It's not a negotiation tactic. They are just sick of EU and their ish. I'm too. It's obvious they are just exploiting big US companies to extract money.

Nonsense. Meta has invested enormous amounts of effort into EU compliance and lobbying. Their President of Global Affairs is Nick Clegg, former Deputy PM of the United Kingdom and one of the best EU-connected Brits that money can buy.

I believe that Zuck views EU regulations as an opportunity to build a moat because they can afford to comply and they've patiently laid the groundwork, whereas rapidly growing upstarts like TikTok will find it hard to spin that up from nowhere.

Multi-billion dollar companies aren't "sick of" things on a whim. They have shareholders, and a business to run.

Facebook needs to protect their tracking-based advertising business. Not only EU privacy laws directly impact it in the 27 countries, but often act as a precedent for similar laws elsewhere.

Or, some US tech companies grew massive and greedy off violating the privacy of hundreds of millions of people and can't think of a business model that works when even the most basic data rights rules are implemented.

Its not the money, they are annoyed over the flagrant disregard of their rules over privacy and election meddling.

I'm also sick and tired of American companies coming to Europe and knowingly just ignoring laws they don't like (many of these laws predating these companies) and then arrogantly and brazenly claim that the problem is somehow with the laws and that they somehow "helped" us by "disrupting" things all the while wanking over the fat pile of cash they made out of "helping" us. This is not a "company"; this is a criminal organisation.

Obey our laws of fuck off. It's very simple. This is how it works literally everywhere, including in the US.

> Withholding Threads is most likely a negotiation tactic in the broader context of how EU’s new Digital Markets Act “gatekeeper” rules are applied to Meta.

Perhaps. This has the potential to massively backfire though: "Threads is not available in EU and we found that it doesn't really matter and we're fine without it".

Or someone else with enough budget and online presence will launch an alternative worldwide and become dominant.