NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2025/10/02/judge-in-the-bits-of-freedom-vs-meta-lawsuit-meta-must-respect-users-choice/

by mattashii • 10 months ago

327 235 10 months ago

mattashii2• 10 months ago

Judgement (dutch): https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025...

The judgement requires Meta to change their platforms within 2 weeks so that the user's choice is persistent. If not implemented in 2 weeks, there is a daily penalty of €100'000, up to a maximum of €5 million.

jacooper• 10 months ago

Lol 5 million is pocket change for meta, wtf are these courts doing?

tantalor• 10 months ago

Maybe it's per user?

maccard3• 10 months ago

The goal isn’t to penalize, it’s to get them to comply.

jeroenhd2• 10 months ago

This is 5 million for this particular court case. Nothing is preventing others from filing their own, very similar cases. If Meta ignores the court's decision, a second lawsuit may end much worse for them.

Though, practically speaking, America has been threatening to make the trade war they started much worse for the EU if it tried to enforce things like DSA and GDPR fines. We'll have to see how enforceable these laws really are.

__MatrixMan__2• 10 months ago

Fines in general aren't effective.

Perhaps this case doesn't warrant it, but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option.

If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook, it should be no different with a company.

RobotToaster• 10 months ago

It also means that after 50 days there's basically no incentive to comply.

pettertb• 10 months ago

Fines up to 5 million Euros against meta

Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!

N70Phone2• 10 months ago

Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!

That is the implication. The point of the first fine isn't to actually hurt Meta. It's to signal that there will be consequences, that the excuse of "but we thought it was legal" is gone now and give them one final chance to get their act together.

It's to pre-emptively clear away any possibility for Meta to appeal to either higher courts or the court of public opinion that they're being treated unfairly. Which they would do if you immediately hit them with a say, €5 billion fine.

mrtksn• 10 months ago

That how you build up a case for transferring control. First its "lol, 5m is a pocket change" and it becomes argument of politicians for tighter control over Meta. Then Zuck says they are trying to make the world a better place but it doesn't stick, people side with the politician who is building a career by sticking it to Meta.

So not entirely useless.

saubeidl2• 10 months ago

I'm not sure if you're arguing for more or less control being transferred from Meta towards the state, but I agree with your observation.

dmd• 10 months ago

The judge: five .... MEEEIIILLIONNNN ... euros!

Meta: lol

belter• 10 months ago

One less principal engineer signing bonus ...:-)

mglazebrook• 10 months ago

I doubt they will meet the deadline or care over 5mill. It just is pennies to them.

inetknght3• 10 months ago

The thing about ignoring courts' orders is... well, courts don't exactly look favorably on people who ignore them. Looking forward to court's round 2, then.

lucumo2• 10 months ago

Note that the penalty for non-compliance will be forfeited to Bits of Freedom. It's not like a traffic fine that has to be paid to the government.

In Dutch this is called a "last onder dwangsom": an injuctive order enforced by a conditional fine.

lucumo2• 10 months ago

As an addition, 5 million is a lot for BoF. At the end of 2024 their balance was a little over 1.8 million EUR. Even a single day's worth of coercive fine (100k EUR) would be meaningful to them.

Their annual report is online at https://2024.bitsoffreedom.nl/en/ for people who want to learn more.

FranzFerdiNaN• 10 months ago

I’m almost hoping Facebook is going to refuse to change, a couple million to BoF would a very nice gift to them.

AdriaanvRossum• 10 months ago

Lekker bezig.

sborsje• 10 months ago

For non-Dutchies: Lekker busy.

lofaszvanitt• 10 months ago

English

https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2025/10/02/judge-in-the-bits-of...

hsuduebc24• 10 months ago

As a European, I’m glad that the influence of big, potentially dangerous companies is being kept in check. From the start of October, Meta is completely switching off political ads and now I can look forward to my feed stopping with tabloids, politics and Russian propaganda and going back to technical curiosities and capybaras.

eru5• 10 months ago

Why don't you just stop using Facebook, if you don't like it?

astonex• 10 months ago

It's about making the right choices for society as a whole

rosseitsa• 10 months ago

There is a level of investment we put in the platforms we use.

