If Google threatened to withdraw (which they're probably not foolish enough to do), the loss of things like Maps (that many other services depend on) and Gmail and Google Docs and etc. would worry most advanced economies. If Apple threatened to withdraw, it would not be as worrisome, but it would probably anger a lot of Apple fans. I feel like a significant chunk of FB users are only on it because they need to be in order to communicate with friends and family who stopped checking their email. Knowing that FB was not available in their country would make things simpler. FB is about as popular with their own users as, say, your average Big Tobacco company. They can't quit, but if it weren't available they would be better off after a couple weeks withdrawal.
I agree wholeheartedly. I think there would be people who were upset, but it would not be a material loss. Meta repeatedly overestimates the appeal of their products. If Microsoft, Apple, Google decided not to do business you would not only hear an outcry from users, it would in some cases be a material loss and make people's lives worse. I don't think you can say that about any of Meta's products. I quit using Facebook and Instagram years back and the next day was a better day.
This analysis does not cover the importance of Facebook in
i) Business pages that are easy to create and maintain for small, local business owners
ii) Facebook events for listing information and keeping in touch with registered attendees, as well as event discovery for users
iii) The importance for certain creators hosting their content and connecting with their user base on Instagram (assuming that would be also cancelled, as it is owned by Meta)
iv) Controversial due to the privacy implications, but a lot of companies rely on paying for Facebook advertisements to survive (which is driving why Meta is valued so highly on the stock market).
A tech-savvy user can create a website (or hire someone to); move to Eventbrite or equivalent; change photo-sharing apps to VSCO or equivalent; and back up their messages.
But many people don't know these are even options, or lack the funds and technical skills to do this (because their specialties are in non-tech fields, for small business owners and people in certain creative fields). The bottom line is that Meta and its constituent of Facebook are valued highly for important use cases that can't be easily dismissed.
That's in the short-term. It could be disruptive in a negative way.
There are probably already a number of EU companies in the space that could quickly be filling in these gaps. It would take some time to settle and have a dominant popular destination/network.
WhatsApp is popular in Europe because of its network effects, not because of any unique features it may have. If it were made unavailable, users would switch to Signal, Telegram, or the European-developed Threema.
Businesses would favor this change, since they would no longer have to pay WhatsApp for every conversation they initiate after exceeding their free tier.*
Threema is a paid app though so that would not happen imho. For people who care somewhat less about end to end encryption, Telegram is by far the easiest: it just works, everywhere and you have all your data everywhere. I understand that it is a safety feature that it is hard to run the other ones smoothly (independent) on different devices while keeping your history but it is a huge annoyance: in whatsapp you cannot even switch android<>ios with history intact. Matrix (Element in my case) works a lot better with end to end encryption in tact and my history there on all devices but it sometimes 'lost keys' on one of them (? No idea what happens, I did report it) so I have to login again (which is a pita); that is better than the alternatives imho.
It depends on who you ask but Telegram and Signal are just as popular. Most people have more than 1 IM. It's been years when I couldn't contact someone because they just had WhatsApp.
People who chat a lot use something different either way because WhatsApp lacks all the cool features.
> It depends on who you ask but Telegram and Signal are just as popular.
It depends on the countries. Some countries in Europe use Telegram and Messenger a lot (never heard of any where Signal is popular), others are virtually a WhatsApp monoculture.
Not that it matters much. Using phone numbers as ID makes things relatively portable: it makes it much easier to adopt a new app, but if Whatsapp shut down tomorrow everyone would be able to easily find each other on Telegram/Signal. Very different from rebuilding a social network from scratch.
Yet many also have a telegram account, some also have signal. There is no big move out of whatsapp because people don't see the advantage of moving. but if whatsapp had to disappear one day, people with already a telegram account would quickly redirect their relatives to it.
Facebook is not irreplaceable, since there are alternatives to all of Facebook's features:
> i) Business pages that are easy to create and maintain for small, local business owners
Business directories such as Yelp and Google Maps (Google Business Profile) allow businesses to maintain an online presence comparable to a Facebook page.
Business owners can also build websites without needing advanced technical skills with WordPress.com, Squarespace, or Wix. This takes more work than a directory listing, but designing a site with these tools isn't much harder than making a slide presentation.
> ii) Facebook events for listing information and keeping in touch with registered attendees, as well as event discovery for users
Meetup and Eventbrite do what Facebook events do. Mobilizon is a decentralized FOSS alternative. These other sites already exist, so people would already need a search engine to discover events across all of them.
Users migrating to these sites would need to learn how to use them, but I don't think using something like Eventbrite is significantly harder than using Facebook.
> iii) The importance for certain creators hosting their content and connecting with their user base on Instagram (assuming that would be also cancelled, as it is owned by Meta)
Instagram users would migrate to other social media platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and Reddit. Professional photographers would also use photo hosting sites like Smugmug/Flickr or 500px to showcase their photos. Pixelfed is the fediverse equivalent to Instagram.
