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Folks, the reason #Facebook/ #Instagram/ #Meta/ Zuckerberg hasn’t launched #Threads in the #EU isn’t because the EU is determined to protect your privacy, it’s because the EU is determined to protect The Single Market (peace be upon it) from anticompetitive behaviour. It’s because they’re using Instagram to launch Threads and sharing data between them (and not with EU startups that might want to use that data too). It’s #antitrust, not #privacy. It’s markets, not people.
@aral whatever the mechanism, it still serves the people. Antitrust/anti-monopoly legislation helps keep prices down and quality up for consumers. If it happens to help us keep our privacy then great.
I find the privacy/GDPR arguments coming from the likes of Germany odd at times though. The very same country wants anyone with a public website to give a physical (not PO box) street address where they can be found 
@sarajw It serves the Single Market, which may, in this case, coincidentally also serve the people. But framing everything through the lens of the Single Market (instead of, say, human rights) definitely doesn’t serve the people and it’s how we end up with antitrust being the main mechanism by which trillion-dollar corporations are regulated. Better than nothing? Definitely. Best we can do? Not by a long shot.
@sarajw Here’s me making basically that same case at the European Parliament (way before the Digital Services Act, in the context of the Digital Single Market framing):
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
