To be clear: I prefer to pay for things instead of having to see ads but 13€ / month!? For a meta product that has inherently user-hostile design patterns even without ads?
They are still going to be tracking you. That isn’t going away.
They just won’t use the tracking for the explicit reason of creating ads for you. But that’s only because you are paying for no ads.
I guarantee the data is logged for all other purposes, and that the data is logged for future ad usage if you ever unsubscribe.
Secondly this doesn’t necessarily equate the profit from your specific ads. This is the result of a legal battle within the EU. That’s the only reason it exists. The price is determined as ‘high enough to not get into more legal trouble’.
Meta already demonstrably does this. I deleted my real Facebook in like 2016. Around 2019-2020, I created a new burner account to browse Marketplace with nearly all fake info expect my name, phone, and email. And lo and behold all of my friend suggestions are people I know and mostly were on the old account. The most charitable I can imagine is that those suggestion had me in their contacts which they agree to share with Facebook (which is problematic af imo) but it is extremely likely they just retain all of data especially since many of the people I was suggested have never had my current number/email.
You deleted your real Facebook account… but did you delete the anonymous shadow account…?
It’s not that Facebook hasn’t deleted the data from your real account, it’s that they keep tons of “anonymous” shadow accounts, each one of us probably has a dozen of them from different interactions with Facebook, and your new account most likely got suggestions from getting paired with those.
From me? Of course not. Unfortunately, I do live in society and do have to share my contact info with others, and I’m guessing the vast majority of people just spam the “okay” button as Facebook asks for contact access, mic access, camera access, access to your colon, etc.
There is this neat horrifying thing the Facebook app does by tracking your location and figuring out where you work in order to suggest colleagues you can add as well as I have noticed just tracking if you happen to be near another device with a unique account on it.
The huge swath of very intimate data they are collecting on us is so not ok and they have all kinds of creepy stuff they don’t even admit too.
Oh the data will absolutely be used for ads elsewhere. It’s just how the ad game works. It’s all interconnected. I also don’t think it’s inherently bad, it’s just what it is. It’s how targeted ads work. They will be stopping that. They just also won’t have to buy data themselves about you because they’re not showing you ads anymore.
I also think this subscription model has run into criticism from EU legislators/regulators as well, which will have to be decided upon. Basically Meta isn’t out of the doghouse yet.
Really, I’d say strip Meta of all its assets and dissolve the whole thing, maybe try some of the heads for all the shit they’ve pulled in the ICC? Like failing to act on genocides or actively working to incite mass violence, political unrest, etcetera.
I think this is much more likely what they think people will pay. And/or what they think a percentage of people will pay that will cover costs/lost revenue from other users leaving. They have basically zero incentive to make it a 1-to-1 replacement.
It’s Meta’s nonsense reply to being forced by the European data protection authorities (EDPB) to get consent before processing users data, which they should have from the beginning: edpb.europa.eu/…/edpb-urgent-binding-decision-pro…
Yup just wanted to comment that it’s basically the “Yes you can track me” button vs the “I will pay” button. A lot of news sites already do the same thing. Not a paywall with content you can only see when payed but a pay or give consent to ads (which means tracking)
It’s not as clear cut as either of us thinks… To my surprise the Dutch seem to agree with you. But case law is being made as we speak consent.guide/cookie-or-pay-walls/
Nobody is forcing anyone, you are free to not use the service at any time.
What they’re doing is turning it into an explicitly paid sevice, and letting you choose whether you’d rather pay in money, or in personal data.
In an ideal world, everyone would have the option to decide getting their personal data gathered, or not, in exchange for some money/crypto, with competing data gatherers offering different packages and rewards, and they could use it to subscribe to whatever services they wished.
