EU tells Meta it can't paywall privacy

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/18/eu_meta_subscription_privacy/

by rntn • 2 years ago

67 129 2 years ago

To me this is the most egregious opinion that came out of GDPR (I've seen in argued in other GDPR threads). That a company is required to provide a service even at a loss.

A company should have every right to deny service. Untargeted advertising pays 90+% less than targeted advertising. If they lose money by serving a user content because they denied targeted advertising, they should be able to deny them service or have them pay up. They're just legislating into law the Meta (and others) have to provide a service at a loss for a growing number of users.

abyssin• 2 years ago

They have the right to stop operating in the legal zone where it isn't profitable for them.

xamolxix• 2 years ago

Meta is free to close shop (in the EU) if it's not worth it to them. Not all business have the right to exist.

ToucanLoucan4• 2 years ago

Even further: No business has the right to exist.

If your business can't make money because you have to respect the rights and freedoms of your customers, then close your shop up. If your business can't make money because you have to pay your workers enough to live, then close up shop. If your business can't make money because you have to abide the laws of the countries in which you operate, then close up shop.

This bizarre entitlement that entrepreneurs have, especially but far from exclusively in the tech space, that just because they want their business to exist and make money that they therefore have this strange innate right to transact and draw profit, even when providing subpar service, paying subpar wages, cutting corners in the work they do, etc. etc. has been entertained for far too long. The way I was always taught it, markets select for firms that provide service well, at competitive cost, and business is a RISK because of those things. Sometimes risks don't pay off.

user_78322• 2 years ago

A company should have every right to deny service.

Pretty sure that's legal and Meta could do it if they wanted to.

dspillett5• 2 years ago

> A company should have every right to deny service.
Pretty sure that's legal and Meta could do it if they wanted to.

It isn't entirely that blank & white. They can't deny service for refusing to let them do something you have a legal right to refuse to let them do. They can refuse service for refusing to pay, but the relevant laws don't allow giving up your privacy rights to be equated to paying. The law doesn't allow you to “pay” for things with your human rights (of which it considers privacy one).

This leads to “pay or no service” being okie dokie, but “pay or give up right or no service” (or just “give up right or no service”) not being.

This partly comes from a desire not to create a new underclass, with some able to pay to maintain their rights and the others effectively losing them because they can't afford other options. There would be a two class system anyway (those that can pay and those that don't have the service), but not having access to facebook is not seen as threatening like not having one of your human rights (as defined by relevant law) is.

zoobab• 2 years ago

"That a company is required to provide a service even at a loss."

That's the conclusion some privacy folks came to after the GDPR came to life. Those predictions from 10y ago are not materializing.

basisword3• 2 years ago

That’s not the case at all. If they can’t serve EU users profitably without violating their privacy they have every right to pull out of the market. If you can’t run your business without violating the rights of the citizens then you can’t do business.

ApolloFortyNine5• 2 years ago

If they can’t serve EU users profitably without violating their privacy they have every right to pull out of the market.

The article clearly mentions how they are only 'violating the rights' if the user chooses to agree with it rather than paying a subscription. It's a trade.

Why do you think people are entitled to consume free content with no strings attached?

freetanga2• 2 years ago

I would argue it’s the opposite: if your business model is unsustainable while observing the law, then you don’t have a business. Close and pull out.

SigmundurM2• 2 years ago

Consent to having your privacy violated has to be actual genuine consent. Charging a privacy fee up to €250 a year I don't think can be reasonably interpreted as genuine consent.

ApolloFortyNine5• 2 years ago

Then what is a reasonable price? They could define it. Though it does sound like in the article the opinion from the board that any price is too much.

I also have no idea how they came up with that number, since earlier in the article they mention 9.99 and 12.99 a month.

398968804• 2 years ago

The key here is that Meta is not just “A company.” Meta is effectively the communication infrastructure of a vast swathe of EU citizens. The EU has decided they have strong opinions about the administration of this infrastructure.

