Genuine question: does Facebook own Meta, or does Meta own Facebook? Or is it Meta Platforms[0]? Will Facebook (the product) as everyone knows it continue to be marketed as Facebook (under the leadership of Meta), or is facebook.com going to be re-branded as Meta? I looked the other day and it still comes up as Facebook... and Meta. What the hell?
Meta is like Alphabet. Facebook, Insta, WhatsApp are products under Meta. Facebook the product will stay the same. Where it gets a bit hazy is what the new "Metaverse" product will be exactly, something something VR something AR.
Of course there's some "hull" called "Alphabet" who legally owns Google, but what more than a hull is it? Don't know whether it's for tax reasons, spreading the risk, trying to decouple the image in case of failed products, everybody knows that Alphabet == Google. Same goes for Facebook and Meta: There might be a Meta hull but that hull is quite packed with Facebook, so it does not really matter what the hull is called (or does).
Yeah, Alphabet certainly came to mind when I first heard the news about Meta. I'm guessing it's for tax reasons too since they're also (well, Facebook) located in Ireland. There seemed to be a big push to move companies to Ireland a few years back.
I can't exactly explain why but in my mind, Alphabet and Google make sense. My thought process is that Google makes money that it then uses for other things which are not Google.
I don't understand Facebook's name change. It is still Facebook. It wants to stay as a cohesive unit and share data across products. It isn't like Facebook will ever voluntarily give up whatsapp or instagram.
I can't quite explain it but I am willing to disassociate the stock ticker Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) from Google but not Facebook (NASDAQ:FB)
Meta is a holding company, much like Alphabet for Google, and is intended to limit cross-concern damage. By keeping services as separate entities under the holding company they are shielded from each other to an extent with regard to tax, other financial, regulatory, criminal, and other responsibilities, so a massive problem/scandal in one service can have its blast radius more easily managed.
These arrangements also make it easier to close things down if needed: it simplifies redundancy (“why can't you offer me a replacement role over there?”, “that is a separate company”) and so forth, though this is more a concern of smaller organisations than Meta & Alphabet. A company I've worked for once had a significant rearrangement with people signing contracts for specific parts where they had previously been employed by the larger group entity, shortly before “divesting” some of those parts. Shady, but legal.
> I'm of the persuasion that nearly everyone is fine without Facebook.
I can mostly agree, but there will be large and interesting practical effects. For example, everyone I know in Prague uses Messenger on a daily basis. I think this is true in many places. I also wonder about where small businesses, who have come to rely on FB for one thing or another, will migrate.
If this story applies to Messenger, this would lead to the biggest DAU migration in history![1] Kind of interesting.
I don't know if I would agree. The fact that growth is stopping is more damaging to share price than the actual material impact of the growth stoppage, until the price corrects.
I think there is a good chance Meta is not bluffing. It could be viewed as a way to slow or quarantine the spread of data regulations. Pull out of Europe and let Europe develop its own competitor that will have control over Europe, but won't be able to compete abroad. Satiating European want for data regulation and privacy laws in Europe would, hopefully in Meta's view, dampen the broader push for these regulations (a push being led by Europe). Essentially let Europe isolate themselves. This will probably be followed by Meta and other corporations pushing propaganda and marketing highlighting any mistake or failure of European replacements.
Pulling out of Europe would hurt, but at the end of the day Europe's population is small and already developed. In 10 years are there going to be a lot more Europeans spending a lot more, requiring more advertising? Doubtful.
But this could also backfire if other countries look at new European competitors with jealousy and want to emulate it.
Meta Platforms Inc.’s veiled threat to quit Europe because of blocked talks over privacy rules was more like music to the ears of two top German and French politicians.
“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.”
Meta Renews Warning to EU It Will Be Forced to Pull Facebook
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.
Meanwhile Le Maire listed ways in which European governments have challenged tech giants, including with privacy rules, taxation and blocking the development of digital currencies.
As much as people would like to see that, Facebook-Meta will not withdraw from the EU anyway. It's an empty threat. The EU has never been particularly impressed with such bluffing in the past.
