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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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But they're not selling to advertisers in Europe. They're selling to them in the US, because that's where they are. How do they enforce a fine against a company that isn't physically located in the EU?

Twitter has an EU HQ in Dublin that runs the EU subsidiary. Post-Musk, they still have over 500 staff here. Most of those are salespeople, selling ads to EU customers.

I don't know the breakdown for Twitter specifically, but typically American MAGA/Faang/whatever firms make about 25 - 30% of their revenue in Europe. It's not nothing

Facebook's EMEA headquarters, which is Europe, Middle East and Africa, is located in Dublin. The EU has regulations for businesses doing business in Europe to EU citizens using their data.

You may not have seen the little pop-up banner on some American sites about "We see you are located in the EU and under GDPR we can't accept your details/you can't access this site", but it's because American companies do not have the level of data protection demanded by GDPR and if they aren't compliant, they can't do business with/handle data of EU citizens.

Whatever Facebook does in America is its own business, but it's a multinational corporation. If it's doing business in Europe and handling data of EU citizens, it has to be compliant with GDPR, or not handle that data.

Huh? Twitter has executives and employees in europe, and sells to advertisers in europe.

Presumably, they could work with the US government to hash it out.

The ole reverse DeBeers?