> iv) Controversial due to the privacy implications, but a lot of companies rely on paying for Facebook advertisements to survive (which is driving why Meta is valued so highly on the stock market).
Brands and advertisers follow their target market. Whichever social media platforms the Facebook and Instagram users migrate to, the brands would use to advertise.
Facebook closing down would inconvenience its users in the short term, but the affected users would adapt by switching to alternatives. The people who don't know about these alternatives would know about them as soon as Facebook leaves, since these services would be publicized by the media and by former Facebook users.
I agree. I understand the impulse of most people to say that FB is replaceable. But the network effects there are so strong that it's not. If FB leaves, a lot of things would be completely disrupted (not in a good way).
FB was smart enough to go into business fields. A social network is replaceable. But what FB has become is not.
As much as I hate to admit it, they are very good at what they do.
I mean, not if they comply judiciously with EU law. It's not like Facebook have been famous for the care with which they have followed all the rules laid upon them.
My thought process was like this. In order for a social network to capture the market, it should attract as many users as possible, because having your friends, relatives, coworkers etc. in a social network is why people use them in the first place. Therefore it will have to be free for users. Therefore it will have to make money in some other way, which will probably have something to do with user data and/or user attention. If they find a way to do that in a way that is compliant with the current EU regulation, the public sentiment towards making business with user data is such that this will likely be seen as circumventing the law as soon as the company will become successful enough. Which in turn will result in more regulation introduced to cover what you do specifically.
What could work is what many (most?) European startups do - pretend to try to capture the market, get acquired by a large company before shit hits the fan and when it predictably fails it's not your problem anymore.
> But many people don't know these are even options, or lack the funds and technical skills to do this
Upon Meta’s absence, there would be a robust market response to overcome this “lack of knowledge” gap. Marketing outfits of all sizes and SaaS platforms that handle these things for the non-Meta markets would find new business opportunities and marketing spends would connect consumers to their new options. It would be incredibly fine.
The importance of FB for businesses might be different in Europe - at least based on my personal experience.
I've never come across a business relying on FB as primary web presence.
Google (maps/profile) is used far more here now in my experience: I think the fact that users can correct opening times and other info themselves etc is a godsend for small businesses and their customers alike.
There is a Korean restaurant in my area (Berlin) that only has Facebook, I guess they just don't know better. Facebook only used to be more common (if rare) a couple of years ago, always made me less inclined to visit these places.
To be fair none of these are such big of a thing around here. Businesses have a website and Google maps, can't remember the last time something linked me to Facebook.
Events being not on Facebook is getting common again because it doesn't make sense to host events in a platform that more than 50% of people in some age groups simply refuse to use.
Not sure about ads, personally I only wasted money on Facebook. I am getting better ad results, with less fishy clicks, everywhere else. (I stopped using FB ads when they started to send traffic from countries I did not order but counted them.)
From my understanding the dependency on Facebook here in central Europe is way less than in some other places.
Yeah. When I read things like US schools expecting parents to have Facebook, I am like "WHAT?!". Facebook isn't required for much at all in Germany. I don't use it, I'm fine. Focused services such as Meetup.com, Doodle, (WhatsApp), Signal, eBay Kleinanzeigen (classifieds), Google Maps... cover the things that I hear people using Facebook for.
Same here in Switzerland. The landscape is totally split up between many small and big companies doing their thing. They also come and go, I never witnessed a deep fixation as HN makes me think the US haves for Facebook.
I can easily say I don't use Facebook and still be connected, don't use eBay and still sell used things, refuse to use Google and still receive emails and be able to find places. There simply is no hard monopoly
If Apple withdrew, there would simply be people buying their products abroad or via the black market. Hardware is pretty portable like that, unlike services. Even apps can be gotten if you just get gift cards for another country’s App Store.
The Great Firewall of China is a perfect example of what happens when Google and Facebook aren’t allowed into a country. Alternatives that the government can better control fill the gap.
> If Google threatened to withdraw (which they're probably not foolish enough to do), the loss of things like Maps (that many other services depend on) and Gmail and Google Docs and etc. would worry most advanced economies.
It would inconvenience those who are using these Google services, but the services themselves are easily replaceable.
Google Maps can be replaced with HERE Maps, which has a similar feature set. The absence of Google Maps would also accelerate contributions to OpenStreetMap and its ecosystem.
Gmail and Google Docs have Zoho Mail and Zoho Docs as alternatives, as well as Microsoft's Outlook.com and Office 365. Nextcloud combined with Collabora Online or OnlyOffice also makes a fine FOSS substitute to Google Docs.