It's not even a threat really. Everyone is quoting an SEC filing by Facebook where it lays that out as a worst-case scenario - which is what companies do so they don't get sued by stockholders trying to get them to pay up because they "hid information" from them if there is any further trouble with EU access (which there likely will be). Facebook just has officially told everybody the obvious fact of "we have issues with EU regulations, this could get bad", as they are supposed to do as a public company.
I think the interesting thing is that Facebook seems to finally begin to take SchremsII seriously.
It is a sword of Damocles hanging over all US companies doing business in the EU and it is something that needs to be solved by the US side, as European courts have shot all attempts by the EU down.
I hope this is a beginning for the US to finally tackle their due process deficiency.
It makes me smile that the EU, which so many Brexiteers wrote off as a bloated bureaucracy, is currently going toe to toe with Facebook all while avoiding regulatory capture.
It's a fully corrupt bloated bureaucracy, very few people love to click on stupid cookie popups. In a lot of countries the scumbags the people who elect the EU asshats don't even follow what the people they elected vote on.
Facebook doesn't give European politicians and regulators any arguments that speak for them:
- (Basically) No jobs in Europe
- (Basically) No taxes in Europe
- Easily replaceable (aka no major economic consequences when they disappear)
- Considered as dividing the population and fueling conflict for profit
- In a position to block meaningful local competition
- Facebook flipped them off in the past when they could get away with it
- Facebook delivers the data of EU citizens directly to foreign secret services. Even if you don't care about privacy, this removes a potential bargaining chip for future transatlantic contracts.
I mean it can be both right? "The EU" is actually a collection of various treaties and organizations, some of which function better than others, and it's certainly not small by any measure.
As a citizen I am in general still supportive of the EU, in fights like this for sure, but some of the criticisms that came out of Brexit were fair.
I'm curious how this will unfold, something similar happened with Google News in Spain[1], and Deliveroo [2], of course we are talking about the whole EU and neither of examples had as many customers as Facebook.
I imagine there will be a fair amount of internal noise from small D2C businesses in the country - Facebook is (at least was 3 years ago when I was in this world) unreasonably effective at delivering target demographic potential customers to company websites.
Once there is no Facebook in Europe and everyone else is gone from the platform, there would be no network effect to push anyone to go out of their way to access a US version and deal with VPN.
Quite true. The network that would be left would be quite narrow. I wonder if a Euro replacement will arise, or if truly nothing of value will be missed.
There are four ways a business can grow:
1) Add more users
2) Sell more to each user
3) Retain a higher proportion of users
4) Reclaim churned users (a corollary of #1)
It seems like Meta, Oculus and such notwithstanding, had essentially focused exclusively on #1. Then they ran out of humans on earth. Folks rarely "churn" in the conventional sense (unless their government bans use!), so #3 became irrelevant.
It’s a bit strange to think about business success as purely a function of users isn’t it? Especially when those users are product themselves.
Facebook, and all other advertisers, sell the attention of their users to third parties called customers. If this customer base is growing, and the amount of user attention is growing, it seems like there is plenty of greenfield to prospect to me.
Don’t grow? Stay the same, maintain the status quo, be happy with what you achieved, get over the need for more more more, etc. The shareholders will get over their disappointment.
That's of course perfectly fine, but the stock will re-rate to a P/E of 15 - as it has for Facebook - and long time average stock price growth shrinks from 15%+/yr to 5%/yr - which will suddenly halve the compensation of the staff, who suddenly realize that stock- or option-based comp can go down as well as up...
(Of course you could then also draw the conclusion that a company in maintenance mode doesn't need 45,000 people earning half a million a pop, but can make do with paying half as much to half as many -- but that might be a bridge too far for a corp that is still on course to earn $60 billion EBITDA a year...)
I agree I think they hit the top and will be wavering around but have a solid "clientele" but tech investors do not want to hear that from a growth stock.
>“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.
