After City AM broke the news Sunday, worldwide media, including us here at GiGadgets, reported that Meta threatened to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if the company was not allowed to store and process data from its European users on servers in the US.
Yesterday, however, Meta saw the need to put out a press release denying their own words from the annual report:
“Meta is absolutely not threatening to leave Europe,” Meta states in their press release, going on to state that “any reporting that implies we do is simply not true.” They also say this isn’t a new issue, and that they’ve raised the issue around international data transfers since 2018. They go on to state that Meta is “legally required to disclose material risks to our investors,” only to continue with the words “continuing uncertainty over EU-US data transfers mechanisms poses a threat to our ability to serve European consumers and operate our business in Europe.”
So you’re not threatening to pull out, Meta, you feel threatened by the EU and may have to pull out if there are no new agreements… Got it!
Meta says that they, like others, depend on data transfer between the EU and the US, to operate their global services: “Businesses need clear, global rules to protect transatlantic data flows over the long term and, like other companies across a wide range of industries, we are closely monitoring the potential impact to the millions of people and businesses who use our services as these developments progress”, they state in their press release.
