Who decides that? I am european and I do not need or use Meta, but I believe there are many small buisness for example, who invested in a social media presence and get their clients through instagram etc. Or just ordinary people, who have their social life organized with it.
To be honest: a european wide poll of whether europeans decide to allow or ban meta (with its current practice) would probably not give the desired result.
They do not threaten to ban Meta. Just the opposite. Meta threats to quit Europa (That is just words actually). Meta could work without moving data to the USA.
They say they cannot - so current legislation is threat of a ban. And the imaginary poll would probably give very different results, depending on the wording:
"Should a exception for meta be made?"
vs.
"Should meta be banned fron operating in europe, for not following regulations"
People do not like exceptions for big companies, but they also do not like extra work and they usually do not like regulations from the EU, either
I interact with several communities that are mainly composed of older people. Facebook is all they know how to use and all they have to interact in this way. What could they replace it with? I'm not sure what to suggest to them.
I'm from the generation of people who "grew up" with Facebook (~40 fwiw, so I guess I'm one of these "older" people).
There are of course folks older than me who use Facebook but they all got to adulthood before Facebook even existed.
I can't imagine any of my peers being overly worried about facebook going away. We figured out how to communicate with our friends before facebook. We'll figure out how to do it again.
I'll give facebook that, it's pretty easy to use. It can be frustrating to dig around for obscure settings but for your average user everything is pretty much front and center friending/liking/sharing/clicking on links all work quite easily and are straight forward.
While facebook is still around it's hard to get people to switch due to network effects. If Facebook suddenly disappeared we'd have similar services popping up within a couple of months. Russia for example has V Kontakte.
Many of these people are probably beyond the stage in life where they're able to adapt to something new.
I feel like there's a whiff of discrimination in people who call for Facebook to be shut down. I'm sure it's easy for young people in cities to switch. Not everyone is as mentally nimble.
To be honest: a european wide poll of whether europeans decide to allow or ban meta (with its current practice) would probably not give the desired result.