Any worry would be in the short term, until companies make the transition to other solutions. I agree that the absence of Facebook would also not pose long-term issues, since users would simply migrate to other social media platforms and businesses would choose other forms of advertising.
The availability of (often worse) alternatives does not mean a transition will not destroy billions of euros worth of effort and disruption of business processes.
I am fairly sure the backlash to losing Google would be significant, even government-ending.
This is beautiful. Can someone who understands what’s actually happening explain if this is just negotiation theatre? Meta is obviously bluffing and posturing right, and there’s no real likelihood they would extricate their platforms from Europe?
This sounds completely different than it really is. Angloshpere eagerly picks up anti-Meta sentiment, but old Germans and French are so disconnected that social media and the entire internet thing are some kind of caprices for them. That's why they say they're fine without it. Private jet, high end Mercedes, yacht, villa on Capri, revolving door with the industry - this is their reality and internet is toothles there.
given how easily they caved to the Australian government when the whole revenue sharing thing was going on I think the possibility of them leaving the 14 trillion dollar Eurozone economy approaches zero.
It's stock market stuff. If there is no new EU-US privacy deal, that's likely going to cause some kind issues for Facebook. If that happens, some investor can sue Facebook for "you didn't tell us there was a risk you'd have problems in Europe!". Thus, Facebook does what any company is supposed to do: put the potential risks to their business in their SEC filings, so investors can read that, be happy and not pretend they were defrauded because they weren't told obvious things.
I'd really love to be a fly on the wall in the internal FB conversations on this one because from the outside it makes no sense.
They are either unbelievably tone deaf and about to get themselves in serious trouble which feels unlikely given the amounts of money involved or they are playing some crazy chess game. Unbelievably the first feels more likely here. You'd have to assume at an organization the size of FB there are a couple of adults in the room but maybe none with enough sway to stop this slow motion train wreck?
Having worked at Facebook before, it's definitely the first.
People and especially execs at Facebook are incredibly out of touch with how their product is perceived.
I also know that the actual perception of Facebook in Europe is even worse than in the US, due to higher importance of privacy.
They think everyone loves them and would hate to see them go, to the point where they might pressure their governments, when in reality most Europeans hate Facebook and would love to see them gone. The amount of hubris and ego-driven miscalculation is insane.
“After being hacked I’ve lived without Facebook and Twitter for four years and life has been fantastic,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters at an event alongside French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire in Paris on Monday.
“I can confirm that life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook,” Le Maire added. “Digital giants must understand that the European continent will resist and affirm its sovereignty.”
The pair were responding to comments in Meta’s annual report published Thursday, warning that if it couldn’t rely on new or existing agreements to shift data, then it would “likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe.”
The European Union “is such a big internal market with so much economic power that if we act in unity we won’t be intimidated by something like this,” Habeck said.
(That's the gist of it - Meta doesn't want to comply with EU's privacy and data protection laws).
So am I. Have been just fine for many years. Never signed up for twitter, facebook, linkedin, instagram, whatsapp, tiktok, snapchat. Abandoned my reddit account years ago. I do have a github account, but that’s about it as far as “social” media goes.
One day a cool enough new social media startup will appear, and I will sign up, I promise!
I'm genuinely surprised Facebook is playing these games.
This is disproportionately so much worse for Facebook, than it is for German/French users.
1) Let's assume that German/French users are absolutely shattered to lose Facebook. If they are that hurt, they will probably do at least a basic Google search to find out why they can't access FB anymore. And what they will find is that FB preferred cutting them out rather than not transferring their data to the US.
I suspect that people would be split between (a) surprise that FB is storing their data, (b) surprise that FB has been sending their data to the US, (c) shocked that FB would choose to end operations than not send data to the US (which would immediately make them suspicious why they want to send data to the US), (d) have jingoistic anti-FB sentiments, etc.
I can't see a significant cohort that would be unhappy that their governments stood the ground on their data not being sent to the US. Even if you don't understand why the governments did this, you'd be wondering what FB has to hide that they can't keep the data in France/Germany.
2) Many people may not see FB as such a huge loss. There are many alternatives that could fill their social media addictions.
3) If there isn't a huge outcry for FB, that would shatter the aura of invincibility FB currently holds in the social media space. That aura has already been marginally dented with their latest quarterly results, but to see FB completely disappear from the 2 biggest European economies and life continuing as basically normal will be a huge blow to FB.
It will raise a whole lot of questions everywhere else. More authoritarian regimes will threaten to cut out FB if they don't help censor, etc. the way those regimes want them to. Privacy focused regimes would hold the threat of cutting out FB if it doesn't impose greater privacy protection. etc.
I don't see how FB can win here besides France/Germany folding, which I seriously doubt will happen.
