* Governments can reach Apple and Google, and thus force them to remove the apps from their app stores.
* Diplomacy. EU and USA will have a lot of negotiation to do pretty soon. USA doesn't like how EU handles big tech and privacy. EU doesn't like how USA's preferred treatment of domestic electric cars in the "inflation reduction" act that went into effect a few days ago. If Meta pulls out of EU to dodge enforcement, the EU diplomats will surely bring that up, and work a solution into whatever treaty comes out of this.
I bet Facebook will still happily provide service in a region, even if the only customers for their ads there are groups like companies with no footprint in the country, foreign regimes that would like to influence elections, and locals who’ve figured out ways to evade local laws.
Punishing companies directly that do business with Facebook/Meta would probably be the strongest deterrent. If we can sanction countries, why not companies?
That's how sanctions are usually implemented. See: Russia and Iran, trickling down to their state businesses and armaments industries, tricking down to their suppliers. The only difference here would be there isn't a nation-state as the starting point.
Yup. That's what I meant too. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp doesn't care much about US sanctions, but other companies selling them {insert thing} do, if it has financial repercussions.
1. Force Apple and Google to remove the apps from stores.
2. Lowest effort DNS blocker to exclude the 90% who don't care enough to circumvent.
2. Let the lack of network effects and time do the rest.
Sure, a few will hold on, and there will probably be a temporary "buy a phone with fb installed for 10000$" market, but given time, Facebook/Whatsapp/etc. will be dead in Europe.
Except politicians will have to come out as supporting a ban on the most popular apps that tens of millions people use every day. Which outside of HN circles would probably be unpopular (see how the proposed Tiktok ban was received in America). And have sites ever even been blocked for GDPR violations before / in which member states would mandating ISPs block sites on that basis even be allowed?
They could press criminal charges against all Meta executives and extradite them from the US. Of course this is ridiculous and will never happen for a number of reasons, but it shows that the EU doesn't have literally no teeth.
America requires dual criminality for extradition. America has no privacy law similar to GDPR so that couldn't happen + I think GDPR violations are a civil thing only (?).
* Governments can reach Apple and Google, and thus force them to remove the apps from their app stores.
* Diplomacy. EU and USA will have a lot of negotiation to do pretty soon. USA doesn't like how EU handles big tech and privacy. EU doesn't like how USA's preferred treatment of domestic electric cars in the "inflation reduction" act that went into effect a few days ago. If Meta pulls out of EU to dodge enforcement, the EU diplomats will surely bring that up, and work a solution into whatever treaty comes out of this.