China did ban Facebook, as did Russia and North Korea. Countries where Facebook is not banned are largely allies of the US.

Don't forget that The EU is currently considering banning Facebook if changes to privacy and data security aren't made.

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/ban-on-facebo...

https://news.yahoo.com/facebook-instagram-face-europe-ban-16...

The EU authorities themselves are not banning Facebook, per se, despite the headlines - the threat to remove Facebook from the European market comes from Facebook/Meta, because they don't want to comply with the expected upcoming order preventing them from transferring EU data subject data to the US. The thing that the EU officials are preparing could be described as a ban on data transfer, although it's really an order to comply more correctly with an existing law (the GDPR) rather than a new obligation. But it's not a ban on operating in the EU.

If Facebook kept EU data subject data in the EU, or even if they use Standard Contractual Clauses to transfer it to different third countries without the same kind of problematic surveillance laws that the US has, there would be no issue.

What does the fact that we are allies change? This is espionnage in any case and the US has shown that they do not miss a beat when it comes to stealing information from us.

We would be doing the same of course if we were not much weaker and if our products were actually used over there.

If a major war occurs in the near future it won't be between the EU and the US. This lowers the risk of US companies hold EU data.

Also, don't be one sided on this. The EU countries also spy on the US.

> If a major war occurs in the near future it won't be between the EU and the US. This lowers the risk of US companies hold EU data.

I do not understand. What does a war has to do with the fact that countries spy on each other without rest? Merkel's phone was bugged by the US - not something nice you do to an ally, right? (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24690055)

> Also, don't be one sided on this. The EU countries also spy on the US.

I am not and this is exactly why I wrote the second sentence. Our capacities, unfortunately, are way lower.

Well, allies can ask friendly governments for information on their own citizens without violating and of their own privacy laws. So it can be useful as a circumvention tool for them.

>> The differentiator here is national security,

> Which means that all countries other than the US also should be banning Facebook, and most US companies.

Like many sibling comments have already pointed out, many do.

But the answer to your statement is "no." You're trying to pull an oversimple rule out of a pithy comment and neglecting other important distinctions. It's not just a black/white distinction like foreign country vs. domestic, but more more nuanced one like enemy country vs adversary country vs neutral country vs allied country vs domestic. The answer to the question "should country X ban Facebook for national security reasons" will be different for different countries based on their context.

> Which means that all countries other than the US also should be banning Facebook

In case you hadn't heard (I presume you have, us being on HN and all), there is some movement within the EU towards that end

Blatantly false. Completely unrealistic. Additional regulation towards privacy perhaps - affecting all similar (American, Chinese, European etc.) platforms. But not an outright ban.

Facebook threatening to close their site in Europe because of regulations is not the same as EU banning them.

> There is a risk Europeans won’t be able to use Facebook after the Irish data protection agency (DPC) doubles down on stopping data transfer between the US and the E.U.

https://blog.simpleanalytics.com/eu-moving-closer-to-faceboo...

I dunno, "stopping data transfer" sounds like a ban by another name to me.

EU countries are banning Google already. Never say never

No, that's not the case.

Judiciaries in multiple EU member states have judged Google to be breaching EU regulations (in regards to Google Analytics). That is not a ban; Google is welcome to do business in the EU if they observe EU laws and regulations.

Probably, yes. Though it also depends on the country. I would be more OK with Canada having my data than China or Russia.

>Which means that all countries other than the US also should be banning Facebook, and most US companies. As Snowden showed, most of them have a history of wire fraud.

If you assume equivalence between (1) Facebook and Tiktok and (2) the U.S. and China's data collection practices.

And I don't think those are equivalent, and therefore it's not necessary to treat the dissimilar cases the same.

It's much more valuable to them as a data source on others. So they try to rely on training and forbidding their own personnel from using such things. I assume the tik tok app has more security concerns than the platform itself.