Could Facebook and Instagram Really be Banned in Europe? | Social Media Today

Could Facebook and Instagram really be shut down in Europe? Over the weekend, several reports suggested that Facebook’s parent company Meta may consider shutting down its services within the EU due to an ongoing legal challenge over how it handles EU user data. The reports came on the back of this note, which was included in Meta’s most recent SEC update: “In August 2020, we received a preliminary draft decision from the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) that preliminarily concluded that Meta Platforms Ireland’s reliance on Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) in respect of European user data does not achieve compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and preliminarily proposed that such transfers of user data from the European Union to the United States should therefore be suspended. We believe a final decision in this inquiry may issue as early as the first half of 2022. If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and we are unable to continue to rely on SCCs or rely upon other alternative means of data transfers from Europe to the United States, we will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and…
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