My guess would be that if Facebook and Twitter pulled out of the EU market instead of complying privacy rules then some other organisation would step up to fill that void.
It wouldn't even have to be an EU company just one that followed the rules willingly.
I'd better that even worse than the loss of business neither Twitter or Facebook/Meta would like to see a competitor have access to a protected market of the size of the EU.
Who decides that? I am european and I do not need or use Meta, but I believe there are many small buisness for example, who invested in a social media presence and get their clients through instagram etc. Or just ordinary people, who have their social life organized with it.
To be honest: a european wide poll of whether europeans decide to allow or ban meta (with its current practice) would probably not give the desired result.
They do not threaten to ban Meta. Just the opposite. Meta threats to quit Europa (That is just words actually). Meta could work without moving data to the USA.
They say they cannot - so current legislation is threat of a ban. And the imaginary poll would probably give very different results, depending on the wording:
"Should a exception for meta be made?"
vs.
"Should meta be banned fron operating in europe, for not following regulations"
People do not like exceptions for big companies, but they also do not like extra work and they usually do not like regulations from the EU, either
I interact with several communities that are mainly composed of older people. Facebook is all they know how to use and all they have to interact in this way. What could they replace it with? I'm not sure what to suggest to them.
While facebook is still around it's hard to get people to switch due to network effects. If Facebook suddenly disappeared we'd have similar services popping up within a couple of months. Russia for example has V Kontakte.
Many of these people are probably beyond the stage in life where they're able to adapt to something new.
I feel like there's a whiff of discrimination in people who call for Facebook to be shut down. I'm sure it's easy for young people in cities to switch. Not everyone is as mentally nimble.
I'm from the generation of people who "grew up" with Facebook (~40 fwiw, so I guess I'm one of these "older" people).
There are of course folks older than me who use Facebook but they all got to adulthood before Facebook even existed.
I can't imagine any of my peers being overly worried about facebook going away. We figured out how to communicate with our friends before facebook. We'll figure out how to do it again.
I'll give facebook that, it's pretty easy to use. It can be frustrating to dig around for obscure settings but for your average user everything is pretty much front and center friending/liking/sharing/clicking on links all work quite easily and are straight forward.
I wouldn't be so sure. FB has become a massive platform for political organising by regular folks, and because its population skews older, any backlash will be painfully felt at the political level.
I am sure the establishment will be more than happy to get rid of it, but further down the social pyramid? There will be lamentations.
> I'm pretty sure the majority of German and French citizens would see the demise of Facebook positively.
Of course not; in France Facebook has 40M MAU for a population of 67M (50M if you take only people from 15 to 75 years old). Tons of small shops and restaurants rely on it for their own "website". It’s massively used by people of 40-50 y/o who often don’t use any other online social network. Politics use it as well to announce stuff to their supports.
The importance of Facebook on business is vastly overstated. If Facebook were not to be there, something else would quickly fill in. A lot of users and companies are effectively forced to use Facebook because of the network effect but would prefer not to.
> A lot of users and companies are effectively forced to use Facebook because of the network effect but would prefer not to.
Don’t forget that a lot of them use Facebook because it’s easy. For a restaurant owner, what’s the easiest way to have a public page on the Internet with your open hours and your menu? A Facebook page (or a Google Maps location).
Because of the large tourism industry here I happen to have quite a few friends and acquaintances that run hospitals and restaurants. Facebook, Booking, Google Maps and co are universally hated by company owners. But they have to be on there because it’s the only way to get the right visibility and there are customer expectations. I have not met a single person who didn’t wish they could get away with just a website and a booking form on it.
Network effects prevent that from being an individual decision, and government regulation is actually a viable solution to the populance at large being trapped, regardless of some individuals trying to make their own way.
We all know that Meta has zero intention of pulling Facebook and Instagram from the EU market. That is 400m+ people, Mark can get away with a lot but that is a move even he couldn't pull off.