I agree Facebook loses, but I think maybe we differ on how. For example, I have no confidence that humans would behave as logically as you do in your post. I'd expect them to fully blame the government for any number of reasons but primarily because they don't care about their data, and they now can't interact with their friends/memes as they did before. Even if you tried to explain, I don't think most people would care.
That said I also think they'll forget about Facebook in a week or two and move to tiktok or where ever their friends/memes go.
I'm being misanthropic but I really do think this is how it would go down.
> I can't see a significant cohort that would be unhappy that their governments stood the ground on their data not being sent to the US.
There are >400 million monthly active Facebook users in Europe today [1]. It is pretty absurd to think that a substantial amount of them would prefer losing access to Facebook over an EU mandate, especially considering most people are likely aware at this point that Facebook is using their data.
I don't think this issue is as clear cut as you and many other posters here see it. I find that the EU's decision can overwhelm legitimate services that may not be able to comply with this regulation, and I also see it as part of their intention to build a China-like firewall eventually - they are already trying to shutdown Telegram, for example.
And what percentage of those have abandoned or switched off from Facebook upon learning about their practices?
I doubt a majority of Facebook users would agree with it being prevented from operating in European Union due to their servers being in the US. This is a precedent that can and will lead to undue internet restrictions in the future. So while I share your concern that we should do more regarding data protection, I'm not sure this is the way to go.
>There are >400 million monthly active Facebook users in Europe today [1]. It is pretty absurd to think that a substantial amount of them would prefer losing access to Facebook over an EU mandate, especially considering most people are likely aware at this point that Facebook is using their data.
Most people who rely on it are business, and they stay in to compete with businesses who are also in it. If nobody has access to it they will just rely on other means, their own personnal website, other social medias that would fill the gap...
Most individual would be annoyed at first as well, but then all end up migrating to the another thing once the dust settle. More than facebook, this would be more the loss of instagram and whatsapp that would annoy them but they would easily move to telegram and signal. Many non-tech people already have a telegram account for example but don't move out of whatsapp because they are all on it already. Nobody wants to be that guys asking anyone else to abandon the group and move to somewhere else just for the heck of moving. As for instagram, they would quickly switch to tiktok, snapchat or something else that fills the gap.
I'd like to think open source and decentralized tool would have en edge but I am very doubtful it would happen. It is always easier to migrate to a single jail cell than being free.
Anyway, Facebook/Meta has just filled a form to cover their ass. They aren't threatening to leave EU. If they have to keep and manage the data in EU they will find a way. It will just be costly and hurt their finances hence the obligation for them to mention the riskier route.
> Many non-tech people already have a telegram account for example but don't move out of whatsapp because they are all on it already. Nobody wants to be that guys asking anyone else to abandon the group and move to somewhere else just for the heck of moving. As for instagram, they would quickly switch to tiktok, snapchat or something else that fills the gap.
Telegram's servers are in Russia, and Tiktok's are in China. If shutting down Facebook in the European Union means people are going to switch to those other apps, that would defeat the purpose of this initiative. I would also disagree that they are equivalent, I cannot imagine my mom migrating to any other social media if Facebook ceases to be available. She would likely go and protest this measure actually.
I agree this is likely a bluff, I just disagree that we should not seriously consider the actual costs of blocking over 400 million people from doing what they want to do. Also note that ultimately this could be viewed as a protectionist measure, so Europe-based social media companies would have a big advantage. I'm not sure I'm ok with that either.
I'm not sure why anyone would draw the conclusion that they are losing Facebook because of an EU mandate, when all other competitors continue to work for them.
And if they dig into it even slightly they will probably be even more horrified at Facebook once they find out they lost Facebook because it considered transferring their data to the US more important than having them as a user.
(e) blame the local politicians for destroying their internet.
Especially with the crowd that uses Instagram or Facebook, data protection laws are not something they consider, they want their little bubbles to continue working. Politicians risk alienating the young (who will most likely start sending their data to some Chinese company instead) and the mid-aged-to-elderly, low-educated, which is their main election pool.
This risk of losing business in the EU due to regulations around data is also acknowledged by google in their recent filing.. this isn’t specific to Meta despite all the articles that have popped up about it… https://twitter.com/SMalikjo/status/1490938883760033792?s=20...
Their Q4 earnings had some conservative projections and higher expenses due to investments in building out their VR teams, and this was enough of a catalyst that the short sellers were able to create a panic.
Fine to hate the company and management, and their politics, but following the money, this seems to be a wildly successful effort to manipulate sentiment and cause retail investors to panic and benefit short sellers in the market. There’s huge money to be made by hedge funds in shorting Meta on the way down, and then buying it again on the way up.
Or maybe they’re really going down to $0 … which is more likely?
