Meta and the rest are already regularly in trouble with EU regulators over their data gathering and retention policies. Threads, billed as the killer of Twitter, a platform that has tumbled into chaos under the leadership of mercurial tycoon Elon Musk, has added more than 100 million users in its first week in app stores but Zuckerberg’s firm Meta said it could not be released in Europe because of “regulatory uncertainty” around the Digital Markets Act, an antitrust regulation that will not come into force until next year. Meta will give Threads to the rest of the world and Europeans will become so vexed at missing out that they will pressure the EU to water down the Digital Markets Act. Who will lose more ?