Meta's Twitter rival will not be available in the EU when it launches Thursday
Instagram Threads is not yet GDPR compliant, says Meta
Instagram Threads, Meta's answer to Twitter will not be launching in the EU after privacy concerns were raised by the DPC, Ireland's data protection authority (DPA).
A DPC spokesperson said that the Irish regulator had been in contact with Meta about the new service and that it would not be rolled out in the EU "at this point," according to a report by the Irish Independent.
Meta said it is "not yet prepared the service for a European launch outside the UK, which is not fully governed by GDPR or EU privacy rules."
Threads is due to be launched in the US and the UK tomorrow 6th July under the Instagram brand.
It will allow Instagram users to engage in Twitter-like conversations and is clearly aimed at competing with Elon Musk's troubled microblogging platform, including, reportedly, seeking to poach key staff.
It is likely that Threads will be eventually be based on ActivityPub, the federated protocol used by Mastodon, PixelFed and Tumblr, which allows users of those services to interact with each other. However, Instagram does not run on ActivityPub, so it's not clear at this stage how that will work. The initial launch will not use ActivityPub.
More of a worry to those concerned about privacy and confidentiality will be Meta's track record of privacy, including mining user data across its various platforms without the users' consent. The list of data collected by Instagram according to its privacy page on Apple's App Store includes health, purchases, financial info, location, "sensitive info" and browsing history.
Under EU rules Meta cannot use data from one app to serve ads in another. Earlier this year the company was fined €390 million over its use of users' data for ads on Facebook and Instagram. This behaviour is permitted in the US. In the UK, the law post-Brexit is less clear.
Meta's business practices have put the company at odds with the EU, numerous times in the past. The Irish DPC, has generally been seen as a soft touch, since the country has been keen to lure tech companies to its soil with low corporate tax rates, but recently it has found against the company on several occasions.
It does not appear that the Irish regulator blocked Meta in this case. Meta is likely taking a cautious approach to avoid further expensive run-ins with the EU.
On Tuesday, Meta failed to overturn a judgement by the German regulator that found its data collection practices not only violated competition rules, but also contravened the GDPR. A key issue in the case was Meta's ability to link users' data across various platforms including as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The ruling paves the way for Germany's antitrust regulator to prevent Meta from consolidating data gathered from users across its various platforms, as well as data obtained from external websites and applications, unless explicit consent is obtained from the users.