It’s not as clear cut as either of us thinks… To my surprise the Dutch seem to agree with you. But case law is being made as we speak consent.guide/cookie-or-pay-walls/
As far as my interpretation of the law goes… You can either block your website to all non paying visitors OR you also allow non paying visitors but you are not allowed to blackmail the free visitors to give up their privacy. Either everyone pays, or you have the right to privacy. Otherwise, long term, the internet will become divided and inaccessible to low income households. And that’s something the EU definitely doesn’t want to happen (net neutrality). I think the Dutch verdicts will be overruled by Europe one of these days… Or years :)
IANAL, but… I don’t think the law says that? My understanding is that the points are not related to each other:
You need prior explicit consent in order to gather non-essential tracking data
You can charge any amount for any functionality
That would mean all these combinations would be allowed:
Free, no tracking and no consent
Free, prior consent for tracking
Paid, no tracking and no consent
Paid, prior consent for tracking
If a site decides to only implement numbers 2 and 3… there wouldn’t be any conflict.
Either everyone pays, or you have the right to privacy. Otherwise, long term, the internet will become divided and inaccessible to low income households. And that’s something the EU definitely doesn’t want to happen (net neutrality)
Net neutrality doesn’t apply to services, only to carriers, who are considered more like utilities, but still aren’t required to offer a “free” tier. Services don’t need to offer an option accessible to everyone at all, they can specify whatever requirements they want (with only a few exceptions related to discrimination).
Large social media platforms… is where current legislative efforts are in. Above a certain number of users, they’re getting defined more as utilities, and subject to more requirements, but still no “free” tier.
The internet divide exists already: some households can afford 1Gbps unmetered symmetric fiber with Netflix, HBO and Disney+ and a few mobile lines with unlimited calls and 50GB/month data for 100€/month… while others can barely affford a prepaid 100MB/month mobile connection for 1€/month… but it’s fine as long as it’s a divide based on service pricing, not carrier traffic discrimination.
Sorry for the downvote, especially seen that case law hasn’t been settled yet nor if your, or my, reasoning is the correct one. I just hate your arguments though it looks like you work as a part-time Dutch judge :))
Don’t be sorry, just don’t use downvotes to express your opinion… use your words.
If you don’t like my arguments, go ahead and propose others.
For starters, I see you referring to “case law”, which sounds like a US thing. In the EU, case decisions generally don’t shape the law, except Supreme Court decisions, and even then lawmakers can inform or reform those decisions. It’s usually more accurate to define a logical reasoning from the bare law, rather than expect decisions in one case to influence others.
I’m not an English native speaker nor a Lawyer. I base it on how I understood the law through articles in the years since it was introduced. We can go back and forth, but there’s nothing I can add that isn’t in the article I also linked in the replies. Thanks :)
They definitely coordinated this and did it with all the other social media. Is nobody buying their data anymore? Brave of them to straight up admit they’re using your data for ads though, and they’re implying it’s a bad thing.
I have absolutely zero faith in Instagram’s ability to manage this. They can’t even handle account access right. I use IG for business (I’m a performer) and have been locked out for a month with full access to my Facebook, email, authenticator app, phone, other accounts - you name it. Their shit is just straight up broken and throws error messages when trying to log in.
Meta is absolute shit when it comes to supporting their users. I “deleted” my original Facebook account that I started in 2005 (you can’t actually delete an account, only deactivate it, which is bullshit) around 2008 or 2009, and created a new one. Somehow someone started posting diet ads from that account about 13 years later (about 6 months back).
I emailed support and said someone had hacked my old account and was posting diet ads as me, but I no longer had access to the account because it was supposed to be removed over a decade ago. The profile pictures of both accounts were clearly the same person (me), the email addresses were the same, and so were the displayed account names. Support said they couldn’t do anything about it because they couldn’t verify that I owned the account that was posting ads! 🤦♂️🤬
I sent them a response that pretty much said “are you fucking joking right now?!” and didnt get a response back, but the ads apparently stopped.
It’s disappointing that they only exclude the information use regarding ads.
So they will still track everything users do and profile them, just like any other free user. And they can sell to everyone else who pays for user data (e.g. AI learning, market research etc.). With that wording, they could even sell to ad companies, if they e.g. use the data for some algorithm optimisation in their tech department. So they leave the door open to keep selling the data to 3rd parties, while already charging the user ‘starting at’ 12.99€.
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