Facebook Says it Will Stop Operating in Europe If Regulators Don’t Back Down
https://www.vice.comFacebook has threatened to pack up its toys and go home if European regulators don’t back down and let the social network get its own way.
In a court filing in Dublin, Facebook said that a decision by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) would force the company to pull up stakes and leave the 410 million people who use Facebook and photo-sharing service Instagram in the lurch.
If the decision is upheld, “it is not clear to [Facebook] how, in those circumstances, it could continue to provide the Facebook and Instagram services in the EU,” Yvonne Cunnane, who is Facebook Ireland’s head of data protection and associate general counsel, wrote in a sworn affidavit.
Cunnane also complains that Facebook is being singled out, noting no other big tech company using similar methods to transfer data to the U.S. from the EU is under the same scrutiny.
Facebook’s entire business model relies on being able to easily and quickly transfer data across the globe so that it can better target users with ads. By disrupting that flow of data, the EU is threatening Facebook’s revenue potential, and as this lawsuit shows, that is something the company takes very seriously indeed.