BlueTemplar3• 2 years ago

Since this came up, it would be nice if they also had strong opinions (and followup actions) about a related infrastructure :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843068

x0x02• 2 years ago

I think this only bans consent or pay. Nothing in the edpb opinion prevents just charging (we can call it pay or pay).

nottorp• 2 years ago

A company should have every right to deny service.

Sure. They can pull out of the EU if they can't follow the rules.

If they lose money by serving a user content

Btw, don't the users who generate said content have a right to be paid for it? Social networking doesn't generate shit, it's their users that do the work for them.

Untargeted advertising pays 90+% less than targeted advertising.

But then they'll be able to drop the targeting infrastructure and reduce their hosting costs by at least two orders of magnitude :)

Workaccount23• 2 years ago

I think we are going to go back to paywalls and subscriptions for everything.

Providers and users have been unable to strike a balance, with users being entitled to free content and providers being shameless about 3rd party data sharing. It's a self-reinforcing cycle, where intrusive advertising perpetuates ad-blocking and ad-blocking perpetuates more intrusive advertising.

In my opinion the best solution would be something like what Brave is perusing, a seamless integrated micropayment system where site owners can charge penny fractions in order to view content. Yes, I know, I can easily think of all the downsides to this system.

The core problem is that no one has figured out a good monetization method for internet content for 30 years. It's either pay with credit card or pay with personal data.

BlueTemplar3• 2 years ago

Everything commercial. Good riddance I say, the Web has become too commercial.

Also, patronage-style funding does work (even if the crowdsourced one somewhat fragile against deplatforming and not exempt of its own issues).

Youden• 2 years ago

The problem isn't that they charge at all but that they charge too much. The court ruled that a "reasonable" charge can be asked but at an ARPU of $45, it seems Meta is asking users who value their privacy for twice as much money ($120/yr) as the average user gives them in ad revenue.

ajmurmann6• 2 years ago

How does the court decide what's "reasonable"? What does "reasonable" even mean? Isn't it up to consumers and the company to find the equilibrium price? Does the court have some arcane economic formulas I'm unaware of?

fnordian_slip• 2 years ago

This is sibling to the complaints many in the US like to voice against minimum wage (that it makes it impossible for some businesses to stay afloat).

The obvious counterargument imho is, that no-one owes these people a profitable business. If you can't do business without exploiting people or destroying their privacy, you can't do business. Someone else will come along and fill that niche without the exploitation or destruction of privacy, and they deserve our custom more than these other entities. And if no-one is able to fill it, that's OK, too. Not every possible idea needs to be profitable.

waffleiron• 2 years ago

That a company is required to provide a service even at a loss.

They don't

A company should have every right to deny service.

They do.

They're just legislating into law the Meta (and others) have to provide a service at a loss for a growing number of users.

They don't.

---

You can't just do something illegal just because you are offering a paid version where you don't do the illegal thing.

JohnMakin• 2 years ago

woo boy defining meta products as “providing a service” is a stretch. They’re absurdly thin wrappers around a platform whose only purpose is to hoover up your data and sell it.

ptx• 2 years ago

Untargeted advertising pays 90+% less than targeted advertising.

Perhaps if this kind of targeting is banned, the advertising budgets will be spent of untargeted advertising instead, raising the prices of non-targeted advertising?

Perhaps advertisers (at least those with useful products) will find that less invasive targeting is good enough, such advertising e.g. knitting-related products next to knitting-related content?

66fm472tjy7• 2 years ago

A company should have every right to deny service

Plenty of utility companies are already being forced to provide service. As the EDPB opinion says, a lot of big tech is

decisive for participation in social life or access to professional networks, even more so in the presence of lock-in or network effects
Untargeted advertising pays 90+% less than targeted advertising

I don't think that such a large difference is rational. "Untargeted" advertising can still be based on the content being viewed, just not on surveilling the viewer.

If they lose money by serving a user content because they denied targeted advertising, they should be able to deny them service or have them pay up.