This comment is akin to asking farmers cut off from repairing their equipment "why don't you buy tractors from a different company instead of fighting to fix your existing ones?"

The investment in the case of social media is the network you've built. In my country most local events are announced primarily on facebook for example.

saubeidl2• 10 months ago

The network effect is real.

pixl972• 10 months ago

Why dont we make all laws voluntary and let people do whatever they want?

jlouis2• 10 months ago

Facebook is one major bait and switch strategy.

In the first step, you get everyone to invest into your platform. You provide some valuable services to people, and they sign an implicit contract as a result.

In the second step, you reap what you sow. You switch the platform entirely and change its core nature and functionality. It's hard to stop using Facebook when everyone else is using Facebook, and this fact means you can do things which would normally have people leave your platform in droves.

This ruling limits the extent to which you can run such a bait and switch campaign. It's somewhat remarkable, because it extends some basic consumer rights to tech companies, even if there's no direct product nor a subscription in place. Personally, I think it's long overdue.

N70Phone2• 10 months ago

An important matter in this particular case: It's about elections as well.

You can opt to not use facebook yourself to protect your own data, that is more or less fine. (Though we can talk about Facebook's collection of non-user data another time)

You can't individually opt out of the election influence.

thahajemni• 10 months ago

I, as a European, am worried that these rulings, regulations, and the prevailing mindset will lead to companies leaving and result in technological stagnation, due to our inability to compete with global markets.

Of course, there is something to be said about the dangers, effectiveness, and societal impact of social media. But companies should have the right to decide how they conduct their business. They should also have the incentive to innovate and improve- without being threatened by overly strict or poorly designed laws.

delbronski3• 10 months ago

As a European, I much prefer technological stagnation over technological progress that is harmful to society.

em-bee5• 10 months ago

companies leaving [will] result in technological stagnation, due to our inability to compete with global markets

on the contrary, companies leaving will allow and force us to develop european alternatives that can actually compete in europe. they don't need to compete on the global market.

munchlax2• 10 months ago

The defendant in the verdict is called "Facebook Netherlands B.V."

I guess they're writing the paperwork to cut off that particular subdivision as we speak.

troupo2• 10 months ago

I, as a European, am worried that these rulings, regulations, and the prevailing mindset will lead to companies leaving and result in technological stagnation

If your "technological progress" is dependent on algorithmic feeds and pervasive tracking, good riddance.

deaux2• 10 months ago

But companies should have the right to decide how they conduct their business.

What Meta does is the equivalent of dumping nuclear waste in the middle of your city. I'm sure you don't think companies have the right to do the latter.

I'm very sceptical of the origin of comments like these. I don't know any actual Europeans who share these concerns because they know that the status quo is that the entire EU market is captured by US tech. And that this has been done through anticompetitive tactics as well as offloading trillions in negative externalities onto societies.

If you're truly a concerned European, you're incredibly naive, and need to read much more about how banally evil Meta is.

Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuckerberg: Just ask Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuckerberg: People just submitted it. Zuckerberg: I don't know why. Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks

DrScientist3• 10 months ago

But companies should have the right to decide how they conduct their business.

Nope - not if it is to the detriment to society ( as decided by society via democratic means ).

In the UK - when radio and TV came along, society recognized the power of these platforms and the danger of how they could amplify single voices with money in an anti-democratic way. As such political advertising on such platforms very tightly controlled.

In addition there are overall limits on campaign spending.

Then along comes companies like Facebook and money powering political ad campaigns comes in through the back door, and in addition a lack of transparency on the overall spend as it's now much easier to hide.

Moves to curb this is simply society re-asserting it's existing rules, not some new imposition.

55555• 10 months ago

Please for the love of god make it a legal requirement that messaging must be made available as a separate app without addictive feeds. Or make it such that users can disable the feed in settings. We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.

umanwizard• 10 months ago

Messenger is already a separate app.

moolcool• 10 months ago

Instagram Messenger is not

pimlottc• 10 months ago

Completely. I'm not normally on Instagram but I recently made meet some new friends that use it for messaging. The number of times I've open the app to message someone and gotten distracted by the feed...

Aurornis4• 10 months ago

We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.

Those people are in the app because of the social features and the feed in the first place. The messaging features were built on top of the platform.

Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement. If someone has such a strong self-control problem that they can’t message someone without becoming addicted to the feed, they shouldn’t be involved with the platform at all.

Just exchange emails, phone numbers for SMS, or any other type of communication. I seriously doubt that your friends are only able to communicate through exactly one communication channel and it happens to be Instagram.

inetknght3• 10 months ago

Those people are in the app because of the social features and the feed in the first place.

Well, I suppose that's one take on it.

I would argue that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger. Then Facebook changed how Facebook Messenger works. You could call it a rugpull, I would call it US business practices.

em-bee5• 10 months ago

Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement

the better alternative is to require interoperability with other messenger apps, so can use the app of my choice. this is a proposal under discussion since years ago.

I seriously doubt that your friends are only able to communicate through exactly one communication channel

some people do exactly that. they refuse to communicate on anything but their messenger of choice. and sometimes keeping in touch with that person is more important than my preferences. oh, and for many people i do not want to share my phone number, which limits the available messaging platforms we can still use. we'll be lucky if there is one.

komali23• 10 months ago

Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement.

I disagree. I think it's more than reasonable. Facebook designs its features with dark UX to cause addiction, it's not about self control, it's about Facebook engaging in anti-human behavior.

It's reasonable to use the State to force a corporation that makes tens of billions of dollars of profit a year to behave in a way that's beneficial to people. The corporation will be fine, it's air conditioned and listening to its favorite music.

swiftcoder4• 10 months ago

Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement.

In this case Meta already has such an app (Messenger), and it has at times supported instagram messaging. I'm not sure why they broke that association a little while ago, but it's not unreasonable that they could reconnect it.

array_key_first7• 10 months ago

Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement.

I don't think it's unreasonable and I'll take it further - messaging should be forced to use an open protocol. No more iMessage or Facebook messenger. If you want those, great, then open them.

Now everything works with everything and the world is a utopia and also we cured cancer. Downside: Meta will make slightly less money. I can live with that.

bitpush3• 10 months ago

I don't know why you want a government agency to dictate product strategy.

ecb_penguin7• 10 months ago

It's the European way

komali23• 10 months ago

Because things in the State should help people, not exploit them. If the thing, in this case, a corporation, is harming people, why not force it to stop?

psychoslave• 10 months ago

From a government point of view, it makes sense to jump in when the product is a psy-ops at societal level, doesn’t it?

array_key_first7• 10 months ago

Because most products are not only shit, they're designed in such a way to be as shit as possible. Because that legitimately works.

Even if the government agency makes the worse decision possible, which they probably will, that's still an improvement, because we're completely maxed out on shit levels. That's how bad many products are today.

balder19912• 10 months ago

I suppose that’s because people already lost faith in the current system and where things are going as it is.

ecb_penguin7• 10 months ago

Please for the love of god make it a legal requirement that messaging must be made available as a separate app

Please for the love of god do not make legal requirements about how to build an app and what features can be included.

We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.

lol, you have no legal right to how a chat dialog must be presented.

Why don't you try innovating instead of suing?

alkonaut3• 10 months ago

That would be the sensible idea in a free market. But that ship sailed LONG ago. Now there are apps and "markets" that are so important and dominating (Amazon, Facebook, ...) that the only alternatives are basically to split them, control them or regulate them in detail. The problem isn't lack of "innovation".

Anyone can make any social app work the way they want to. But that doesn't mean the same rules and laws applies - or should apply - to one with 1B users as one with 100 users.

ajsnigrutin• 10 months ago

Why not just use SMS messages? No feeds, literally all phones support them, with MMS you also get photos and stuff... you don't need another party involved for the messages to work, and you're already paying for them.

seanhunter• 10 months ago

This is something I genuinely don't understand. Whatsapp used to have a reason to exist because the SMS experience on android was pretty bad. That's not the case any more.

array_key_first7• 10 months ago

1. You do need a third party.

2. SMS is probably the most insecure protocol created for anything, ever.

3. The experience is as close to as shit as it can get.

4. Most modern messaging features aren't supported.

5. Most devices don't support SMS.

6. You can't sync SMS across devices.

spacecadet• 10 months ago

Should be a fixed % tax that is permanent and on all prior and future revenue.

quotemstr5• 10 months ago

This is over the "most recent" mode? Absolutely moronic decision. It punishes companies for giving users any choice at all.

hnuser1234562• 10 months ago

Yes, the issue is forced algorithm-based feeds, where Meta is free to profile as deeply as they want and exploit what should be private knowledge about you. A "most recent" feed (of things you already chose to subscribe to/follow) should be a standard option on any social media app, and the app shouldn't switch back to their toxic algorithm automatically anytime you look away. This behavior itself shows how much Meta wants to control what you see and is extra impetus to require a simple chronological feed option that is selectable as default, and that the user's choice is respected.

