In this case, according to the linked article, it seems to me like meta tried to rules-lawyer their way around the GDPR, and got told no, the words "contract" and "consent" mean exactly what they usually do. If you're testing the boundaries of a law for your own benefit, sometimes you get told you've overstepped it, that's life - not an unpredictable regulatory environment. The spirit of the GDPR doesn't seem that unpredictable to me: you MUST get users consent before doing certain things, and they MUST be able to say no.

As far as I can tell, the "contract basis" exemption was meant for things like, if you order a physical product online then the retailer is allowed to pass your address on to the shipping company. Not for "by opening this app you agree to the following terms ...".

(There are indeed edge cases, such as advertising your service as "5 EUR/month but we'll give it for free if you agree to personalised ads" when you expect that most of your users will go for the "free" one. But that's not what meta did here. If your tagline is "It's free and always will be" you're stuck on this one.)

I think it's quite a leap from not being allowed to track people for advertising purposes as much as you'd like, to Europe "keeping their people poorer". For example, Norway is doing just fine but that's oil not tech; the problems in Greece are bigger than how much their facebook ads are personalised.

I'd take the German healthcare system over the US one any day.