Facebook users could miss out on new features if European regulators keep up privacy efforts, site warns

Site’s executive says that if Facebook’s costs go up, it won’t be able to roll out new features to users

Conversations about the general election on Facebook have surged (Getty Images)

Facebook users won’t be given new features if European regulators move to regulate the site because of privacy concerns, the site has warned.

The site is the subject of privacy probes from various regulators across Europe. But the site said that those investigations should be shut down because they will end up costing it too much money.

If countries in Europe each look to regulate how Facebook uses data and does business, it could push costs up leaving Facebook unable to roll out new features, threatened the site’s vice-president of public policy in Europe in the Financial Times.

“For internet companies, too, national regulation would pose serious obstacles,” wrote Richard Allan. “Facebook’s costs would increase, and people in Europe would notice new features arriving more slowly, or not at all.”

He also said that increased scrutiny could ruin the climate for startups in Europe, and that development everywhere would be threatened.

“The biggest victims would be smaller European companies,” he wrote. “The next big thing might never see the light of day.”

Allan was writing in response to increasing concern among some European countries about how Facebook uses their citizens data. Different countries including Belgium and the Netherlands have opened investigations into Facebook, and the site says that they should instead be talking to regulators in Ireland, where Facebook’s European headquarters are based.

In Ireland, Facebook is regulated by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. The site often points to that regulation when it is questioned over whether its use of data should be scrutinised more closely and by national governments.

If individual countries are able to look into Facebook’s work, it would end up costing the site too much money, Allan claimed.