Facebook isn't "playing games" that much IMHO, Facebook is merely trying to make sure it doesn't get sued by stockholders because it "hid material information from them". Thus, Facebook puts a worst-case scenario in their SEC filing so no stockholders can later sue them because "If I had known Facebook has regulatory issues in Europe I'd have invested differently! They didn't tell me, that's securities fraud!" (Cue Matt Levine on "everything is securities fraud")
Of course it's a big claim, but I don't quite see why this is suddenly over all the media for such an obvious stock disclaimer.
yes, but alternatives for those groups exist. the biggest pain is the necessary regrouping on a different service. this is not about the loss of functionality that doesn't exist elsewhere, compared to say something like google streetview which is rather unique
Depends on how it's framed. Imagine something like "fuelled by nationalistic sentiment, German/French government makes unreasonable demands that would force social network to reengineer their networking solution at a massive cost".
Personally I just don't see why an average user would care about FB not complying with this regulation. Once you type in your data into FB - FB has it, it really doesn't matter where FB's servers physically are, you're no longer in control. The only winning move is not to play, er, not to use social networks at all.
I don't think FB would make a move like this without feeling somewhat confident. My guess is they're leaning into the effect it'll have on small businesses if they suddenly vanish from EU.
Those small businesses could also include digital businesses that FB is more or less killing.
For example, Sweden has two digital markets. One was bought by eBay but the other one continued until FB introduced its own market which unlike this one is "free" and doesn't even require you to leave your filter bubble and log into a different site.
If FB pulls out they will have a fighting chance to survive.
FB is at best a footgun when it comes to small businesses.
Right now, if you don't exist on facebook, it's a bad hit to your sales.
However, existing on facebook requires the goodwill of... well facebook. They can wipe you out of existence in a few clicks, just by deleting your page.
It happened to me once. I was suddenly banned from posting ads on instagram. No explanation given. Then I appealed, and it was restored. Still no explanation given.
Of course I stopped paying those <insert insulting word here> pigs. But still, the situation remains: you have to be on facebook, but they can unjustly dispose of you.
Meta has a monopoly on communication channels. It's not better, it's just a monopoly. That needs to change.
It's a conflict between out of touch Meta executives with out of touch German and French politicians, entirely made up by media. Things are going well and smooth, money is flowing, the power is asserted, the stocks are going only up.
This is an arrogant and naïve view by those two politicians — and by FB too.
My FB feed is pretty equally split between English, French and German posts and comments. I know what’s up with my friends and their kids, pets, etc. I get a lot of jokes. People don’t want to lose that.
FB is also being arrogant and if they really try to pull out yes, they will provoke a lot of unhappiness directed at the EU, but I do think quite a few — probably close to majority, will be upset that FB won’t protect their data. Sadly there is no European alternative to FB/IG, and not really WhatsApp.
The EU politicians should stop them lazy sniping and attacking of FB and simply, quietly, and firmly insist that FB obey the (European) law. They would be more effective if they chose to speak softly and just keep a tight grip on the data protection stick.
> The pair were responding to comments in Meta’s annual report published Thursday, warning that if it couldn’t rely on new or existing agreements to shift data, then it would “likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe.”
I don’t think they’re entirely bluffing, it may be they temporarily have no choice because this is a difficult technical problem with their existing code base. How do you store a global social graph and its associated content without having data cross borders? Even more so, how do you adapt an existing complex global social graph to respect borders? And how do you get Facebook to instantly load all the content from each of these segregated data stores?
I have my doubts about Facebook's courage to shut down their services in Europe even temporarily, since that always comes with a risk of users switching to different services. I imagine they'd rather eat whatever fine the EU was going to throw at their direction than turn off service.
Zuck won't shoot himself in the foot, he is just playing games with politicians at this point. And yea they said they would lost 25% of their revenue if they do it[0].
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadi) Business pages that are easy to create and maintain for small, local business owners
ii) Facebook events for listing information and keeping in touch with registered attendees, as well as event discovery for users
iii) The importance for certain creators hosting their content and connecting with their user base on Instagram (assuming that would be also cancelled, as it is owned by Meta)
iv) Controversial due to the privacy implications, but a lot of companies rely on paying for Facebook advertisements to survive (which is driving why Meta is valued so highly on the stock market).
A tech-savvy user can create a website (or hire someone to); move to Eventbrite or equivalent; change photo-sharing apps to VSCO or equivalent; and back up their messages.
But many people don't know these are even options, or lack the funds and technical skills to do this (because their specialties are in non-tech fields, for small business owners and people in certain creative fields). The bottom line is that Meta and its constituent of Facebook are valued highly for important use cases that can't be easily dismissed.
There are probably already a number of EU companies in the space that could quickly be filling in these gaps. It would take some time to settle and have a dominant popular destination/network.
Businesses would favor this change, since they would no longer have to pay WhatsApp for every conversation they initiate after exceeding their free tier.*
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29711001
People who chat a lot use something different either way because WhatsApp lacks all the cool features.
