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.
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a service that started out as a way to stalk girls turned out so bad? who knew?
They trust me, those dumb fucks. -zuckerberg
Lovingly referred to by his employees as “The Eye of Sauron”
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 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/
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
Hmm, never thought of that. I guess the reddit api fiasco was a catastrophic event.
Do they forgot about the meaning of the world “RIGHTS”? Doesn’t feel very legal to lock users rights behind a paywall.
You have a right to not use their website. It’s completely legal, as long as they’re upfront
As long as they give you an option to remove your data if you don’t agree to the terms, that’s ok
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?
I haven’t used anything Meta-related in almost 10 years and my life has failed to disintegrate. It’s actually been lovely.
As absurd as the price may seem, that is actually about how much money they make from selling user data. Of course, given their track record I don’t feel inclined to trust this “pinkey promise” of not selling the data in some form anyways.
So it’s time for our EU politicians to step up then…
Hey, US, where are you in this? We need you guys to get on board with the right to privacy…
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US government here, we buy the data from parties like Meta to save on the costs of surveillance and to get around laws that prevent us from spying on citizens. It’s not in our interest to legislate restrictions
Consumer protection is not on our political radar. Maybe California will do something.
I feel like there is a balance to this.
- I hate all the stuff Facebook/Meta has done, but a service from a for-profit company will have a cost.
- At the same time, if you make the cost so excessive that no one will actually go for it, it’s not really an alternative and rather a loophole for the law.
What makes more sense is to set the price point around equal to the amount made / user. I REALLY doubt that they are making $168 from each person per year.
I don’t have the data with me, but would a quick and dirty
total_revenue/total_usersgive a good estimate? Assuming total_revenue doesn’t include other products like devicesNo one is saying they shouldn’t be allowed to run ads. But that they should be allowed to run highly specific and targeted ads is not by any means a forgone conclusion.
Television, newspapers, ads out in the “wild” and whatnot. All manage without individualizing ads. And Facebook could as well. But it’s more profitable to say to hell with our users privacy, let’s individualize the shit out of those ads.
That’s the problem.
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I think this will still be deceptive. These companies have proven countless times that they can’t be trusted, because every word of theirs is a lie.
They’ll just take the money and do the same.
It gets known they mine paying users too for their data? Ooopsie, it was a mistake (that we let you know about it), won’t happen again, pinky promise!deleted by creator
when the punishment is less than the profit, there’s no incentive not to deceive …
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I’m in the US, and I want this here. Not with that price, but I think that there should be an option.
Meta, Google, etc. should calculate how much revenue they could make from me, and then charge me that amount, or something like 10% more. If I pay it, they don’t sell my data (I’ve bought an exclusive right to it). That way I’m either paying for the service by being the product, or by paying what they’d make from me. Seems fair.
How about no and my data is mine to start and end with. If they make money from me, they give me that money or the data is theirs.
Then don’t use Meta products?
If the reason why social media is free to use is because it’s subsidized or paid for by personalized ads, and they now can’t use personalized ads, I really don’t see the problem in putting it behind a paywall. Social media isn’t a public service. It’s a business. We aren’t entitled to Instagram’s free unlimited video hosting in the same way that we aren’t entitled to free movies from Netflix or free electricity from a private utility company.
Meta isn’t the only player in the network. I know how data is used but my response was to the parent comment.
