Comment on If you live in the EU - you may also be faced with this Meta prompt. Info in text.
TheEntity@kbin.social 10 months agoIt's not about getting people to pay. It's about coercing them into giving their explicit consent. Yes, "coercing" and "consent" in the same sentence, let that sink in.
You’re absolutely correct… However it will be very interesting to see how this doesn’t violate the GDPR… recital 42 says:
“Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment.”
Link with more details: gdpr.eu/gdpr-consent-requirements/
Withdrawing consent in this case causes the detriment of having to either pay or lose access to the service… So this clearly isn’t “freely given” consent.
They cannot force meta to give their service for free. If they did that, then they could do it to every online service ever. Services cost money, so either it comes from data collection and ad revenue, or a subscription (or in Meta’s case, data collection and subscription). To force them to let users use the service without data collection or ads would mean forcing them to give away their service for free. Regardless of if you like meta, you cannot deny the fact it costs a shit ton of money to keep the service running. Obviously they make a shit ton of money^2^, but to attempt to force them to provide it for free makes no sense.
The GDPR does not in anyway disallow Facebook from running ads, regardless of the users consent. But if the user doesn’t consent, Facebook can’t run targeted ads on the user.
confusedbytheBasics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You choose to visit Facebook. They’ve always provided services funded by your data. Now you get to choose between that model or compensating them directly.
Where does the coercion come in?
PS, I hate Facebook and don’t use it in case that matters somehow.
TheEntity@kbin.social 10 months ago
EU recently accused them of not asking for data processing consent properly. This seems to be their response.
And same here, mate. No FB in sight for me either.
sitzathlet@feddit.de 10 months ago
This exactly. Facebook can only advertise to EU users with targeted ads if they explicitly opt in. The paid version only exists to give us a “choice”, making targeted ads legally acceptable as we now have an alternative by paying for the service. German newspaper sites have been applying this practice for quite a while now. Those that get fined are only those that ise the wrong legalese.
confusedbytheBasics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m still curious where coercion comes into it?
TheEntity@kbin.social 10 months ago
Let me rephrase to avoid this hyperbole. I mean that the users are presented with two options: one being pretty much bonkers and one being agreeing to the terms. FB was seemingly unwilling to make it a clear yes/no question it is (or should be according to GDPR) everywhere else and decided this manipulation is much more likely to get them the "yes" answers.