IIRC, around 2008-2009, "most recent" was the only kind of feed, and within the span of a couple years, they added their "personalized" feed but would let you switch between the two freely (and the setting would persist), and not much later, the setting would no longer persist.

quotemstr5• 10 months ago

There are probably people on this thread who were born after algorithmic feeds became ubiquitous and they seem to have turned out fine.

The moral panic over feed ranking models will seem to history as quaint as the moral panic over the telegraph and the train.

If your new technology isn't attracting a swarm of moral gnats buzzing about it corrupting the youth, are you even making something impactful?

askonomm• 10 months ago

Punishes companies for not respecting people's settings. It's as if I chose to keep my chat history private in the settings, but they would ignore that and share all my chats with the world. Same problem. I find it odd you can't see how it's damaging to the consumers if you're offering them a choice that you then completely disregard.

kllrnohj• 10 months ago

The law requires that they provide a non-profiled choice. Facebook wasn't punished for providing the choice, that was required. They were punished for not respecting that requirement, overriding the user's choice whenever they thought they could get away with it.

nhinck2• 10 months ago

I wish I could make youtube default to the subscriber behaviour.

stickfigure• 10 months ago

Subscribe?

laweijfmvo• 10 months ago

1. Subscribe to what you want to see 2. Bookmark the “your subscriptions” page; don’t visit the home page 2a. Although if you disable watch history, youtube tries to punish you by blanking out the “home” page. I consider that a good thing. 3. Use an ad blocker to hide the comments and side bar (recommended videos)

That’s pretty much what I do. Discoverability happens off-site, which might be a hindrance for you, but I don’t necessarily want more stuff to watch for the sake of more stuff to watch.

green_beans_25• 10 months ago

Blocking elements with ad block works well, but for convenience I use the extension Unhook. It can redirect the home feed to subscriptions, hide end screen cards, end screen feed, live chat, auto generated mixes, notifications, shorts, etc. I also use a tampermonkey script to auto set theater mode and resolution (necessary for incognito mode).

It would be nice if youtube could include some of these handy features in the settings, but it is not something they want to do it seems.

skrebbel2• 10 months ago

I use an extension called Unhook which has, as one of its many great options, a mode that disables the algorithmic youtube feed and auto-redirects the homepage to your subscriptions page (which is just reverse-chronological)

(it also lets you disable Shorts and suggestions and so on, pretty fantastic actually)

Workaccount24• 10 months ago

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory.

I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs.

You pay for instagram with your personal data, which is used to target you with high value ads. Which covers the cost of your continued usage. If you don't like it, don't use instagram. If you really don't like it, lobby for the law to make it illegal, but get your credit card ready for another monthly subscription.

odux• 10 months ago

Exactly. The very existence of these apps and websites is based on such “user hostile” behavior. Same with the cat and mouse game between YouTube ads and ad blockers and third party YouTube apps. If the side wanting to completely stop Youtube ads becomes successful, YouTube will cease to exist (as a free app).

I am not arguing for this model, my feed is getting more useless every day, but the only other model is subscription based like you say. And for Facebook, Meta and the like, I don’t think the subscription revenue will be anywhere close due to economies of scale on the free model.

ilovetux• 10 months ago

YouTube offers an ad-free subscription called YouTube premium. It's reasonably priced and includes access to YouTube Music.

I like the hybrid approach of being able to be ad-supported or paid with no ads. I would like to see more of it.

What I don't like is a paid service like Amazon Prime that also includes ads. They include ads in their search results and they include tons of ads in their video library.

