Meta’s European game seems to be hanging by a slim thread
There are two ways of looking at Meta Platforms’ release of a Twitter competitor called Threads. It’s nicely timed to capitalize on growing unease over the way Elon Musk has run Twitter. And it’s also horribly timed, coinciding with the imminent launch of an EU law that strikes at the heart of the way Meta makes money.
That undermines its plans to turn Threads into another outlet for data harvesting. For now CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking what he can get. He has rolled out Threads in dozens of countries, racking up more than 10 million users in the first seven hours (just not in the EU).
Down the line, Zuckerberg may be forced to give EU residents a choice on whether they want their data processed for advertising. If they say no, that could hurt Meta financially. Threads is being held back from Europe because Meta knows EU regulators won’t like the way the app plays mixologist with personal information.
But the reason isn’t the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU’s weakly enforced privacy law that has let Meta engage in a free-for-all on private data until now. It’s because of another antitrust law called the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Meta delayed Threads because it needed more guidance from EU officials on how to follow that law, which could have a broader impact on the company.
What does a European antitrust law have to do with privacy? Quite a lot. In fact, Meta’s business model faces a greater threat from new competition rules than it ever did from its data-protection policies. That’s partly because of a shift in mindset among EU regulators over treating privacy infringements as a form of consumer harm, an approach the US doesn’t take.
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