"Meta will not launch its new Twitter rival, Threads, in Ireland or the EU for the foreseeable future.
It is being released in the US and the UK on Thursday of this week as an alternative to Twitter.
A spokesperson for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said that the regulator had been in contact about the new service and that it would not be rolled out in the EU at this point."
In the U.K. we've been so busy laughing at the name Threads that we might have missed this.
Meta have been banned from launching Threads in the E.U. because of data protection concerns. So if we do join up we will only be talking to people in the U.S., the U.K. and the other countries who don't have adequate data protections.
Sounds like the dystopian name wasn't a mistake after all.
Edit: Technically, Threads isn't banned in the EU. Meta hasn't launched it yet due to GDPR issues.
The CJEU have also just ruled that Meta's GDPR policies fall far short of EU standards. The implications of this ruling are still being interpreted but it's fair to say that if you sign up for Threads you won't be talking to anybody in the E.U. for quite some time.
https://noyb.eu/en/cjeu-declares-metafacebooks-gdpr-approach-largely-illegal
Meta's new Threads app isn't being launched in the E.U. because it doesn't meet the E.U.s' privacy standards. So what happens next?
Is the E.U. just never going to have Threads, and be left out of the convo?
Is Threads going to up it's game and meet E.U. privacy standards which all users worldwide will enjoy?
Will we have some weird two tier system where EU Threads users enjoy proper privacy standards while the rest of the world doesn't?
And have they thought all of this through?
I spent hours yesterday skimming through articles on Threads looking for more info on why it's not being launched in the E.U. because of privacy issues.
I found out 2 things-
The English language media really couldn't give a damn about why Threads isn't being launched in the EU because of privacy issues.
There are so many articles on Threads in the English language media. Soooo many. So many unquestioning, uncritical, gushing articles about Threads. Meta's PR machine is unstoppable.
@ProjectFearlessness You might have more success in German, I suspect.
I had a quick recce. I never learned German in school, so I'm not the best person for this. But I did find something of interest.
So, fans of #BadJournalism, whom do we believe? The various people noting that the latest wave of #TwitterMigration has pushed the user count over the 13 millions mark? Or Martin Muno of Deutsche Welle, who tells us today that only 2 millions use the #FediVerse and points to an April 2022 article in DeutschlandFunk as a source. https://www.dw.com/de/bringt-meta-mit-threads-die-twitter-alternative/a-66108886 #DeutscheWelle #journalism
@ProjectFearlessness it's definitively the last one. If they were observing GDPR standards for the whole world it would be much easier to keep them in mind while designing the service.
This looks more like: "OK, now we are in US and UK, what things will we need to disable to be GDPR complaint?" they obviously won't disable anything that makes them money and is allowed.
ProjectFearlessness
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