Meta has just been fined $2 billion by the EU for transferring personal user data off Facebook from the EU to the US without proper protection.
👉 Background: Meta is the big tech company behind major social media apps. Think: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram and of course, it's own unique version of the Metaverse.
👉 What happened: Now, Meta has just been fined $2 billion by the EU for transferring personal user data off Facebook from the EU to the US without proper protection. This is the biggest fine the European Data Protection Board has ever issued... taking the mantle from Amazon.
👉 What else: Until 2020, the EU and the US had an agreement where data transferred between the two regions was protected. But that year, the EU invalidated the treaty saying it didn't protect EU citizens sufficiently.
💡The EU is making an example out of Meta, and its handling of personal data, in front of the world. This decision will likely set off alarm bells for other companies that are currently handling EU user data offshore.
💡 The EU has some of the strictest data privacy laws in the world, except for maybe China. And this new ruling effectively means that tech companies will find it almost impossible, to collect or hold data on Europeans in their home markets.
💡And if they do want to keep the data, they might have to build new data infrastructures in the EU - which would be wildly exxy... Or possibly pull their business out of the EU altogether - which would be even more exxy!
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