Not really sure what Meta's angle is with this 'threat'.
partly because the word "migrated" isn't the most suitable here. "expanded" might be a better one.
e.g. many of my friends "migrated" to telegram and/or signal around that time, but are also still technically on whatsapp since they never actually closed their whatsapp accounts. I am one of those people, since I'm not about to
teach my elderly parents something new.
But do I text any of my "migrated" friends on whatsapp? No, I text them on signal/telegram.
Do they like Facebook/Instagram specifically, or do they like having a social network where their friends are? Because the former disappearing doesn't mean that there won't be the latter.
If we all just keep this story alive, maybe enough people are convinced to seek for alternatives. Then we don't have to wait for Facebook to pull the plug, it will just drain by itself.
I saw this earlier and I wondered if they realized that WhatsApp is included in the faustian deal with Facebook/Meta brinkmanship. Instagram DM and WhatsApp have quickly become the de-facto default digital communication method for young people in many countries.
I understand that without WhatsApp, in some European countries, it can be hard to even get a doctor's appointment or coordinate with one's university. The extent to which these centralized systems have infiltrated our business processes and societies cannot be understated.
Whatsapp is indeed ubiquitous, but it is known that it's just another messenger platform - switching to alternatives wouldn't be particularly painful. In fact, switching back to one that is easier to eavesdrop on, would probably be considered a boon by the ruling classes.
The day WhatsApp get forbidden, people will switch to one of the alternatives in a matter of days. Let's be honest, it's not like WhatsApp is so popular because it's so good compared to the competition, they are all functionally very similar, it's the network effect that keeps it on top.
At least in germany using WhatsApp for anything semi officially is essentially prohibited already due to privacy laws. There is a lot of 'grey' infrastructure
( WhatsApp groups coordinating parent teacher stuff) but this is getting replaced already.
You're overestimating the importance of a digital messaging medium. If WhatsApp went away overnight, you bet your ass an alternative will be popularised the next day, if not sooner.
This is becoming ridiculous: Meta never threated this; the info comes from a SEC filling where this is presented as the worst-case scenario if they have too much trouble with EU data access laws.
> Even tho not read as a threat from SEC fillings, why would they even say that if they don't think about it?
Because they want to protect themselves from investors suing them in case things go bad in Europe. They’re saying to their investors "I’ll do my best with your money, but if things go really bad you need to know that this could maybe happen".
Facebook recently lost 10% of their market cap because Apple put up some simple anti-tracking features. It’s very obvious that Facebook’s business is very sensitive to minor privacy improvements and restrictions on what Facebook can do with data. Presumably Facebook knows a lot more about how much its revenue depends on what it does with user data server-side than anyone else does, and is therefore in a good position to predict how much upcoming regulatory actions could affect its business.
> Can someone weigh in on why FB is making such a stink about this?
There’s no such stink. In a SEC filling, Meta said that if they had too much trouble with EU data laws, the worst-case scenario would be that they would leave Europe. That’s all. That’s "if these things go to far, we might have to maybe do this if really we can't do anything else". Some medias changed this into "Meta is threatening to leave Europe", and here we are.
I'm not a fond user of Facebook for its social networking capabilities, but where I live in Eastern Europe, pretty much any local small business now relies on a Facebook page for its discovery and presence. Whether it's gyms, wedding agencies, child amusement, car TLC repair shops, etc. My primary use of Facebook is to discover those local businesses.
Yes, and if Facebook were to disappear, all of those places and all of those services would advertise elsewhere - if there is no competing platform currently, one would appear. That's the whole point. Just because it's convenient doesn't mean the entire economy in your country should rely on the good will of an American corporation.
Exactly. None of Facebook's products are irreplaceable. If Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus disappeared, even disappeared overnight, there would be a brief period of confusion where everyone scrambled to find alternatives, they would find these alternatives, and then... life would just go on. We might all be better off, particularly if everyone switched over to more open-web, accessible technologies. If the early studies are right, we might even see a general improvement in public happiness and mental health without Facebook and Instagram.
