Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter rival will not launch this week in the EU as the billionaire grapples with strict regulations in the single bloc.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), the chief regulator in the EU which governs Meta, said the company had confirmed that it did not plan to launch its Threads app within the union at first.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, transferred UK users to US agreements earlier this year and its British operations are chiefly regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office after Brexit.
Threads, which is due to launch on Thursday, is Instagram’s answer to Elon Musk’s Twitter, seeking to take advantage of the billionaire’s often erratic stewardship of the social media app.
It is expected to use people’s Instagram accounts to log in and will suggest following users that people already follow on the photo-sharing app.
“Meta has confirmed to the DPC that they have no plans to roll out the service in the EU at present,” a spokesman for the Irish regulator said.
It is understood that the watchdog has not directly blocked Meta from launching the service, but the company itself has not demonstrated that it complies with EU data protections, and is waiting for more details around upcoming EU competition regulations.
The DPC typically asks for advance notice of Meta’s apps and features launching in the EU, and has held up the launch of services such as Facebook Dating and its Messenger Kids app.
It comes weeks after the DPC fined Meta €1.2bn (£1bn), Europe’s biggest ever privacy fine, and ordered it to stop transferring Europeans’ data to the US within months, saying it had broken rules on protecting user data.
The ruling led to a furious response from Meta which said it risked dividing the internet into silos.
On Tuesday, an EU court ruled against Meta in a case that could require the company to gain consent from users before targeting adverts at them.
An Apple App Store listing for the Threads app details that it can collect a large amount of data, including health and fitness information, browsing history, and location.
Meta has said it plans to launch the app in more than 100 countries. (Telegraph)