> Not launching in the EU is a massive red flag on the data hoovering ambitions facebook have for threads
Not really. It just means they don’t want to wait for EU compliance to launch. It’s fairly standard to have an EU lag for feature releases, in the same way there is a lag for releasing certain content in Asia or financial products in the United States.
For obvious reasons, like the reasons the person you replied to mentioned: privacy violating features block apps like Threads from entering the EU market.
No it's just that often waiting for legal to validate you're ok to run in the EU isn't worth waiting around for. Better to launch in the USA and deal with the EU as needed.
And it should stay that way.
CJEU declares Meta/Facebook's GDPR approach largely illegal: https://noyb.eu/en/cjeu-declares-metafacebooks-gdpr-approach...
Threads won't launch until compliant with GDPR and Digital Markets Act: https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-...