8 ms·

I don't see a lot of discussion of the Meta "pay or consent" investigation. Why wouldn't giving users the option to pay for tracking-free, ad-free service meet

I don't see a lot of discussion of the Meta "pay or consent" investigation. Why wouldn't giving users the option to pay for tracking-free, ad-free service meet the requirement? Is the concern that the $10/month price too high? Would this kind of model be acceptable at a more reasonable price point?

acedTrex 3y ago
Ya I am also not following what the problem is with this approach. Is that not the entire point of options? Do people feel entitled to have all free services with no obligations of their own?
- msdrigg 3y ago
  So from the articles I can find about the complaints filed against Meta [1] I can't find any explanation of what would be an acceptable price for non-consent besides free. I mean like it's their right as a government to say 'you can't charge for consent. either charge everyone or no-one', but I wonder how it'll all pan out. [1](https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/meta-consent-or-pay-consumer-gdpr-complaints/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/meta-consent-or-pay-consum...)
  - epolanski 3y ago
    I think the idea is that you cannot have these options like denying access to content only if user pays with $ or personal data. But the issue I find here is that Meta has not premiered this technique, the first offenders were Italian digital newspapers either requiring your data or a subscription.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      I'm never fond of these sort of comparisons, because size does matter. Meta services billions of customers around the globe - a sizable chunk of the entire human species, with a defacto monopoly in terms of raw reach and scale. For them to be held to a higher standard than e.g. an Italian newspaper is not at all unreasonable. In an ideal world the rules and regulations companies have to follow would be strongly correlated against their size, with penalties growing increasingly harsh for violations. In reality, it's the exact opposite. Small companies can get destroyed by even minor rule violations, whereas massive corporations will endlessly litigate out even absolutely overt violations, and even when they lose the cases after dragging them out endlessly, the penalties they face are entirely inconsequential - a few days of revenue at worst. That's just so wrong on so many levels.
      - epolanski 3y ago
        Yes but Italian newspapers which started the trend have faced so far no consequences and they should be more aware of our law than a US company.
        TheCoelacanth 3y ago
        Meta's EU business is orders of magnitudes larger than any Italian newspaper. They should be able to afford much better legal counsel.
  - PeterisP 3y ago
    Meta is free to charge money and/or run ads, but what it can't do is do mass tracking of EU people unless they somehow really want to and freely opt in to that. Charging for an ad-free experience is fine, but charging so that you don't get tracked is not a legal option in EU, privacy is an unalienable human right that's not for sale no matter what contracts they write.
- idle_zealot 3y ago
  If the policy is "you can't sell you privacy" that would be pretty cool. It would require tech companies to come up with a business model that doesn't profit from pervasive surveillance. It is well within our rights as a society to deem such a model unacceptable.
  - nickff 3y ago
    >"It is well within our rights as a society to deem such a model unacceptable" Do societies have rights? Where are these rights defined, and how are they limited (if they are at all)? Are you talking about constitutions (and therefore states), or 'international law'?
    - idle_zealot 3y ago
      The right I am referencing is that to self-governance.
      - throwway120385 3y ago
        Self-governance of what? As a person? The reason I think it's reasonable to limit your right to sell yourself as a slave is because if it wasn't limited then a lot of people in very precarious economic situations would sell themselves and there would be a very real interest in creating those situations to force more people into slavery. You can see that with the usurious interest charged by payday loan companies. Usury is also usually illegal in civilized societies for a similar reason. Similarly you shouldn't be allowed to abrogate your right to privacy because it creates an incentive to force other people to do so as well.
    - SiempreViernes 3y ago
      Are you genuinely, in good faith, asking if societies can define rules?!
      - nickff 3y ago
        Anyone or any group can make a rule; highwaymen and pirates can make rules. The parent comment was about a “right” to do so, which begged the question as to the origin of the right.