FWIW: Hulu offers paid access to content with ads but offers an upgrade to get rid of most of the ads, so there seems to be a whole lot of testing what works in this area going on right now, which I see as a good thing, I just hope that once everything settles the predominant model will be fair and respect user privacy.

throawayonthe• 10 months ago

tbf facebook is the only (mainstream) social media i know that offers a subscription in the first place

actually i forgot about youtube

account42• 10 months ago

You are ignoring that people give away things for free all them time if the cost to them is small enough. But currently those genuinely free options have to compete with ad-funded services for attention and getting that attention requires more effort than just providing the service so this happens less than it otherwise would.

Or to put it another way, most of the content on the internet is already unpaid with the creator not receiving any compensation. What's left is the hosting/distribution and we can find many different ways to (collectively) pay for that besides ads and user subscriptions.

jfengel3• 10 months ago

I think people more or less understand that. Nobody likes ads. Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted.

But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away.

Many won't even create a free account. Tracking tech is so sneaky because just the effort of logging in is too much.

Maybe the world would be a better place if we bit the bullet, nuked the vast majority of web sites, and built a better web on what's left. But it's not going to be an instant, ad-free privacy paradise.

rightbyte• 10 months ago

Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted.

Really? It took me until like 2012-2013 to realize Google searches stalked me to other websites.

Then again much critics at that time of big tech was disregarded as lunatic crackpots. And nowadays your are a crackpot if you claim they are not spying on you. I guess that matters.

ajkjk2• 10 months ago

putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people

Dear god, yes, please, good. Pass laws that force the bloated companies to lose users. Yes. World = better.

delusional2• 10 months ago

But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people.

I have a pet theory that these business models paper over the vast worthlessness of many modern technologies. That the value of Facebook is not in it's technologies or network, but rather in the arbitrage of the value of data when combined. We pay for the nearly worthless service of facebook, with our nearly worthless data. Facebook combines that data with other data from other people, and create data that is extremely valuable for advertisers.

The important bit of this theory is that Facebook is presumed nearly worthless. What that means is that outlawing their combining or collection of data from users wouldn't cause their service to transition to a pay-per-user model, but rather would completely dissolve the product, which nobody would miss.

afavour• 10 months ago

Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted.

To an extent. I think if everyday users were shown just how much personal data follows them around from site to site I think they’d be horrified. Enough to change their habits? Possibly not. But I don’t think people have full understanding.

s3p• 10 months ago

What? Just give them an option. Ads or ad free with card.

wkat42423• 10 months ago

Ads can be done without tracking though. The main reason they're not is that Google and meta actively undermine them. They make it really difficult to buy ethical ads.

The reason is of course that tracking is their moat. Nobody else has tracking networks as pervasive as them. But everyone can sell context-based ads

thfuran2• 10 months ago

putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people

That's precisely why it should be done statutorily. People are known to be irrational about free things, so it's a fundamentally anti-competitive business model that disadvantages companies that want to actually charge for their services.

Hilift2• 10 months ago

I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work

That is unfortunate, due to Mark Zuckerberg has redefined the successful business model. META is on track to clear $80 billion per year in net profit. Like it or not, they have a mutually beneficial relationship with advertisers and investors. It's like a Unicorn reproduced with an ATM. It's one of the stocks that seem like neutral ground for institutions, like TSLA. There has to be a high table where those guys talk on phones carried in suitcases.

To put $80 billion per year in perspective, that is approximately the amount of annual federal Medicare matching funds reimbursement for the state of California (Cal-Aid).

Hilift2• 10 months ago

*Medicaid, not Medicare. And the actual amount is $85 billion, due to Medicaid is available to nearly anyone, and it is only a coincidence it is the reason for the government shutdown.

foofoo12• 10 months ago

I'm totally convinced that even if you'd pay for Meta based social media account, they'd still harvest as much data on you as possible.

The data is extraordinarily valuable and the morals of Meta is so utterly low.

wkat42423• 10 months ago

This, exactly. They stop showing the highly visible annoyance. But the more insidious and lucrative datamining to sell ads everywhere else still goes on.

lopis• 10 months ago

But at same time, Facebook & co need so much ad revenue and tracking because a) they are greedy and want to profit a lot, b) their tracking and ad apparatus is very complex and expensive to run, possibly more expensive than the actual product. People don't need half the shit that facebook offers, which is why people moved to instagram without a problem; then instagram became equally bloated.