As I understand it the opinion does not categorically rule this out

Controllers should ensure that the fee is not such as to inhibit data subjects from making a genuine choice

That is why NOYB also focuses[0] on the fact the the fee is disproportionate:

The current average revenue for programmatic advertising in the EU is € [1.41] per user - across all websites per month [...] visiting the top 100 websites can already cost more than € [1500] per year if you do not consent to tracking

---

[0] https://noyb.eu/en/statement-edpb-pay-or-okay-opinion, https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/...

dspillett5• 2 years ago

That a company is required to provide a service even at a loss.

No. The company is required to provide any services it provides without breaking the law, which includes privacy legislation. If they can't operate without making a loss without breaking the law, then they are not forced to make a loss, they can always just stop service.

A company should have every right to deny service.

They do, but not on the basis of refusing to consent to a reduction of your privacy rights as defined and protected by the law. If they should be able to break piracy laws in order to be able to provide service, what other laws / human rights / other should they be able to break too? If a delivery company can't turn a profit without being faster by ignoring road safety laws, should we allow them to break those laws in order to keep offering their services?

Untargeted advertising pays 90+% less than targeted advertising.

If stalky advertising did not exist, non-stalky advertising would attract higher prices. The difference in success rate between targetted and untargeted advertising is incredibly small (the difference is orders of magnitude smaller than that pricing differential) in real terms so those doing the advertising would not miss out much. Advertising as a whole, targetted or not, is not nearly as successful as the industry would have us believe. This is why so much effort is made to try make some adverts seem as much as possible like personal recommendations instead of paid promotions, and so much effort goes into other forms of astroturfing (fake reviews, paying to have bad ratings dropped, etc.).

The advertising industry is conning its own customers to an extent as well as us, cleverly abusing statistics to make their services look as worth paying for as possible. This is not unlike parts of the spam industry: those buying access to send to mailing lists are conned into believing a higher rate of return is possible than is actually likely. The advertising/spam industry gets paid, the advertiser pays in money, we “pay” in irritation.

mschuster91• 2 years ago

Gooooooood.

Now it's time to target the myriad of newspapers that have all chosen to go that same path - and even if you pay, you still get heaps of tracking crap.

freetanga2• 2 years ago

Turn off JavaScript. That works most of the time for me.

coldpie• 2 years ago

Rather, use NoScript and use its allowlist as needed to fix poorly made websites.

vincnetas• 2 years ago

The burden to fight this should not be shifter to end user. It's like saying buy a gun to ensure your safety. It's police job to ensure public safety.

ajmurmann6• 2 years ago

That still seems like a very unequal application of law. Newspapers -> disable JS, Meta -> even if you consent, it's illegal

noisy_boy• 2 years ago

Hit them where it hurts, don't click on ad/affiliate links. The lesser the validation of ads resulting in sales, the lesser the value of advertising on these platforms and consequently, lesser the value of data collection for targeted ads. Click-starve these fuckers.

aspyct• 2 years ago

You pay for impressions.

exe342• 2 years ago

I've only ever clicked on ads by accident. Does anybody actually click through and buy? The few products I came across through ads, I googled for them at a later date, and I can't even think of any that I ended up buying.

cess114• 2 years ago

Yes, it's common that people don't really distinguish between ads and other things that show up on their screens. Many also hook up their accounts to shady companies that quiz them and tell them what kind of wizard they are because they think it's fun to have the screen tell them little stories where they are involved.

otterley8• 2 years ago

John Gruber’s take should make folks think twice about what’s going on here:

“”” What makes this all the more outrageous is that many major publishers in the EU use this exact same “pay or OK” model to achieve GDPR compliance — and none offer a free alternative with non-targeted ads. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Der Spiegel to offer free access without ads. Christ, they don’t even let you look at their homepage without paying or consenting to targeted ads. And Spotify quite literally brags about its ad targeting. But Spotify is an EU company, so of course it wasn’t designated as a “gatekeeper” by the protection racketeers running the European Commission.

