The EU’s Data Protection Board (EDPB) has told large online platforms they should not offer users a binary choice between paying for a service and consenting to their personal data being used to provide targeted advertising.
In October last year, the social media giant said it would be possible to pay Meta to stop Instagram or Facebook feeds of personalized ads and prevent it from using personal data for marketing for users in the EU, EEA, or Switzerland. Meta then announced a subscription model of €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android for users who did not want their personal data used for targeted advertising.
At the time, Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at noyb, said: “EU law requires that consent is the genuine free will of the user. Contrary to this law, Meta charges a ‘privacy fee’ of up to €250 per year if anyone dares to exercise their fundamental right to data protection.”
Stop telling these companies. Send them a fine, and cease and desist. That’s is. They know, they don’t care. Just charge them until they comply
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I mean tracking exists because advertisers pay more for targeted ads, based on the tracking. I’d rather prefer it if the EU just made tracking illegal. Deal with the problem at its root.
Also maybe ban ads that track clicking on them (to then give a bigger payout). Advertisers should pay for simply showing me the ad and putting their brand/product in my brain.
And if we remove the option for targeted ads based on user tracking, the price for plain and simple old school ads might rise again, which is a very good thing for websites and users.Too bad that i left its platforms due to it.
That said, i dont expect this to be their last exploit of user rights.
Its actually fairly fast reaction from EU considering they ok introduced their pay or ok model in November.
I dont believe that paying really was a viable option anyway, as they set the price so high but it could be interesting to see how many actually chose to pay!
I was close to it. I’m an advocate for paying for services I use. We’re way too used to getting everything for free and we should be willing to pay for services we appreciate.
Which made me realise that Facebook especially I don’t appreciate. So I quit instead. It had value to me once but those times are long gone.
What bugged me and ultimately drove me to leave Instagram was the wording. In the prompt, they said something along the lines of “we will not use your data for advertising”. And I thought, wtf, I don’t want you to collect my data in the first place.
I read it as “no, we won’t use your data for advertising, but collect it anyways. If you ever dare to stop paying, we’ll retroactively process this data, too”
It had value to me too. I lost a lot of my online social life due to it. I honestly also considered paying but not the ridiculously high price that they were asking. Further more, paying would not stop them from tracking me and it would still have them show me recommended content. Its only the actual ads that you get rid of, but you’d still be seeing recommended commercial content from pages that META thinks suit your purchasing pattern.
Not aimed at the person I’m replying to specifically, but SUPPORT YOUR LEMMY INSTANCE. :-)
Comprehensive data is worth more for Meta, so my guess would be that the price model only existed to get users to consent.
Still interesting to see the numbers, yeah.
Serious question to Europeans: “How the hell did you get a group of people to actually give two fucks about you?” Seriously, here in the US even my goddamn local BOE is doing shady greedy shit. It’s all fucking corrupting so fast and without even a semblance of shame or privacy.
The EU is clueless. They think they are going to bypass the advertising model and that users are going to pay hundreds of dollars for all the services. They will continue to fall behind the US and China and they don’t have a plan. There is going to be backlash when news organization pull out just like Canada.
Oh yes please make Meta pull all their crap out of the EU. I can’t wait for it!
I’d be concerned with other services. Facebook is irrelevant in the larger policy push.
What services do you think are worth letting them violate my rights to my personal information?
Plenty. I don’t want to pay full price. YT, TikTok, and insta are great. I use sheets/docs for some minor personal stuff too.
Are you so deluded to think that there are no other service provider in EU ?
What’s going to replace YT? Or insta? You going to go door to door to have everyone convert to signal?
What’s going to replace YT? Or insta?
Maybe nothing in the short term, but it is not that improbable that something will emerge. YT and insta are here just because they were the first, not that it is clear that there is a market (or a use for these kind of services), once you remove the one who don’t follow the laws, other will emerge.
