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.
Media are paywalling content but Facebook doesn't really produce anything other than their platform.
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.
Ha! Get rekt, Meta.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
The original article contains 556 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, worrying that I don't see as many ads as the Yanks do.
Or the service will just go away 🤷♂️ Or you end up spending $200/mo replacing them.
Oh no, not the Facebook! I can't even imagine the world without all the good that it does!
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.
lmao
tfw your national strategic reserve of facebook posts is depleted
It'll be a service useful to you some day 🤷♂️
I always thought Facebook was useful to me. Until one day I decided to stop. A week later I deleted my account.
Turns out Facebook wasn't useful to me.
And I can't see a future where it will be.
WhatsApp is currently useful to me.
And considering EUs current ruling, I imagine there will be WhatsApp compatible apps soon. Besides, if meta leaves the EU, everyone will move to telegram or signal or whatever.
So no, I don't think it will be useful to me one day. And I'd be quite happy to see it go
what scenario are you imagining where any of meta's product offerings are useful to me?
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.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
