European Union (EU) officials said the European launch of Meta’s new social media platform, Threads, will be delayed due to privacy concerns.
Press reported on Tuesday that a spokesperson for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said that the government agency has been in contact with Meta about the new platform. The spokesperson added that it will not be rolled out in the EU at this point.
The EU declined to comment on News inquiry.
Meta on Wednesday night officially launched Threads, which is widely seen as a new competitor to Twitter, which is now owned by Elon Musk.
Twitter has come under a number of criticisms during Musk’s reign.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that 10 million people had registered for the app in the first seven hours after it launched in the U.S. and other countries such as Japan, Australia, and Canada.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the company is working on its new service in other countries and continue to evaluate whether to launch in Europe, noting that “the upcoming regulatory uncertainty has played into our decision not to launch right now.”
“Europe continues to be an incredibly important market for Meta and we hope to make new products available here in future,” the Meta spokesperson told.
Sources close to Meta told that the company wanted more information about the EU’s Digital Markets Act before it put out Threads in the EU.