European companies are already pushed / punished when they don't follow USA rules while doing business in the USA. Just take Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank and Bayer / Monsanto as examples of multi-billion fines. There were many companies that abandoned USA marked completely because it was not worth to them to do business there any more.
EU producers are already "pushed out" by US trade barriers, on things like cheese and aeroplanes. Does it matter? No. Most USAians have never eaten proper cheese, and they're not interested in buying EU planes - they make their own.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadAddendum: why does meta.com redirect to [1]?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms
[1]: https://about.facebook.com/meta
Of course there's some "hull" called "Alphabet" who legally owns Google, but what more than a hull is it? Don't know whether it's for tax reasons, spreading the risk, trying to decouple the image in case of failed products, everybody knows that Alphabet == Google. Same goes for Facebook and Meta: There might be a Meta hull but that hull is quite packed with Facebook, so it does not really matter what the hull is called (or does).
I don't understand Facebook's name change. It is still Facebook. It wants to stay as a cohesive unit and share data across products. It isn't like Facebook will ever voluntarily give up whatsapp or instagram.
I can't quite explain it but I am willing to disassociate the stock ticker Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) from Google but not Facebook (NASDAQ:FB)
These arrangements also make it easier to close things down if needed: it simplifies redundancy (“why can't you offer me a replacement role over there?”, “that is a separate company”) and so forth, though this is more a concern of smaller organisations than Meta & Alphabet. A company I've worked for once had a significant rearrangement with people signing contracts for specific parts where they had previously been employed by the larger group entity, shortly before “divesting” some of those parts. Shady, but legal.
I can mostly agree, but there will be large and interesting practical effects. For example, everyone I know in Prague uses Messenger on a daily basis. I think this is true in many places. I also wonder about where small businesses, who have come to rely on FB for one thing or another, will migrate.
If this story applies to Messenger, this would lead to the biggest DAU migration in history![1] Kind of interesting.
[1] In the areas affected.
I think there is a good chance Meta is not bluffing. It could be viewed as a way to slow or quarantine the spread of data regulations. Pull out of Europe and let Europe develop its own competitor that will have control over Europe, but won't be able to compete abroad. Satiating European want for data regulation and privacy laws in Europe would, hopefully in Meta's view, dampen the broader push for these regulations (a push being led by Europe). Essentially let Europe isolate themselves. This will probably be followed by Meta and other corporations pushing propaganda and marketing highlighting any mistake or failure of European replacements.
Pulling out of Europe would hurt, but at the end of the day Europe's population is small and already developed. In 10 years are there going to be a lot more Europeans spending a lot more, requiring more advertising? Doubtful.
But this could also backfire if other countries look at new European competitors with jealousy and want to emulate it.
“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.”
Meta Renews Warning to EU It Will Be Forced to Pull Facebook 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.
Meanwhile Le Maire listed ways in which European governments have challenged tech giants, including with privacy rules, taxation and blocking the development of digital currencies.
It is a sword of Damocles hanging over all US companies doing business in the EU and it is something that needs to be solved by the US side, as European courts have shot all attempts by the EU down.
I hope this is a beginning for the US to finally tackle their due process deficiency.
Facebook doesn't give European politicians and regulators any arguments that speak for them:
- (Basically) No jobs in Europe
- (Basically) No taxes in Europe
- Easily replaceable (aka no major economic consequences when they disappear)
- Considered as dividing the population and fueling conflict for profit
- In a position to block meaningful local competition
- Facebook flipped them off in the past when they could get away with it
- Facebook delivers the data of EU citizens directly to foreign secret services. Even if you don't care about privacy, this removes a potential bargaining chip for future transatlantic contracts.
As a citizen I am in general still supportive of the EU, in fights like this for sure, but some of the criticisms that came out of Brexit were fair.
- [1] https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9609...
- [2] https://deliveroo.es/en/
It seems like Meta, Oculus and such notwithstanding, had essentially focused exclusively on #1. Then they ran out of humans on earth. Folks rarely "churn" in the conventional sense (unless their government bans use!), so #3 became irrelevant.
