it as mainly social my point might still be true
On my own Instagram people who I know make up maybe 1 piece of content every second day.
Otherwise it is Ai generated content that is, unfortunately, very engaging but of a very low quality.
So I understand why there are a lot of people on Instagram.
(personally, I prefer to ruin my health with i IPAs over doom scrolling)
France is not exempt from its anti privacy law attempts around mass surveillance.