And so far it's only from one nation. Much of Europe shares a stronger belief in things like privacy and data protection than the US, and much of Europe has law in place to defend such things if the political will is there. Facebook can't afford to face fines at significant multiples of that scale, and even if it could, it's just asking for more severe action if it tries to force the issue.

The nightmare scenario for FB is probably losing access to parts of Europe for a while and as a result losing their critical mass of users so a rival social network can gain a foothold. With the digital native generation already far less attached to any one social network than their predecessors, that could become an existential threat to Facebook itself. As such, it seems highly unlikely that they will try to hold their position indefinitely on this one.