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Meta Threatens To Shut Down Facebook And Instagram in Europe

In a recent development, Meta threatened the European Union (EU) of removing all its services claiming that tough compliance with data regulations has been hindering the company’s operations, applications, and services across data centers in the region.

In its annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook’s parent company Meta condemned the European rules and regulations, that prohibited the firm from storing European data on American servers for security reasons. The report further criticized the European courts and legislative bodies, stressing that European laws were impacting its critical operations, due to which it might be forced to shut down Facebook and Instagram throughout the region.

Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), claimed to be the world’s toughest privacy and security law, imposes a set of obligations onto the foreign organizations that target or collect data of European citizens. However, a new EU law requires companies that gather user data within the region to store and process that data only on European servers.

Given that Facebook’s and Instagram’s data is processed on both the US as well as European servers, which is crucial for ad targeting as well as for businesses that operate via these platforms, Meta might get heavily fined if the platforms fail to comply with the guidelines laid down by the European Union and monetary penalties might shoot up to tens of millions of euros.

In the report, Meta suggests that if the company fails to comply with the new EU regulations, it will simply stop providing its Facebook and Instagram services within the union.

While Meta’s Vice President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, argued that this would have adverse effects on a lot of businesses in the EU that rely on the services and ads the company provides, the company itself isn’t in a place to act on its threats in light of last week’s financial report, that sent Meta’s stock dropping by a historical 25% after the company lost its daily active users base for the first time ever.

Source: Pro Pakistani

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