So yeah, I understand that Meta wants a lot of money, but I reject the idea that we need to suffer this much to have the social features we need.

duxup2• 10 months ago

I don't disagree about the structure problems with apps and sites that are free with ads.

I do worry that without that free option users just simply wouldn't ever try anything new and just stay where they are new. If everything costs money to move ... I worry nobody moves and everything stagnates. Facebook and similar, now in an even stronger position.

Users, for worse, like it this way and make free with ads the best route because of their choices. Users with their choices incentivize this system too ...

gnramires2• 10 months ago

I think another model could help here. Like an automatic/anonymous micropayment when you access a website. This could be a fraction of your internet subscription reserved for micropayments. It should be possible, and cryptocurrencies aren't necessary either (although similar cryptographic constructions may be used, no need for proof of work).

BigglesB• 10 months ago

I suspect it will be politically difficult to outright ban the ad model... might the same effect be achieved however by enforcing strict online advertising requirements & making websites (specifically the owner of the domain name used to access the site?) liable for all ads that they host as well as liable for all data gathering activities that drive those ads? Ideally with a requirement that all ads shown must contain a link to information about all parties involved in producing the ad & any profiling used to determine whether or not to show it to the user viewing it.

So if any ad is shown based on user profiling from data gathered illegally (i.e. without a proper opt-in as per GDPR etc) then the site showing the ad could potentially be sued?

Essentially, make it so onerous to legally advertise without risking a large class action lawsuit that the practice more or less dies out without technically being "banned" per se...

ludicrousdispla• 10 months ago

They are not just selling ads, they are also selling 'targeting' services for those ad campaigns.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 10 months ago

I'm not entirely against ads. Ads in my print media don't piss me off because they're clearly ads and separate from other content.

lbhdc• 10 months ago

https://about.fb.com/news/2024/11/facebook-and-instagram-to-...

Don't they already offer this? Did it get canceled?

graeme2• 10 months ago

The EU thought the price should be cheap enough that people would pay instead of choosing ads.

graeme2• 10 months ago

The EU thought the price should be cheap enough that people would pay instead of choosing ads. I think they rejected this plan.

doctorpangloss• 10 months ago

people didn't choose to subscribe... kind of a no brainer

basic history one google search away for the top ranking comment on Hacker News

timeon• 10 months ago

When Facebook offered me this option: "will you pay with your money or your data?" I was like: "do I really need this?" I just deleted the account since I was already not really using it. Everyone I know went with "yeah just track me" instead.

AtlasBarfed• 10 months ago

Certainly the company like Facebook, even if you're paying them for data security privacy, how can you trust them? That they will respect it?

These companies are filled to the brim with utter sociopaths, Especially Facebook. Companies that internal metrics with them fully aware of the mental health damage they're doing at a massive scale to young children, and buried it.

Companies that did psychological manipulation AB tests.

motoxpro• 10 months ago

So pay ~$30 a month (the LTV of a user on facebook). No way.

hypercube33• 10 months ago

There was a time I'd sub to YouTube. however they ditched the sub for that and force YouTube music as well with all of its enshitified user experience I want none of it.

kylecazar2• 10 months ago

What I can't understand is how the ads are still effective, targeted or otherwise.

I've long thought we are going to reach a point where the return on social advertising isn't worth the investment, these models have a crisis and pivot, but it still seems to be going strong.

thewebguyd2• 10 months ago

Enough people to sustain the model still click. At Meta's scale, you only need a small fraction of clicks and conversions to make it worth it. Meta reaches billions of people, so even a small slice of that is still a huge chunk of people.

There's also a bit of competitive pressure. Even if people get numb to ads, business, especially small businesses, can't afford to not show up if their competitors are still showing up in feeds.

The usual advertising psychology tricks still apply also which is why ads still work. Even if the ad itself doesn't result in a conversion, there's still the exposure effect of someone seeing your brand over and over again in their feed. The more times someone sees it, they'll subconsciously start preferring that brand or see it as more trustworthy. Among other tricks.

thewebguyd2• 10 months ago

If you don't like it, don't use instagram.

