Threads not available in EU: Here’s why

Meta launched its clean Twitter-like app Threads on Thursday morning. To be more precise, its iOS app made its way to the users' App Store exactly at 5am on Thursday.

Within just a day and a half of its launch, Threads now has over 60 million users, according to Quiver Quantitative, an alternative data platform designed for retail investors.

Meanwhile, Twitter doesn't seem too happy about it as it already threatened to sue Meta Platforms with the accusation of hiring former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information."

Even Twitter owner Elon Musk said, "Competition is fine, cheating is not," in response to a tweet citing the news.

Among all these, one important news remained unnoticed by the mass.

Threads has been launched in 100 countries, and none of the European Union countries are on that list. There are no foreseeable launch dates in the EU either.

But why?

Meta vs EU

EU has been a primary reason for Meta's headache for a while now. On 22 May this year, Meta was fined a record €1.2 billion by the Irish data regulator for breaching EU data protection rules.

Meta was fined for "continuing to transfer personal data" of users from the European Economic Area (EEA) to the US in breach of the EU's strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules, said the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which acts on behalf of the EU.

Coming back to Threads, it is not the EU who blocked the access. It is Meta being cautious and careful maybe so that it does not end up getting another history-breaking fine.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said to The Verge that more than 100 countries in which Threads initially launched do not include EU member states, due to "complexities with complying with some of the laws coming into effect next year."

While Mosseri did not clear out what "some of the laws" are, sources close to Meta said that the company isn't offering the app in the union's member states because it's not sure about the requirements set out by the Digital Markets Act, the EU's new competition rules governing how large online platforms use their market power, according to Euronews.

The European Commission is currently speaking with businesses like Meta about the rules and it plans to provide more direction in September.

What is EU's Digital Marketing Act

The Digital Marketing Act (DMA) of the EU primarily intends to ensure a higher degree of competition in European digital markets by preventing large companies from abusing their market power and by allowing new players to enter the market.

According to the European Commission, the DMA defines when a large online platform qualifies as a "gatekeeper." These are digital platforms that provide an important gateway between business users and consumers – whose position can grant them the power to act as a private rule maker, and thus creating a bottleneck in the digital economy.

To address these issues, the DMA will define a series of obligations they will need to respect, including prohibiting gatekeepers from engaging in certain behaviours.

A number of companies, including Meta, have self-designated themselves as "gatekeepers" under the DMA rules, which will potentially make them subject to stricter regulations around data sharing and giving preference to their own products.

Threads' data policy conflicts with EU regulations

Threads' synchronisation with Instagram is one of the key reasons behind the platform getting so many users in such a short period of time. The users can just log in using Instagram and hence, do not need to go through feeling forms, provide email addresses or contact numbers and wait for a confirmation email or text.

While it seems convenient, this is also a major red flag when it comes to the overall privacy and collection of advertisement data.

Whenever a user installs Threads, the data it collects include health & fitness, purchases, location, contacts, contact info, search history, browsing history, sensitive information and many more.

Advertising data will also be collected from Instagram, which contains the same entries under App Privacy in the App Store. If you look at it, Meta already has Facebook, Instagram, newly added Threads and WhatsApp, three of which are already major players in the market.

What Meta is doing is collecting data from all of its platforms and sharing them with one another for advertisement. EU is not a fan of this tactic since it breaks the core principles of DMA.

Meta, being a gatekeeper, is banned from combining users' personal data across different platforms under the DMA. Previous attempts by Meta to introduce Whatsapp advertising services that incorporated data from Facebook or Instagram were unsuccessful, and Threads will clearly not be allowed to do the same.

With everything that's going on, it is unclear exactly when Threads will adapt to the EU market or if it will ever launch in the continent.