So now what?
Facebook, and all other advertisers, sell the attention of their users to third parties called customers. If this customer base is growing, and the amount of user attention is growing, it seems like there is plenty of greenfield to prospect to me.
(Of course you could then also draw the conclusion that a company in maintenance mode doesn't need 45,000 people earning half a million a pop, but can make do with paying half as much to half as many -- but that might be a bridge too far for a corp that is still on course to earn $60 billion EBITDA a year...)
Conversely, a lot of journalists nowadays are just Twitter copy-pasters.
>“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.
Doesn't sound like the kind of technically competent person we should be taking advice from.
It wouldn't even have to be an EU company just one that followed the rules willingly.
I'd better that even worse than the loss of business neither Twitter or Facebook/Meta would like to see a competitor have access to a protected market of the size of the EU.
To be honest: a european wide poll of whether europeans decide to allow or ban meta (with its current practice) would probably not give the desired result.
They say they cannot - so current legislation is threat of a ban. And the imaginary poll would probably give very different results, depending on the wording:
"Should a exception for meta be made?"
vs.
"Should meta be banned fron operating in europe, for not following regulations"
People do not like exceptions for big companies, but they also do not like extra work and they usually do not like regulations from the EU, either
I feel like there's a whiff of discrimination in people who call for Facebook to be shut down. I'm sure it's easy for young people in cities to switch. Not everyone is as mentally nimble.
There are of course folks older than me who use Facebook but they all got to adulthood before Facebook even existed.
I can't imagine any of my peers being overly worried about facebook going away. We figured out how to communicate with our friends before facebook. We'll figure out how to do it again.
No I mean people in their 80s, 90s. Many of them isolated, and slowly learned Facebook, but probably not able to learn new things now.
I am sure the establishment will be more than happy to get rid of it, but further down the social pyramid? There will be lamentations.
Of course not; in France Facebook has 40M MAU for a population of 67M (50M if you take only people from 15 to 75 years old). Tons of small shops and restaurants rely on it for their own "website". It’s massively used by people of 40-50 y/o who often don’t use any other online social network. Politics use it as well to announce stuff to their supports.
Don’t forget that a lot of them use Facebook because it’s easy. For a restaurant owner, what’s the easiest way to have a public page on the Internet with your open hours and your menu? A Facebook page (or a Google Maps location).
Not really sure what Meta's angle is with this 'threat'.
Not because I hate Facebook or anything, but because it would be "a good thing (TM)" in the first place!
partly because the word "migrated" isn't the most suitable here. "expanded" might be a better one.
e.g. many of my friends "migrated" to telegram and/or signal around that time, but are also still technically on whatsapp since they never actually closed their whatsapp accounts. I am one of those people, since I'm not about to teach my elderly parents something new.
But do I text any of my "migrated" friends on whatsapp? No, I text them on signal/telegram.
Although unfortunately, people would just move to some other similar network to post their fake perfect lives or get depressed about the others'.
On the other hand, everyone I know who doesn't use Facebook/Instagram hate it.
I understand that without WhatsApp, in some European countries, it can be hard to even get a doctor's appointment or coordinate with one's university. The extent to which these centralized systems have infiltrated our business processes and societies cannot be understated.
Because they want to protect themselves from investors suing them in case things go bad in Europe. They’re saying to their investors "I’ll do my best with your money, but if things go really bad you need to know that this could maybe happen".
There’s no such stink. In a SEC filling, Meta said that if they had too much trouble with EU data laws, the worst-case scenario would be that they would leave Europe. That’s all. That’s "if these things go to far, we might have to maybe do this if really we can't do anything else". Some medias changed this into "Meta is threatening to leave Europe", and here we are.
Then again, something else will come along. As long as the public and business are flexible. We saw the printed newspaper, "Yellow Pages" replaced.
Getting a login wall when I try to check your working hours or menu is the surest way to lose me as a client.
Oh, and I might even tell the business how and why they're not getting my money... if the only way to contact them wasn't through messenger.