Even that's not enough with the shadow profiles they build on people without accounts. It's more like "if you don't like it, don't use instagram and also make sure none of your friends, coworkers, family, associates, or anywhere you go doesn't use it either. Also make sure you, nor the others mentioned, visit any website using Meta's pixel."

We definitely need laws when an individual effectively can't opt out because of network effects.

yoyohello13• 10 months ago

I actually think ad based funding models is probably one of the most destructive forces in our society. Do you think politics would be so insane right now if fear based click baiting wasn’t so profitable?

crowcroft• 10 months ago

You pay for instagram with your personal data, which is used to target you with high value ads.

It's not quite that simple though. The problem is that they are not simply showing you relevant ads, they actively attempt to deliver an outcome the ad is trying to achieve.

On the surface this is relatively benign, Nike wants to sell shoes, they run ads and optimise towards shoe sales, and Meta makes that happen.

But what happens when people run political advertising? What happens when crypto companies promote scams?

sim7c002• 10 months ago

the only solution is not yo consume things that operate on the model. the difficulty there is that the model is generally adopted. so a massive amount of users will go from 1 to another system only to get rug pulled out from under them again and again.

this can be a business model, economic circumstance, mgmt change. a lot can trigger such a shift in services up to then just fine to use.

most companies did not start out on these premises, and its really hard to tell what service will turn next.

i hope maybe ISPs could handle it and offer it as a service. like an ad free internet. but then they will just more deeply embed the ads and it will still get past. changes in designs of the apps will lead to blocking being ineffective.

so really then all that is left is not to use anything that has potential to identify you and your use of it. thats not a lot of things currently. most are frowned upon if you use it in a lot of regions.

sim7c002• 10 months ago

a last point would be that another problem is that the apps feed into ad networks. so using 1 is already an issue, mostly the same as using all of them. maybe less data but they can get a lot from little anyway.

mgraczyk2• 10 months ago

This is also a misunderstanding. Not how it works economically.

You do not pay for Instagram with your personal data. The data is elsewhere, not on Instagram. For example with your local retailer or credit card company.

Instagram pays for data about you, which they buy from other people. You do not have a say in this for the most part. Whether or not Instagram buys this data does not affect its collection.

You pay for Instagram with your time spent watching ads. The data they collect about you is mostly not for ads, it's to get you to spend more time on Instagram

To make it clear why this matters: If you banned advertising on social media, the amount of data collected about you would not decrease

thfuran2• 10 months ago

If they're not making money from ads, they don't have incentive to manipulate you into spending as much time as possible watching ads. Maybe if it's some kind of micropayment based model, but if it's subscription the profit motive would be to get you to use the service as little as possible without unsubscribing.

npc_anon• 10 months ago

"If you don't like it, don't use instagram."

I get what you're saying but by current EU privacy law interpretation this approach is not allowed.

You can of course charge for services but you cannot charge people just to get rid of tracking. This is not to be confused with ads. You can run ads and offer a paid version without ads. It's about the tracking.

wkat42423• 10 months ago

Not just that. If you pay Instagram to turn off the ads, they're still tracking you so they can show you targeted ads elsewhere.

For me the tracking is a lot more harmful than the ads. Ads are much more noticeable but tracking is a lot more insidious.

It's really that tracking that I want to see gone

yason• 10 months ago

Am I weird because I don't consider, in particular, the tracking nature of ads the biggest problem? Sure, I my browser doesn't share data between websites, I delete cookies automatically except whitelisted, and I don't give apps permissions for no good reason. But the problem with ads is their display, not the contents.

Early Google style text box ads were fine. Any ad put on the side of the page with no animated elements is probably fine. But in reality ads are intrusive and those block my mental process when I'm trying to read about of focus on something. Especially ads in videos would just make me focus really, really hard on blocking off the message until I can restore my mental stack and continue with the original video. (I can't watch youtube with ads, for that reason.) Anything that pops up, takes space, or requires me to find an X button to shut them off gets me to C-w the browser tab nearly without exception.

