Facebook exited the EU legal framework for 1.5 billion users to evade GDPR

Evidence

In practice, however, the company was making changes to ensure that the GDPR would not circumscribe the majority of its operations. Until then, 1.5 billion of its users, including those in Africa, Asia, Australia, and Latin America, were governed by terms of service issued by the company’s international headquarters in Ireland, meaning that these terms fell under the EU framework. It was in late April that Facebook quietly issued new terms of service, placing those 1.5 billion users under US privacy laws and thus eliminating their ability to file claims in Irish courts. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1556

Categorization

• CANDY: A concrete, shareable instance of regulatory arbitrage: Facebook moving 1.5 billion users out from under GDPR in one quiet terms-of-service change.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone tracking GDPR enforcement or platform-regulatory gamesmanship.
• XREF: connects to: Regulation like the GDPR reshapes but does not dissolve data-colonial power. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 591; The EU may impose GDPR as a standard on trading partners. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 1180; Stricter EU privacy laws did not slow Facebook and Google growth — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1553