It depends on the countries. Some countries in Europe use Telegram and Messenger a lot (never heard of any where Signal is popular), others are virtually a WhatsApp monoculture.
Not that it matters much. Using phone numbers as ID makes things relatively portable: it makes it much easier to adopt a new app, but if Whatsapp shut down tomorrow everyone would be able to easily find each other on Telegram/Signal. Very different from rebuilding a social network from scratch.
But good point. Even thought I don't like the number requirement it will and does it make it easy for people to change.
> i) Business pages that are easy to create and maintain for small, local business owners
Business directories such as Yelp and Google Maps (Google Business Profile) allow businesses to maintain an online presence comparable to a Facebook page.
Business owners can also build websites without needing advanced technical skills with WordPress.com, Squarespace, or Wix. This takes more work than a directory listing, but designing a site with these tools isn't much harder than making a slide presentation.
> ii) Facebook events for listing information and keeping in touch with registered attendees, as well as event discovery for users
Meetup and Eventbrite do what Facebook events do. Mobilizon is a decentralized FOSS alternative. These other sites already exist, so people would already need a search engine to discover events across all of them.
Users migrating to these sites would need to learn how to use them, but I don't think using something like Eventbrite is significantly harder than using Facebook.
> iii) The importance for certain creators hosting their content and connecting with their user base on Instagram (assuming that would be also cancelled, as it is owned by Meta)
Instagram users would migrate to other social media platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and Reddit. Professional photographers would also use photo hosting sites like Smugmug/Flickr or 500px to showcase their photos. Pixelfed is the fediverse equivalent to Instagram.
> iv) Controversial due to the privacy implications, but a lot of companies rely on paying for Facebook advertisements to survive (which is driving why Meta is valued so highly on the stock market).
Brands and advertisers follow their target market. Whichever social media platforms the Facebook and Instagram users migrate to, the brands would use to advertise.
Facebook closing down would inconvenience its users in the short term, but the affected users would adapt by switching to alternatives. The people who don't know about these alternatives would know about them as soon as Facebook leaves, since these services would be publicized by the media and by former Facebook users.
FB was smart enough to go into business fields. A social network is replaceable. But what FB has become is not.
As much as I hate to admit it, they are very good at what they do.
If they sense blood in the water, you'll have Eurobook in a week, and that's that.
What could work is what many (most?) European startups do - pretend to try to capture the market, get acquired by a large company before shit hits the fan and when it predictably fails it's not your problem anymore.
Upon Meta’s absence, there would be a robust market response to overcome this “lack of knowledge” gap. Marketing outfits of all sizes and SaaS platforms that handle these things for the non-Meta markets would find new business opportunities and marketing spends would connect consumers to their new options. It would be incredibly fine.
Events being not on Facebook is getting common again because it doesn't make sense to host events in a platform that more than 50% of people in some age groups simply refuse to use.
Not sure about ads, personally I only wasted money on Facebook. I am getting better ad results, with less fishy clicks, everywhere else. (I stopped using FB ads when they started to send traffic from countries I did not order but counted them.)
From my understanding the dependency on Facebook here in central Europe is way less than in some other places.
I can easily say I don't use Facebook and still be connected, don't use eBay and still sell used things, refuse to use Google and still receive emails and be able to find places. There simply is no hard monopoly
The Great Firewall of China is a perfect example of what happens when Google and Facebook aren’t allowed into a country. Alternatives that the government can better control fill the gap.
It would inconvenience those who are using these Google services, but the services themselves are easily replaceable.
Google Maps can be replaced with HERE Maps, which has a similar feature set. The absence of Google Maps would also accelerate contributions to OpenStreetMap and its ecosystem.
Gmail and Google Docs have Zoho Mail and Zoho Docs as alternatives, as well as Microsoft's Outlook.com and Office 365. Nextcloud combined with Collabora Online or OnlyOffice also makes a fine FOSS substitute to Google Docs.
Any worry would be in the short term, until companies make the transition to other solutions. I agree that the absence of Facebook would also not pose long-term issues, since users would simply migrate to other social media platforms and businesses would choose other forms of advertising.
i thought that was just recent
I am fairly sure the backlash to losing Google would be significant, even government-ending.
They are either unbelievably tone deaf and about to get themselves in serious trouble which feels unlikely given the amounts of money involved or they are playing some crazy chess game. Unbelievably the first feels more likely here. You'd have to assume at an organization the size of FB there are a couple of adults in the room but maybe none with enough sway to stop this slow motion train wreck?
People and especially execs at Facebook are incredibly out of touch with how their product is perceived.
I also know that the actual perception of Facebook in Europe is even worse than in the US, due to higher importance of privacy.
