Europeans have been saved from a summer shutdown of social media sites Facebook and Instagram by … European Union bureaucracy.
An Irish draft decision to block the social media sites’ parent company Meta’s data transfers from Europe to the U.S. is stuck in the process, as regulators from across the EU butt heads over the details.
In July, POLITICO reported that Ireland’s privacy regulator had decided to block Facebook’s owner Meta from using a last legal mechanism called standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to transfer large chunks of data like family pictures and direct messages across the Atlantic. The Irish decision followed a 2020 European Court of Justice ruling that deemed major flows of data between Europe and the U.S. illegal because they expose Europeans to U.S. government surveillance risks.
The threats against US big tech by the EU has always been teethless posturing. Nothing more. They will never actually ban one of them, I’ll eat these words if they do.