Politico reports that Meta’s new social media Threads won’t start in the EU until Thursday. The platform will be launched on Thursday in the United States and Great Britain.
Politico.eu reports, that Facebook owner Meta’s new social media Threads won’t start operating in Europe until Thursday at least. The platform, intended as a competitor to Twitter, will launch on Thursday in the United States and Great Britain.
The matter was confirmed to Politico by a representative of the Meta company and the Irish supervisory authority responsible for Meta’s EU regulation. Meta has its EU headquarters in Ireland. Because of this, the local authority manages its and the EU’s common affairs.
According to Politico, Meta did not say more about the matter and will inform about the possible EU launch of Threads later.
An Irish newspaper was the first to report on the matter Irish Independent. The Irish supervisory authority commented to the newspaper that Threads will not start in the EU “at this stage”.
The issue may be related to the EU’s strict data protection regulation (GDPR). According to the Irish Independent, Threads uses information from other Meta profiles of its users in the US and UK in a way that is problematic under the EU Data Protection Regulation.
The Irish supervisory authority previously prevented Meta from launching an advertising service using data from users’ Facebook and Instagram services in the messaging application Whatsapp.
In May, Ireland’s supervisory authority said Metal was fined €1.2 billion for violating European Union privacy laws.
The fines were imposed because the data of European Facebook users had been uploaded to US servers.