They think everyone loves them and would hate to see them go, to the point where they might pressure their governments, when in reality most Europeans hate Facebook and would love to see them gone. The amount of hubris and ego-driven miscalculation is insane.
s/plastics/Facebook
“I can confirm that life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook,” Le Maire added. “Digital giants must understand that the European continent will resist and affirm its sovereignty.”
The pair were responding to comments in Meta’s annual report published Thursday, warning that if it couldn’t rely on new or existing agreements to shift data, then it would “likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe.”
The European Union “is such a big internal market with so much economic power that if we act in unity we won’t be intimidated by something like this,” Habeck said.
(That's the gist of it - Meta doesn't want to comply with EU's privacy and data protection laws).
https://archive.fo/YRWuc
One day a cool enough new social media startup will appear, and I will sign up, I promise!
This is disproportionately so much worse for Facebook, than it is for German/French users.
1) Let's assume that German/French users are absolutely shattered to lose Facebook. If they are that hurt, they will probably do at least a basic Google search to find out why they can't access FB anymore. And what they will find is that FB preferred cutting them out rather than not transferring their data to the US.
I suspect that people would be split between (a) surprise that FB is storing their data, (b) surprise that FB has been sending their data to the US, (c) shocked that FB would choose to end operations than not send data to the US (which would immediately make them suspicious why they want to send data to the US), (d) have jingoistic anti-FB sentiments, etc.
I can't see a significant cohort that would be unhappy that their governments stood the ground on their data not being sent to the US. Even if you don't understand why the governments did this, you'd be wondering what FB has to hide that they can't keep the data in France/Germany.
2) Many people may not see FB as such a huge loss. There are many alternatives that could fill their social media addictions.
3) If there isn't a huge outcry for FB, that would shatter the aura of invincibility FB currently holds in the social media space. That aura has already been marginally dented with their latest quarterly results, but to see FB completely disappear from the 2 biggest European economies and life continuing as basically normal will be a huge blow to FB.
It will raise a whole lot of questions everywhere else. More authoritarian regimes will threaten to cut out FB if they don't help censor, etc. the way those regimes want them to. Privacy focused regimes would hold the threat of cutting out FB if it doesn't impose greater privacy protection. etc.
I don't see how FB can win here besides France/Germany folding, which I seriously doubt will happen.
That said I also think they'll forget about Facebook in a week or two and move to tiktok or where ever their friends/memes go.
I'm being misanthropic but I really do think this is how it would go down.
There are pretty significant cohort in Russia that slaps our government for LinkedIn ban. For exact same reason.
There are >400 million monthly active Facebook users in Europe today [1]. It is pretty absurd to think that a substantial amount of them would prefer losing access to Facebook over an EU mandate, especially considering most people are likely aware at this point that Facebook is using their data.
I don't think this issue is as clear cut as you and many other posters here see it. I find that the EU's decision can overwhelm legitimate services that may not be able to comply with this regulation, and I also see it as part of their intention to build a China-like firewall eventually - they are already trying to shutdown Telegram, for example.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/745400/facebook-europe-m...
I would contend most facebook users are not, as they are broadly either poorly informed or very old.
So imho this can not happen soon enough, people think the EU is actually protecting them when it isn't. I hope more countries join as well
I doubt a majority of Facebook users would agree with it being prevented from operating in European Union due to their servers being in the US. This is a precedent that can and will lead to undue internet restrictions in the future. So while I share your concern that we should do more regarding data protection, I'm not sure this is the way to go.
The far majority of my social circle doesn't use Facebook and removed their accounts with all the bells and whistles years ago
Imo DNS banning software that is breaking privacy laws is not to much to ask to. Anyone can use a different DNS, nobody cares.
I am usually against banning, but we ban other dangerous scam things too in order to protect customers because sorrily this is the best we have.
Most people who rely on it are business, and they stay in to compete with businesses who are also in it. If nobody has access to it they will just rely on other means, their own personnal website, other social medias that would fill the gap...
Most individual would be annoyed at first as well, but then all end up migrating to the another thing once the dust settle. More than facebook, this would be more the loss of instagram and whatsapp that would annoy them but they would easily move to telegram and signal. Many non-tech people already have a telegram account for example but don't move out of whatsapp because they are all on it already. Nobody wants to be that guys asking anyone else to abandon the group and move to somewhere else just for the heck of moving. As for instagram, they would quickly switch to tiktok, snapchat or something else that fills the gap.
I'd like to think open source and decentralized tool would have en edge but I am very doubtful it would happen. It is always easier to migrate to a single jail cell than being free.
Anyway, Facebook/Meta has just filled a form to cover their ass. They aren't threatening to leave EU. If they have to keep and manage the data in EU they will find a way. It will just be costly and hurt their finances hence the obligation for them to mention the riskier route.