They’re not saying “pay or OK” is illegal. They’re saying it’s illegal only if you’re a big company from outside the EU with a very popular platform. “””

https://daringfireball.net/2024/04/edpb_meta_pay_or_ok

cess114• 2 years ago

He could have checked whether Spotify is hunted by data protection authorities before he claimed they don't.

I wonder why he didn't.

https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2023/imy-issue...

otterley8• 2 years ago

He didn't say that Spotify had never been investigated or found liable for misbehavior. He said that Spotify is permitted (as of now) to continue to target its ads and content, which is true.

littlestymaar3• 2 years ago

The fact that the EU commission doesn't have the political leverage to protect its citizens against the greed of European corporations (because member states oppose that) is a pity, but we should still rejoice to see they at least have the leverage against the worst offenders because they don't have enough political power in the EU to protect their malpractices.

bluelu• 2 years ago

They explicitly added an exception later on for newspapers (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38114111)

ajmurmann6• 2 years ago

Well, if they made the bizarrely uneven application of law explicit, it's all cool...

gpderetta2• 2 years ago

Sorry, I don't see in that thread where the exception is coming from. Can you be more explicit?

fransje262• 2 years ago

No. It is just as illegal for newspapers.

https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-tech-news-site-heisede-illega...

basisword3• 2 years ago

I put little stock in Gruber’s takes. He should stick to the Apple rumours. If he has a problem with DerSpiegel he should make a complaint. Not only that, but this ruling is setting a precedent - it doesn’t only apply to Meta but instead applies to the consent or pay model generally. Only time will tell the consequences of the ruling.

otterley8• 2 years ago

it doesn’t only apply to Meta but instead applies to the consent or pay model generally.

No it doesn't. He points out, correctly, that there are EU companies that are doing so now, aren't being threatened, and will probably continue to be permitted to do so.

Macha• 2 years ago

Why did they take so long to act against Facebook? People here were complaining about how little teeth it had against the big players, until they moved against the big players. Now they're claiming how little teeth it has against the long tail. Their time will come too.

xyzzy_plugh• 2 years ago

This is a pretty bad take, borderline disingenuous. Spotify is certainly not a "gatekeeper" -- I don't think Spotify is comparable to Facebook by any measure really. Is Der Spiegel a "large online platform?" I suspect not.

It's actually quite simple: they have to not violate the rights of their users. They proposed legislation explicitly targets large online platforms that offer users no choice but to pay to uphold their rights. It's practically extortion.

orwin4• 2 years ago

Also, he's lying about Spotify not being treated like Facebook in that case (for data protection).

Other people here try the same idiotic take on Rgpd 'protectionism' but do not even think to look at active Rgpd cases. This guy is worse though, directly talking about Spotify and didn't bother to check, if you cannot be trusted to do basic research on your arguments, on your own blog, you shouldn't be listened to.

akmarinov• 2 years ago

Gruber has been wildly out of touch for years now.

He's claiming remote work doesn't work when he's worked remotely his whole life.

He's raging against the EU even though it gets us concrete results that we would've never had otherwise, the very least being Emulators and Game Streaming apps.

He has a lot of "old man yelling at cloud" energy.

gpderetta2• 2 years ago

As far as I can tell, the EDBP opinion[1] is a general one, and not Meta/FB specific (which are mentioned only in one footnote).

edit: it is actually for Large Online Platforms, which probably won't include newspapers.

[1] https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-04/edpb_opinion...

TheCoelacanth2• 2 years ago

Meta's revenue last year was $135 billion. Der Spiegel's revenue rounds to $0 billion.

