Platforms should not confront users with 'binary choice' over personal data use
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."
Very interesting. Lots of news websites are operating on a very similar principle, with the user having to either accept all cookies or pay for an expensive subscription that allows them to opt out of tracking cookies. I've always thought that this couldn't possibly be legal.
If they just charged you for not showing you ads, that might be an alternative solution for monetisation, rather than the current model of charging you for not accepting cookies.
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.
We have to be real here, that nobody has ever really consented to being tracked in the way these giant sites do it. Nobody has looked at that form and gone "I'm perfectly OK with 1698 different advertising agencies knowing my real name and interests, every time I'm online"
They go "yeah, whatever, get that popup the fuck out of my face so I can read this fascinating article about some 19 year-old pop star's boob job".
Part of it should be legislation. Another part should be browsers rendering fingerprinting to be completely ineffective.
Opinion: "Personalized ads" are a ruse and don't actually work better than regular ads. They only have a higher click-through rate because they are more often disguised as normal content on the platform and people are simply being tricked into clicking on them.
Until a court rules in favour of this no one will budge as this is just an opinion. I do hope it comes to that as since Spain ruled that charging for not planting cookies was a okay browsing news sites has been miserable.
It followed requests by the Dutch, Norwegian, and Hamburg Data Protection Authorities and complaints about Meta, the social media company that owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
"Most users consent to the processing in order to use a service, and they do not understand the full implications of their choices," EDPB chair Anu Talus said in a statement.
But a Meta spokesperson said: "Last year, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the subscriptions model is a legally valid way for companies to seek people's consent for personalized advertising.
In November last year, privacy activist group noyb (None Of Your Business) filed a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority against Meta for introducing the subscription model.
At the time, Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at noyb, said: "EU law requires that consent is the genuine free will of the user.
In February, consumer groups filed their own complaint to stop Meta giving EU users a "fake choice" between the subscription offer and consenting to being profiled and tracked via data collection.
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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.
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.