Facebook’s parent company Meta said on Monday it has no plans to withdraw its services from Europe, after raising the possibility amid an ongoing dispute over the transfer of European data to the United States.
Data is critical to the advertising business that generates nearly all of the company’s billions of dollars in revenue, and the structures that oversaw the transfer of information from the mainland are now in limbo.
“We have absolutely no desire and no plan to withdraw from Europe, but the simple reality is that Meta and many other companies, organizations and services rely on data transfers between the EU and the US to operate global services,” said the statement. communicated. the company said in a statement.
The crucial Privacy Shield online data agreement between Europe and the United States was invalidated in July 2020 in a major EU court decision that put big transatlantic technology in legal uncertainty.
Meta also noted in a statement Thursday to US market regulators that the bases it uses for data transfer are also in legal and regulatory jeopardy.
“If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted… we will likely not be able to offer many of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe,” Meta wrote in her filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
European officials and the US government are still discussing ways to resolve the issue.
The social media giant recently saw its worst fall in market value after disappointing quarterly results that raised questions about its future.
Its Facebook subscription platform saw a small drop in daily users worldwide in late 2021, the first such decline for a platform relentlessly focused on growth.
The company’s preoccupation with adding users was central to last year’s whistleblower scandal, in which leaked internal documents supported media reports saying the company prioritized growth over security.