They don't have resources to directly take on every company. Obviously they should be going after the biggest offenders first. Smaller companies will get in line once the precedent is set.

coretx2• 2 years ago

The EU should be more consise and tell everyone not to paywall security. Puting people at risk only to subsequently charge them protection money is a textbook example of a criminal enterprise.

greggsy• 2 years ago

You’re thinking of racketeering, which this is not.

littlestymaar3• 2 years ago

Putting all your personal data you've put on Facebook, and all the relationship you have there behind a paywall really is racketeering.

littlestymaar3• 2 years ago

It would be grate indeed, but the commission has limited power, and if member states (at least a qualified majority of member states) aren't onboard with such a move, then the commission is helpless. At least member states aren't interesting in protecting American megacorps like they protect their own businesses, and that's why that happens.

BlueTemplar3• 2 years ago

That last sentence is not entirely true :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40025198

lycos• 2 years ago

I never accepted the new terms in the Instagram app, it keeps asking again every now and then but you can get around it for a while and use the app. I'm very curious whether that means they are using my personal data for targeted ads or not, but I also don't remember the last time I saw an ad (maybe became blind to them)

kelthuzad• 2 years ago

Paywalling privacy makes it look a bit like extortion: "nice data you have there, would be too bad if someone were to exploit that data. We could protect you...for a fee."

reustle• 2 years ago

So then don't use the product? It's free, and your data is the price currently.

deely3• 2 years ago

This simple solution does not help, unfortunately.

(This is how Facebook collects data on you even if you don’t have an account) https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17254312/facebook-shadow-profi...

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

Create a problem, sell the solution.

jqpabc1233• 2 years ago

Just make "personalized" advertising flat out illegal without opt-in --- due to the fact it is built around privacy violation.

Problem solved. The EU is just trying to dance around doing this.

account42• 2 years ago

Just make advertising flat out illegal

Agreed.

jqpabc1233• 2 years ago

I'm not against "context sensitive" advertising. It can even be beneficial at times.

If I specifically express a need or interest in a particular product --- for example by doing a search, some ads are not unreasonable.

What is blatantly unreasonable and just plain dumb are these ads following me all over the internet on totally unrelated web sites for weeks or months --- long after I have made a purchase and no longer have any need.

In a great many cases, "personalized" ads are totally ineffective and waste the advertiser's money while being nothing but a nuisance to the consumer --- squandering his time, attention and communication bandwidth and violating his privacy.

Allow those who disagree to "opt in". This should be fair enough but the ad industry knows full well that there would be very few takers.

Nextgrid2• 2 years ago

It is illegal as per the GDPR.

The problem is that GDPR enforcement is severely lacking, even in Facebook's case where there is plenty of evidence of bad faith as opposed to legitimate mistakes.

(please don't bother posting that "enforcement tracker" link - what matters is not the absolute count/amount of fines but said metrics relative to the total amount of breaches and/or estimated profit earned from them)

jqpabc1233• 2 years ago

It is illegal as per the GDPR.

Then they should simply tell Meta. There should be no need to debate or dance around privacy paywalls.

But they obviously haven't done this.

from-nibly• 2 years ago

Facebook is the scum of the earth, but you don't HAVE to use Facebook. If you don't like their terms don't use it. I can see a case where you must be allowed to end the contract with Facebook and have them delete your data or whatever, but I can not figure out why people think that Facebook is some publicly owned entity. Should I be able to go to my neighbors house and say they don't get to set the rules on the tools I borrow from them? Their my neighbors tools, they don't even have to let me use them.

Facebook isn't paywalling privacy unless they are actively spying on you without you using their products, which would be a completely different situation.

Or if they were outright lying to you about what data they collect and what they do with it, again though completely different situation.

They are paywalling their product, you know, like how walmart "paywalls" milk.

timeon• 2 years ago

They are paywalling their product, you know, like how walmart "paywalls" milk.

So you can take milk from walmart without paying if you agree to tracking? Analogies are not arguments.

dns_snek• 2 years ago

Great! It's been a long time coming, now chase after everyone else doing the same exact thing.

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 2 years ago

I'm ramping up my ublock origin usage by a lot at this point. I didn't know that with the annoyances list you can remove most of the pooup blockers (cookies, paywalls, newsletters)

EU tells Meta it can't paywall privacy

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