3 reasons why Facebook will never leave Europe!

Meta Platform Inc., the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has threatened to pull the plug on its platforms from all of Europe. This threat is because of a spat they have with the European Union. And all because of a problem which Facebook caused! Let me explain. 

The problems started a few years ago when Cambridge Analytica, a relatively unknown and obscure company, was set up. They claimed to be a "global election management agency", thus handling the online campaigns of major political parties worldwide. Although in principle, there's nothing wrong with that, they didn't just promote political parties, but they abused and manipulated citizen data for their gain. They used a vulnerability within Facebook to gather as much information as possible and then show users a twisted version of reality. Pumping millions of euros to portray the political candidate on their payroll as the best and his opponent the worse. Of course, no one could compete with them, and this system led to President Trump's election in the U.S., the triumph of Brexit in the U.K., and hundreds of other manipulated elections around the globe!

In response to the misuse of personal data which has been going on for a while, the E.U. published the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a set of rules for collecting and processing personal information from individuals in Europe. The recent issue with Facebook seems to stem from the fact that one of these regulations forbids the transfer of data on E.U. citizens back to the U.S.

Of course, whether this threat materialises or not is yet to see; however, I highly doubt it. Let me explain why.

First of all, we experienced a similar showdown when Australia passed the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, which forced platforms to pay publishers if they host their content. The law is a response to years-long complaints from news outlets worldwide. Their content is being shared online by Facebook, Google, and others, earning them lots of money, but the publishers get nothing! And this is at a time when print journalism is in decline. 

In response, Google made deals with Australian news publishers, but Facebook decided to cut off the entire continent made of 26 million people. Of course, Facebook didn't take long to realise their mistake. Less than a week later, Facebook was on again in Australia, and they agreed to pay Australian media companies for news content.

So when considering that Facebook has almost 3 billion users, can they just switch off their services on the E.U. (with a population of 450 million citizens)? I doubt any company would be ready to forego such a big chunk of their earnings. 

This leads us to the second reason. For the first time ever in the past decade, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, forecasted weaker earnings. So much so that the value of their stock plummeted 26% in its most significant one-day drop ever, making them lose billions of dollars. There are various factors for this; the new Apple privacy changes, the steady decline in adolescents on Facebook and many others. Facebook is also being threatened by other social networks such as TikTok. Since its inception almost 5 years ago, TikTok has just become the world's most downloaded social media app and the most visited website worldwide.

Furthermore, there is a growing global animosity towards social media. Various scientific reports confirmed the toxicity of social networks, and many governments are worried about their effect. Bruno Le Maire, the French Finance Minister, was even quoted on Euronews saying that: 

"I can confirm that life would be very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without it."         

So I doubt any company going through such a turbulent time will be willing to keep on digging their own grave.  

Finally, whoever follows tech knows that Facebook is at a stage where it has to reinvent itself. This was very evident with their rebranding into Meta. They invested heavily in Virtual Reality (V.R.) and believe that the Metaverse is the future of social media. So their obvious strategy is to expand further into this new territory. Can a company with such an ambition dismiss 450 million citizens? And not just any citizens but people who have access to finances, education or technology. They automatically fall within their cohort of prime customers who will buy their technologies, use them, and create content. 

So to summarise, in my opinion, Facebook will never leave Europe. They can't just dismiss such a large chunk of people, they can't give further economic blows to their company, and they can't jeopardise their future expansion plans. Of course, this doesn't mean that it is a good thing since the harmful effects of social media on our society still need to be quantified. But for all of you hooked on to it, you can rest assured that most probably, you'll keep on enjoying social media, at least for the near future. 

____

Prof Alexiei Dingli is a Professor of AI at the University of Malta. He has been conducting research and working in the field of AI for more than two decades, assisting different companies to implement AI solutions. His work has been rated World Class by international experts and he won several local and international awards (such as those by the European Space Agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the United Nations to name a few). He has published several peer-reviewed publications and formed part of the Malta.AI task force which was set up by the Maltese government, aimed at making Malta one of the top AI countries in the world.

Read more: