Facebook and Instagram may go off the air in Europe, warns Meta; understand

THE Goalthe parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it may need to take some of its services offline in Europe due to changes in data storage policies following a court ruling.

The alert was made in a report sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States (SEC), equivalent to the CVM Brazilian, on Thursday (3). In it, Meta argues that it is subject to evolving laws and regulations that determine whether, how and under what circumstances it can transfer, process or receive certain data “critical to our operations”.

In this process, the company worked with the so-called “privacy shield”, which allowed sharing user data on the Internet. European Union to the company’s headquarters in the United States. In July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated this system.

Other Meta data transfer databases are also being investigated by regulatory and judicial agents. The company claims that in August 2020 it received a preliminary decision from the Data Protection Commission of Ireland which concluded that one of these bases, the SCCs, was not in compliance with EU data protection regulations.

The commission even tentatively proposed that data transfers from the European Union to the United States be suspended. According to Meta, a final decision on the subject may be released in the first half of 2022.

“If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and we cannot continue to use SCCs or rely on other alternative means of transferring data from Europe to the United States, we will likely not be able to offer many of our most important products and services. , including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe, which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.”

The data processing that takes place in the United States is used by the company to provide services and carry out so-called targeted advertising, one of the main sources of income for social networks such as Facebook.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into force in the European Union in 2018, and established stricter rules on the use of user data and customers by companies.

In the report, Meta also cites data protection laws in countries such as Brazil and United Kingdom that are similar to the European one, as well as a measure approved by the state of California that will take effect in January 2023.

All of these measures, according to the company, could force it to incur “significant compliance costs and could potentially impose new restrictions and requirements on companies like ours, including in areas such as data blending in services, mergers, acquisitions and product design.” products”.

“New legislation or regulatory decisions that restrict our ability to collect and use information about minors may also result in limitations on our advertising services or our ability to offer products and services to minors in certain jurisdictions,” it says.

In this scenario, Meta states that it expects to continue to be the target of “investigations, inquiries, data requests, requests for information, actions and audits by the government and regulators in the United States, Europe and around the world, particularly in the areas of privacy. , data protection, law enforcement, consumer protection, civil rights, content moderation and competition as we continue to grow and expand our operations.”

Facebook’s parent company expects these actions to “interrupt or require us to change our business practices in a way that is materially adverse to our business, results in negative publicity and reputational damage, embezzles resources, time and attention for the management of our business, or subject us to other structural or behavioral problems that adversely affect our business”.