It’s been talked about since the first of the year: Meta shutting down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if it can’t keep transferring user data back to the U.S.
So Ireland decides to put the pedal to the metal … but its sister regulators yell “HOLD ON!” And Facebook is saved by the EU bureaucracy 🤣
Damn those standard contractual clauses!!
BY:
PROJECT COUNSEL MEDIA
11 August 2022 (Mykonos, Greece) – An order by Ireland’s privacy regulator for parent company Meta to comply with EU privacy rules has been delayed, meaning its popular platforms Facebook and Instagram can continue sending sensitive user data across the Atlantic, detailed by Politico here.
Blackmail? Meta has repeatedly warned that if it is prevented from sending such data to its servers in the U.S., it will have to shutter its Facebook and Instagram offerings in Europe — even though critics have pointed out that the company might be using the warning as a threat. Indeed, Meta could continue legally offering the services in Europe if it stored the sensitive data on servers in the EU.
Backstory: In July, Politico reported that Ireland’s privacy regulator had decided to block Meta from using a last legal mechanism called standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to transfer large chunks of data such as 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.
Delay: But the Irish decision is still pending review by other authorities in Europe. A spokesperson for the Irish regulator said Wednesday that it had received objections from several other EU regulators to its draft order, which effectively delays a final decision to shut down the data flows and buys Facebook time.
What’s next? The Irish regulator is now expected to take months to attempt to resolve the objections. It previously has taken the regulator up to four months to attempt to tweak decisions upon request of European peers.
Side note: But this is just the tip of the iceberg. As we noted in our “Mykonos Newsletter” yesterday, there is a huge shift underway in Big Tech’s core business model, which hinges on globalisation and the network effect to create scale: key political and regulatory shifts are challenging platforms’ ability to cross borders and lock in market share, and so they are reacting. More next month after we fully digest the Mykonos unconference.
