> The reality is you don't really have to transfer anything out of EU in order to keep your service running.
Practically speaking, running FB in a way that doesn't transfer anything out of the EU would involve either:
1. Siloing off the EU facebook, with no contact with the US side
or
2. Building a federated facebook, which transfers across e.g. only the timeline entries US friends are granted view access to
The former would not be well-accepted, as it would cut off communication from e.g. international relatives, and would be a rather large project to launch. The latter would be an even bigger rearchitecture, which would likely take, at a minimum, several years to complete, since it's unlikely this was ever anticipated as being a possibility when FB was originally created.
So, I sympathize with them - while in the long term they might be able to find a solution, in the short-to-medium term, FB would have no choice to stop operating.
Practically speaking, running FB in a way that doesn't transfer anything out of the EU would involve either:
1. Siloing off the EU facebook, with no contact with the US side
or
2. Building a federated facebook, which transfers across e.g. only the timeline entries US friends are granted view access to
The former would not be well-accepted, as it would cut off communication from e.g. international relatives, and would be a rather large project to launch. The latter would be an even bigger rearchitecture, which would likely take, at a minimum, several years to complete, since it's unlikely this was ever anticipated as being a possibility when FB was originally created.
So, I sympathize with them - while in the long term they might be able to find a solution, in the short-to-medium term, FB would have no choice to stop operating.