Telegram's servers are in Russia, and Tiktok's are in China. If shutting down Facebook in the European Union means people are going to switch to those other apps, that would defeat the purpose of this initiative. I would also disagree that they are equivalent, I cannot imagine my mom migrating to any other social media if Facebook ceases to be available. She would likely go and protest this measure actually.
I agree this is likely a bluff, I just disagree that we should not seriously consider the actual costs of blocking over 400 million people from doing what they want to do. Also note that ultimately this could be viewed as a protectionist measure, so Europe-based social media companies would have a big advantage. I'm not sure I'm ok with that either.
AFAIK they are not, they are spread between a couple of data centers
You can find in this [reddit post](1) the list of ip's and locations from (2) with the geo-ip location
1) https://www.reddit.com/r/Telegram/comments/q81kg8/comment/hq...
2) https://core.telegram.org/getProxyConfig
And if they dig into it even slightly they will probably be even more horrified at Facebook once they find out they lost Facebook because it considered transferring their data to the US more important than having them as a user.
(e) blame the local politicians for destroying their internet.
Especially with the crowd that uses Instagram or Facebook, data protection laws are not something they consider, they want their little bubbles to continue working. Politicians risk alienating the young (who will most likely start sending their data to some Chinese company instead) and the mid-aged-to-elderly, low-educated, which is their main election pool.
Their Q4 earnings had some conservative projections and higher expenses due to investments in building out their VR teams, and this was enough of a catalyst that the short sellers were able to create a panic.
Fine to hate the company and management, and their politics, but following the money, this seems to be a wildly successful effort to manipulate sentiment and cause retail investors to panic and benefit short sellers in the market. There’s huge money to be made by hedge funds in shorting Meta on the way down, and then buying it again on the way up.
Or maybe they’re really going down to $0 … which is more likely?
Of course it's a big claim, but I don't quite see why this is suddenly over all the media for such an obvious stock disclaimer.
That's a very limited view on FB. Here are some uses I know of:
- FB group where company directors meet discuss business issues
- FB groups used for planning local sport/activity groups
- FB Marketplace which displaced the original eBay concept where Gumtree is not popular
- groups for organising conferences
If you're looking at FB users and see only social media addicts, you're ignoring a large variety of users.
Forums
>FB groups used for planning local sport/activity groups
Forums
>FB Marketplace which displaced the original eBay concept where Gumtree is not popular
Craiglist
>groups for organising conferences
Forums
Personally I just don't see why an average user would care about FB not complying with this regulation. Once you type in your data into FB - FB has it, it really doesn't matter where FB's servers physically are, you're no longer in control. The only winning move is not to play, er, not to use social networks at all.
I like politicians with a real backbone :)
For example, Sweden has two digital markets. One was bought by eBay but the other one continued until FB introduced its own market which unlike this one is "free" and doesn't even require you to leave your filter bubble and log into a different site.
If FB pulls out they will have a fighting chance to survive.
Right now, if you don't exist on facebook, it's a bad hit to your sales. However, existing on facebook requires the goodwill of... well facebook. They can wipe you out of existence in a few clicks, just by deleting your page.
It happened to me once. I was suddenly banned from posting ads on instagram. No explanation given. Then I appealed, and it was restored. Still no explanation given.
Of course I stopped paying those <insert insulting word here> pigs. But still, the situation remains: you have to be on facebook, but they can unjustly dispose of you.
Meta has a monopoly on communication channels. It's not better, it's just a monopoly. That needs to change.
Facebook is simply trying to score some small victory out of a bad situation, probably a time extension or somewhat relaxed rules.
The question is whether this will backfire when everyone else sees it as a real threat.
Good that finally it's breaks trough to the mainstream.
My FB feed is pretty equally split between English, French and German posts and comments. I know what’s up with my friends and their kids, pets, etc. I get a lot of jokes. People don’t want to lose that.
FB is also being arrogant and if they really try to pull out yes, they will provoke a lot of unhappiness directed at the EU, but I do think quite a few — probably close to majority, will be upset that FB won’t protect their data. Sadly there is no European alternative to FB/IG, and not really WhatsApp.
The EU politicians should stop them lazy sniping and attacking of FB and simply, quietly, and firmly insist that FB obey the (European) law. They would be more effective if they chose to speak softly and just keep a tight grip on the data protection stick.
I don’t think they’re entirely bluffing, it may be they temporarily have no choice because this is a difficult technical problem with their existing code base. How do you store a global social graph and its associated content without having data cross borders? Even more so, how do you adapt an existing complex global social graph to respect borders? And how do you get Facebook to instantly load all the content from each of these segregated data stores?
[0] https://www.trendingtopics.eu/meta-withdrawal-from-europe-wo...
I would like to do it as a Software Engineer. Anyone wants to be in charge of the marketing?