The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta plans to move to a “Pay for your Rights” model, where EU users will have to pay $ 168 a year (€ 160 a year) if they don’t agree to give up their fundamental right to privacy on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. History has shown that Meta’s regulator, the Irish DPC, is likely to agree to any way that Meta can bypass the GDPR. However, the company may also be able to use six words from a recent Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling to support its approach.
When you bring it back around again to the current scale, so much more terrifying. Bc “they” becomes “humans” and speaking of humans as “the other” makes one what?
It ain’t that deep
“They” are the users. That makes him the owner. “They” means humans most of the time, since we don’t know any aliens
It seems like this might break the GDPR rules for consent:
Any element of inappropriate pressure or influence which could affect the outcome of that choice renders the consent invalid.
https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/consent/
or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance.
https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/
I’m not a lawyer though, so maybe a legal expert can chime in.
edit: the jury is still out it seems:
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/03/meta-subscription-vs-consent/
I think you’d have a hard time legally saying that they have to provide a service to users when that service is paid for by selling access to users via advertising, even if the user refuses to allow that access. It would probably qualify as “necessary for such performance”.
Having the extra option to pay to remove ads (while I think this price is ridiculously excessive) is a pretty reasonable compromise. Although it also feels kinda icky in the sense that it means you’re essentially turning privacy into a privilege for the wealthy. So I dunno, it’s a tricky issue.
I agree, but it’s not like using Meta is mandatory. You can decide not to use their services.
This point gets tricky once things become ubiquitous enough. If I did decide not to use their services (specifically Messenger), I’d be cutting myself off from communicating with 90% of my family, unfortunately. So yeah, it’s a choice that can be made… But how much of a choice is it, in practice?
just because you’re not using their service doesn’t mean they aren’t using your shadow profile
Necessary for performance of such service is like needing your address to ship you food or your identity data to connect you with individuals seeking to employ you. EG the info is necessary and relevant to the performance of the actual task at hand not I need all your data so I can sell it to make money. The alternative is so expansive that it would automatically authorize all possible data collection which is obviously not the intent of the law.
Techcrunch article is misunderstanding the meaning of freely given. It means not under duress and with full understanding. Paying for a service categorically doesnt contradict that.
However the odds of facebook explaining in plain english the egregious privacy breaches they do is unlikely so there’s prob a get out there anyway.
Can’t see how it breaches consent unless, as above they don’t explain what they’re doing to gather info for “personalised” ads.
Am lawyer, not gdpr /EU specialist though.
Of course, that just means you don’t see ads on Instagram/Facebook. They still collect your data, aggregate it and trade it with data brokers, so the ads you see elsewhere (not to mention prices you’re offered) will become more accurate. In fact, it’s not unlikely that the behavioural data of people who pay to opt out of being spammed with ads will be more valuable to data brokers.
Also, for those who don’t pay, the ads will get more frequent and annoying to induce them to pay. (See also: Spotify)
In fact, it’s not unlikely that the behavioural data of people who pay to opt out of being spammed with ads will be more valuable to data brokers.
True. This is why the AdNauseam extension doesn’t simply “hide” ads, but it goes out of its way to actually simulate clicks for ALL ads, causing algorithms to be unable to more accurately profile you and making the pay-per-click model fall on its face. If everyone did that, advertisers would have to pay for completely meaningless clicks making it no longer worth it to advertise this way.
Though it’s still not a solution to privacy, since it still gives some insight on your tastes by allowing them to know what websites do you frequently visit.
Anyone with more than a single brain cell should move to federated/decentralized platforms with a “Don’t pay but still have more rights than a Facebook user” approach
network effect – easy when it’s just you – but then you need to convince all your friends and family to switch over as well – and they’re not interested because it would mean convincing all their friends and family too … best you can hope for is a trust thermocline, a catastrophic event that’s more likely to leave millions of Facebook users floundering in anger than in curiosity at alternatives …
The approach I took is organize my contacts into three categories The people that I talk to on a daily basis, people that I occasionally talk to, and people who I rarely ever talk to. For the first group (less than 10 for me), mostly close friends and families, I just bullied them to use an alternative platform like Signal until they caved in. For the second group, I recommend Signal to them but also left them with my phone number so they can text me if needed. For the third group I did nothing. Then I proceeded to delete FB Messenger off all my devices. I still log in to the web version maybe once per month to check if anyone from the third group needs to reach me or if there’s any group events going on. I did not fully get off FB but I ended up reducing 99% of my usage and 100% of the garbage in app and location tracking. To me this is good enough
Dude you’d be surprised the amount of dumb mofos walking around you. I am 100% sure there will be some losers willing to pay that amount to use Facebook.
This price is absurd, sure. Even if I trusted Meta, there’s no way I’m paying that.
Having said that, they can charge whatever they want for the service. As company, their prices are up them.
I don’t get why you (no OP specifically, but in general) put it as if you must pay or give up your rights. We can just not use Meta, as many of us already been doing.
GDPR should be there to protect and enforce informed consent. Not to remove people’s ability to decide.
Why sholuld we regulate Meta’s prices and not whatever other suscription service exists out there?
Even if you do not have a Facebook account, you are still being tracked through Ghost Profiles.
So no, you can not “just not use Meta”.
They are so ingrained in the internet, that you can not get away, no matter hard you try.
You can alleviate this by using a VPN, configure you browser to minimize fingerprinting and use NoScript which allows you to block their trackers on third party websites.
Firefox’s creators also have an optional Facebook Container add-on which will sandbox all Facebook cookies in their own Fb-only bubble, for those who still want to use it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/facebook-container-prevent-facebook-tracking
