[AsusFan]

Clickbait headline.

Facebook was not "blocked" - they voluntarily halted the rollout of the feature themselves. NOBODY told them to do this.

Reading between the lines, someone at Facebook's legal department was asleep at the wheel and forgot to provide the authorities with the required documentation. The DPC nudged them a bit and Facebook hit the panic button.

[pavel_lishin]

> Facebook was not "blocked" - they voluntarily halted the rollout of the feature themselves. NOBODY told them to do this.

It sure sounds like the DPC told them to:

> the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) — using inspection and document seizure powers set out in Section 130 of the country’s Data Protection Act — had sent agents to Facebook’s Dublin office seeking documentation that Facebook had failed to provide.

That's like saying that I voluntarily left someone's premises after the police told me to leave before I got arrested for tresspassing.

[supercanuck]

Facebook was inspected.

Facebook didn't submit documentation

Facebook decides not to release the product.

Meat Packing Plant Inspected

Meat packing Plant doesn't submit required documentation

Meat Parking Plant ceases operating.

*Seems blocked is a reasonable term in my mind.

[andylynch]

A raid on their offices is perhaps a bit more than a nudge?

[TeMPOraL]

A Klingon nudge, then.

[tripzilch]

That's how the EU works. You get a warning/advisory, and then you're expected to do the right thing.

If they hadn't done this voluntarily, THEN they would have been fined.

We try to regulate before it goes wrong, instead of running after them. It works better that way.

But if you want to believe that FB voluntarily halted the rollout of the feature, for no other reason that they believed it fell short of privacy guarantees ... Yeah no. FB couldn't give a shit about that, without external motivation.