verisimi 3y ago
If you pay, you have to be being tracked surely?
bluesign 3y ago
I think tracking-free and ad-free are different concerns here. Basically you can offer ad-free for $X/month, but tracking consent should be separate ( basically anyone would be able to deny tracking ) Same issue on the Apple side will play out probably similar; either they can charge every developer some technology fee, or they cannot charge to anyone.
- burnerthrow008 3y ago
  > I think tracking-free and ad-free are different concerns here Maybe in theory, but in practice they are one and the same. The CPM on ads where you don't know the audience is so low that you might as well skip the ads entirely. > Same issue on the Apple side will play out probably similar; either they can charge every developer some technology fee, or they cannot charge to anyone. Yes, and the result for both will be that there is no free tier in the EU anymore. All EU developers will pay the CTF and all EU users will pay $10/month for for ad-free FB.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - itopaloglu83 3y ago
    I know you’re not the person to ask about this. Just asking out of curiosity and frustration: Why do advertisers think that they are entitled to everything about my life, family, habits, and other private information? Being able to collect and correlate data from various resources to identify everything about me doesn’t change the fact that I am entitled to my own privacy.
    - tacocataco 3y ago
      "People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs." – Banksy
pashadee 3y ago
I wrote about it months ago when they did it. Why wouldn't it? Because... it's illegal (under EU law) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38192620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38192620 But the answer is: pay or consent "does not achieve the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers". See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_1689 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_... (also linked via the tweet elsewhere in this discussion)
gpm 3y ago
My understanding, and the understanding of the EU commissioner [0], is that any amount is too high. Consent must be freely given under EU law, not given in exchange for not having to pay money. You can't give a discount on the services for consenting. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/apple-google-and-meta-are-failing-dma-compliance-eu-suspects/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/apple-google-and...
- toyg 3y ago
  If that's the case, several European newspapers are also in breach. The latest iteration of paywalls typically state something like "we need money to survive, so you either buy a subscription or you agree to being tracked for advertising purposes". On a certain level I agree with you: it goes against the spirit of the law and it's downright rude (effectively blackmailing readers). This said, the alternative is that they go full-paywall (and risk death, when less than 1% of readers will actually bother to sign up).
  - itopaloglu83 3y ago
    Although I agree with the sentiment, I also would like to point of that newspapers existed before the internet and we had to pay for them despite having ads on them. I don’t know how but at some point as a society we decided that we must tip a restaurant 25% after tax, but the newspapers aren’t worth a dime. I also don’t understand why they have to be all $25 per month now. I don’t think they were ever so profitable to being with.
    - toyg 3y ago
      > we had to pay for [newspapers] despite having ads on them Absolutely. The main difference is that I could decide, day by day, whether I wanted to read newspaper A or B, or nothing at all; now I have to pledge monthly contributions to one paper, which are often very hard to cancel. The industry cannot get their act together to solve microtransactions, and that's their doom; if a few major newspapers pooled together to, say, subsidize a browser feature that gives us back that model, they wouldn't be in the dire shape they're in now. > at some point as a society we decided that we must tip a restaurant 25% As an American society maybe, tips in Europe are not as common nor expected.
nickpsecurity 3y ago
I’ve long promoted this. Many others did, too. I went as far as suggesting they charge above the per-user profit of the surveillance business just to increase odds it would be profitable. I wanted that for Google apps on alternative Android’s and Facebook. That they won’t release such products despite the demand shows they’re just evil. They believe they can squeeze more money and power out of ever-increasing surveillance.
- tacocataco 3y ago
  Perhaps there is another incentive/coercion to encourage this behavior that we are not aware of.