If the ads do behave I don't particularly mind. I even used to peruse ads in print magazines. In fact, untargetted ads are generally complete shit and if the "inter Net cloud thing" has even an inkling of what I might be interested at all, that's all the better I think. I don't ever click on ads though, so I'm probably not part of the prime target audience. But meaningful ads may make me add their products in the comparison set if I'm in the process of buying something similar.

whalesalad2• 10 months ago

This is government overreach. These are novelty/fun apps. They are not critical infrastructure or needed in any way. This would be like a court ordering a local bar to serve more than just beer and wine, to accomodate people who like sake and soju. You have free choice to use the social platforms that you want to use. Really don't understand this kind of action tbh.

suddenlybananas2• 10 months ago

Bars are heavily, heavily regulated actually. You could have chosen a better example.

richwater2• 10 months ago

They're heavily regulated but not regarding what liqueur and beer they have to offer...which is exactly what OP was comparing it to.

callc2• 10 months ago

Let me offer a different opinion.

Facebook is a massive part of social media. Billions of users. It is apart of society in its sheer size. A society decided “we want to make this better” and acted appropriately. I think it’s a noble pursuit for a society to attempt to reduce the clearly negative aspects of social media.

There is no real freedom of choice. The network effect cements big players positions. Try telling an 80 year old grandma with a 20 year old laptop to use mastodon. Likely no one she knows is on it.

Finally, individuals make essentially no difference when choosing to not use FB. But when choosing to not go to a local bar, that may be 0.03% loss of their monthly revenue. The only actor that can reasonably bargain with huge organizations is other huge organizations.

whalesalad2• 10 months ago

There is no real freedom of choice

but there is? simply choose to not use facebook.

balder19912• 10 months ago

This is true when there’s plenty of competition that matter. When everybody and every business is in one app, the network effect forces everyone to be there or be invisible. So the “essential infrastructure” label is kinda debatable. I suppose it’s essential for many businesses.

So your analogy should be more like there’s one big shopping mall network in the city that basically everyone has to go because certain stores are only there — and the owners bought any competitor that seemed to start becoming popular in the past so there’s no perspective of competition either.

yujzgzc• 10 months ago

I've switched to email and chat for social connection, works a lot better for me than I think any ranked feed ever will, no matter how many court decisions try to shape it.

moi2388• 10 months ago

I would like them (or actually the EU) to go one step further:

All people should see the same information, in the same order, with the same metadata such as likes and comments.

Example:

I go to Reddit. I see a list of only the subreddits I subscribed to. This is fine. But within this subreddit, I should see the same information as other users do.

Currently, you don’t even see the same comments and same replies, likes, dislikes on topics. This puts people in bubbles, and makes it impossible to enforce fair reporting, illegal content or manipulation.

gnramires2• 10 months ago

Something I think is worth pointing out: this is happening in the Netherlands, i.e. their jurisdiction. I think most people here aren't from the Netherlands. I think they should be free to try out the legislation they want, and people elsewhere don't need to agree. It's good that different countries can try different things, and if that doesn't work it's a lesson for other places, and if it works that's even better. People on the internet tend to focus too much on uniformity and conformity, as if we lived everyone in the same place.

f33d5173• 10 months ago

It's the implementation of an eu wide law. Judges in other countries might rule differently, but this isn't really an example of the netherlands going its own way and experimenting.

ankit219• 10 months ago

The headline is provocative. The issue is simple: Meta has a recommended feed and another feed which is reverse chronological. The option is hidden and not default, and all the NL judge is asking is for that option to be preserved and not be reset everytime user opens the app/website. Instagram never had this option, this does not say whether they have to implement it too.

I would be curious if the order stands as for curation as well. Someone could have 1000s of friends, and you cant show posts from everyone in a reverse chronological order for a good ux.

arccy• 10 months ago

on the Instagram mobile app: long press their logo to switch from the recommended feed to your following feed, in reverse chronological order

toofy• 10 months ago

/me claps.

in my not so humble and often overly verbose opinion, we desperately need to get back to a place where we have more control over what our own inputs.

a handful of people are now in control of the overwhelming majority of what we see. whether that’s the few websites most people visit or the wildly merging media ecosystem which is now also overwhelmingly controlled by a tiny few with even more mergers on the immediate horizon. to the corporate live event space. it’s insane that weve allowed such a tiny few to control nearly everything our people ingest.

anything which counters this stranglehold on our inputs is a good thing, no matter how small.

NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

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