Folks want Facebook or whatever to be regulated into some perfect idea they have in their heads of how it should work and how it should be regulated. Sorry, many people have many views on that, and you're never going to be happy with an outcome. Even this article - Facebook is complying with EU rules/regulations and now you're not happy that your voice isn't heard through your preferred form of political activism. If Facebook allows this content, they break EU laws, or they have to allow some content you disagree with and now you're mad.
I don't know why people, right, left, or sideways keep putting up with this stuff.
My money is that this is manufactured by some PR team.
Possibly the Ad's text was purposely inflammatory (something like "overthrow the patriarchy" or something) so that they can say it was banned.
> Ending Political, Electoral and Social Issue Advertising in the EU in Response to Incoming European Regulation
I guess rather than micro-regulate what constitutes "designed to influence an election/referendum, voting behavior, or a legislative/regulatory process", they just decided to refuse to run ads for anything potentially politically or socially "sensitive".
I'm guessing that they also refuse to run ads for things that are less socially acceptable such as anti-feminism which I would say is a good thing.
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral...
Move along now, little sheep, don’t make a racket. Can’t disturb count Zuckerberg as he’s pleasuring his masters.
No. Meta enforces a broad ban because they don't want EU to regulate them, so they drag their feet and create the most possible "unwanted collateral damage" so people will get upset at the regulation instead of the company. So, pieces like this from The Guardian are surely needed.
Other examples of this bullshit being cookie consent dialogs and Apple acting like a victim for being forced to open their platform a bit.
It also defines political ad narrowly as placed by a political actor or campaign, or intended to influence some part of the political process, like voting, legislation, or regulatory action.
I don't know what motivation Facebook has to automatically limit certain political advertising and not other, but it certainly has nothing to do with EU regulation
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2026/09/19/the-lucr...
Meta aren't 'forced' to do anything other than treat the fines imposed by their lack of adherence to the laws of the territories they operate in as a BAU cost. Meta's profits run roughly the same as the GDP of Paraguay ($60.46 billion in 2025) - i.e. that Country's total value added by an economy through wages, profits, and taxes. Their revenue is on track to exceed the Ukrainian GDP next year
This year alone Meta will pay up to $16.7bn to settle landmark US legal actions as result of not obeying US law, reporting $2.4 billion in legal fees in Q2 alone.
The sum total of the EU fines issued (read: appealed and not collected) likely won't even exceed Metas legal fees for the 2026 calendar year; i.e.:
April 2025 - €200m (DMA "consent or pay" advertising model) November 2024 - €797.72m (Antitrust re:Facebook Marketplace) September 2024 - €90m (Storage of user passwords in plaintext) May 2023 - €1.2b (Unlawful EU-U.S. user data transfers) January 2023 - €390m (Forcing personalized ads via terms of service) December 2022 - €251m (2018 data breach and system design lapses) November 2022 - €265 (Inadequate protection against data scraping) September 2022 - €405m (Instagram children's privacy)
That’s Meta response. There is no mention of any regulation in that article.
I don't have any of those but I do need one messenger to communicate with my buddies in the EU. As I'm a "fuck the Zuck" person and an "ABM" (Anything But Microsoft), Telegram is my poison.
I don't have any doubt: I know it's not E2EE (and I doubt that one-on-one encrypted communication --it's a setting you MUST turn on-- in Telegram is actually really E2EE).
But Telegram is neither from the Zuck nor from Microsoft, so that's a big win for me.
Also basically everyone in the EU has Telegram now.
There is a particular amount of economic privilege in this statement. While I am a person who doesn't use those services (and recently stopped using reddit), a large number of people are required to use those services for their job, so they can get money, so they can put food on the table.
Worse these companies ingrain themselves into a lot of physical locations and data collection from other sources so your not free of them.
Individual boycotts rarely work, even ones that attract attention from a good number of people, companies are better at waiting than individuals seem to be. Political action has a much higher likelihood of success when driven by smaller motivated groups.
It’s the same bullshit as “we could stop climate change if only we bothered to bring cloth bags to the store instead of picking up a disposable plastic bag each time”.
“We” don’t have any power. And once you accept that, you can stop blaming yourself and your neighbors for the world you live in, and direct your anger where it belongs.
I would hazard a guess theres stuff that I don't agree with you on, and we would want certain laws written differently. Its important to remember that we all vote for what we think is right, based on a system evolved over thousands of years to cater for human fallibility. The modern rhetoric of "us against the billionaires" is simply not how the world works, despite how much people want it to.
<Ned Flanders' father>: We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!
People who say this have never tried, do nothing themselves to contribute to improving the problem or to convince others or the government to improve the problem besides perhaps complaining on the internet in a bubble of likeminded people who don't need their minds changed.
Where does it belong?
Their argument is so generic they would probably say something equally as generic and useless like 'The billionaires"
Your take is exactly what keeps people apathetic and reliant on others.
"It's someone else's fault and someone else's responsibility" is what you're saying.
It relieves the individual of the outcome of their actions. 8 billion people matter.
If I were an abuser, I would LOVE to hear my victims say they are powerless. Think about that.
I doubt that even 8,000 people “matter” in the sense of having meaningful power.
causally I think this is because we all grew up watching government operate glacially and so nobody really believes there's an alternative... but I eagerly await the day that millennials realize they can just win every election and fix everything that sucks about their world by basically trying really hard and coordinating with each other.
jmclnx•1h ago
I know banning or forcing meta to obey laws in the US is impossible due to bribes (political contributions), but in the EU I would think meta could at the very least be reined in.
ActionHank•1h ago
fooqux•1h ago
1attice•59m ago
ericmay•40m ago
mminer237•1h ago
tygon•46m ago
dgellow•24m ago
And your point about Meta being forced to act is also wrong, companies aren’t just passive institutions that only react to regulations, they constantly take decisions and actions, and regularly manufacture that type of situation as a way to lobby regulators
tantalor•43m ago
The answer is right in front of your eyes: theguardian.com
watwut•40m ago
This strategy of "we will lie about what the law enforces, so that we can blame the regulator instead of the company" is getting old.
mhitza•54m ago
Plenty of hands seem to be well greased over there given how long it takes to issue fines for clear&cut violations of EU regulation.
thesmtsolver2•50m ago
Wow, Europeans do have a penchant for recursively banning things :)
watwut•37m ago
troupo•35m ago