The tension between Meta and the European Union has not ceased. On Monday, those led by Mark Zuckerberg filed a document with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) where, surprisingly, they hinted the possible closure of Facebook and Instagram in Europe . The reason? The GDPR of the European Union does not allow them to transfer data to the United States.
Although the company qualified its message shortly after, the reaction of some European politicians was swift.
Interestingly, those who have spoken in the last few hours do not take a dim view of a hypothetical goodbye from Facebook; If not the opposite. In statements collected by Bloomberg, Robert Habeck , Minister of the Economy of Germany, revealed that his life has been better since he abandoned social networks. “After being hacked, I have lived without Facebook and Twitter for four years and life has been fantastic.”
For his part, Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Finance of France, followed the line of his colleague. He was blunt in expressing that “we would live very well without Facebook” , and he is not without reason
.”I can confirm that life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook. The digital giants must understand that the European continent will resist and assert its sovereignty.”
By now, the negative impact that Facebook has had on the lives of many people is well known. Just in a matter of privacy, which is the issue that has sparked all this controversy, the social network has been surrounded by constant scandals for its poor protection of the data of its users. Due to the above, multiple governments have been forced to introduce laws that reinforce privacy; the GDPR is a good example.
Surely the reactions of the aforementioned European politicians will not be the only ones that will arise around the controversy. Of course, from Meta they have already transmitted that their intention, at least for now, is not to leave the European Union. “We have absolutely no desire or plans to withdraw from Europe, but the simple reality is that Meta, and many other companies, organizations and services, depend on data transfers between the EU and the USA to operate global services,” they said.
