Never Threatened To Withdraw From EU: Says, Meta

At the start of the week, Meta caused a lot of excitement and amusement as the social media group threatened to close its platforms in Europe if you don’t get a longer data protection line. But the threat came to nothing and now nobody wants to know about it. A few days ago, it was revealed that Meta wrote in its latest annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that its business base in Europe is increasingly under threat as various privacy and data protection aspects affect the company’s life. Meta specifically writes in this report that it “will not be able to offer some of our key products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe”.

Europe was not necessarily shocked by this quasi-threat, but just shrugged and said travelers should not be held back. Politicians and large segments of the user community said, “Goodbye!” Meta and his boss Mark Zuckerberg were told that Facebook and Co. wouldn’t really be missed. There was also a lot of laughter on social media and the memes and GIFs were correspondingly clear.

Meta’s own Interpretation

That is why Meta has long realized that it was their own goal and is now trying to row back in a blog post titled “Meta Threatens to Leave Europe” attempts to explain that this was not a threat – despite clear wording in the report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (see below). Meta writes that they have only identified business risks arising from the “uncertainty associated with international data transfers”.

In the article, Meta explains why this data exchange is so important. It wasn’t a threat. Therefore, for the sake of PR spin, the English and far from the ambiguous original passage from the SEC letter (PDF): “Unless a new transatlantic data transfer framework is adopted and we cannot continue to rely on SCCs or other alternative means of transferring data from Europe to the United States, we will probably not be able to handle some of our core products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe, which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.”