acedTrex 3y ago

Ya I am also not following what the problem is with this approach. Is that not the entire point of options? Do people feel entitled to have all free services with no obligations of their own?

msdrigg 3y ago
So from the articles I can find about the complaints filed against Meta [1] I can't find any explanation of what would be an acceptable price for non-consent besides free. I mean like it's their right as a government to say 'you can't charge for consent. either charge everyone or no-one', but I wonder how it'll all pan out. [1](https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/meta-consent-or-pay-consumer-gdpr-complaints/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/meta-consent-or-pay-consum...)
- epolanski 3y ago
  I think the idea is that you cannot have these options like denying access to content only if user pays with $ or personal data. But the issue I find here is that Meta has not premiered this technique, the first offenders were Italian digital newspapers either requiring your data or a subscription.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    I'm never fond of these sort of comparisons, because size does matter. Meta services billions of customers around the globe - a sizable chunk of the entire human species, with a defacto monopoly in terms of raw reach and scale. For them to be held to a higher standard than e.g. an Italian newspaper is not at all unreasonable. In an ideal world the rules and regulations companies have to follow would be strongly correlated against their size, with penalties growing increasingly harsh for violations. In reality, it's the exact opposite. Small companies can get destroyed by even minor rule violations, whereas massive corporations will endlessly litigate out even absolutely overt violations, and even when they lose the cases after dragging them out endlessly, the penalties they face are entirely inconsequential - a few days of revenue at worst. That's just so wrong on so many levels.
    - epolanski 3y ago
      Yes but Italian newspapers which started the trend have faced so far no consequences and they should be more aware of our law than a US company.
      - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
        Meta's EU business is orders of magnitudes larger than any Italian newspaper. They should be able to afford much better legal counsel.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  Meta is free to charge money and/or run ads, but what it can't do is do mass tracking of EU people unless they somehow really want to and freely opt in to that. Charging for an ad-free experience is fine, but charging so that you don't get tracked is not a legal option in EU, privacy is an unalienable human right that's not for sale no matter what contracts they write.
idle_zealot 3y ago
If the policy is "you can't sell you privacy" that would be pretty cool. It would require tech companies to come up with a business model that doesn't profit from pervasive surveillance. It is well within our rights as a society to deem such a model unacceptable.
- nickff 3y ago
  >"It is well within our rights as a society to deem such a model unacceptable" Do societies have rights? Where are these rights defined, and how are they limited (if they are at all)? Are you talking about constitutions (and therefore states), or 'international law'?
  - idle_zealot 3y ago
    The right I am referencing is that to self-governance.
    - throwway120385 3y ago
      Self-governance of what? As a person? The reason I think it's reasonable to limit your right to sell yourself as a slave is because if it wasn't limited then a lot of people in very precarious economic situations would sell themselves and there would be a very real interest in creating those situations to force more people into slavery. You can see that with the usurious interest charged by payday loan companies. Usury is also usually illegal in civilized societies for a similar reason. Similarly you shouldn't be allowed to abrogate your right to privacy because it creates an incentive to force other people to do so as well.
  - SiempreViernes 3y ago
    Are you genuinely, in good faith, asking if societies can define rules?!
    - nickff 3y ago
      Anyone or any group can make a rule; highwaymen and pirates can make rules. The parent comment was about a “right” to do so, which begged the question as to the origin of the right.

verisimi 3y ago

If you pay, you have to be being tracked surely?

bluesign 3y ago

I think tracking-free and ad-free are different concerns here. Basically you can offer ad-free for $X/month, but tracking consent should be separate ( basically anyone would be able to deny tracking ) Same issue on the Apple side will play out probably similar; either they can charge every developer some technology fee, or they cannot charge to anyone.

burnerthrow008 3y ago
> I think tracking-free and ad-free are different concerns here Maybe in theory, but in practice they are one and the same. The CPM on ads where you don't know the audience is so low that you might as well skip the ads entirely. > Same issue on the Apple side will play out probably similar; either they can charge every developer some technology fee, or they cannot charge to anyone. Yes, and the result for both will be that there is no free tier in the EU anymore. All EU developers will pay the CTF and all EU users will pay $10/month for for ad-free FB.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- itopaloglu83 3y ago
  I know you’re not the person to ask about this. Just asking out of curiosity and frustration: Why do advertisers think that they are entitled to everything about my life, family, habits, and other private information? Being able to collect and correlate data from various resources to identify everything about me doesn’t change the fact that I am entitled to my own privacy.
  - tacocataco 3y ago
    "People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs." – Banksy

pashadee 3y ago

I wrote about it months ago when they did it. Why wouldn't it? Because... it's illegal (under EU law) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38192620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38192620 But the answer is: pay or consent "does not achieve the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers". See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_1689 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_... (also linked via the tweet elsewhere in this discussion)

gpm 3y ago

My understanding, and the understanding of the EU commissioner [0], is that any amount is too high. Consent must be freely given under EU law, not given in exchange for not having to pay money. You can't give a discount on the services for consenting. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/apple-google-and-meta-are-failing-dma-compliance-eu-suspects/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/apple-google-and...

toyg 3y ago
If that's the case, several European newspapers are also in breach. The latest iteration of paywalls typically state something like "we need money to survive, so you either buy a subscription or you agree to being tracked for advertising purposes". On a certain level I agree with you: it goes against the spirit of the law and it's downright rude (effectively blackmailing readers). This said, the alternative is that they go full-paywall (and risk death, when less than 1% of readers will actually bother to sign up).
- itopaloglu83 3y ago
  Although I agree with the sentiment, I also would like to point of that newspapers existed before the internet and we had to pay for them despite having ads on them. I don’t know how but at some point as a society we decided that we must tip a restaurant 25% after tax, but the newspapers aren’t worth a dime. I also don’t understand why they have to be all $25 per month now. I don’t think they were ever so profitable to being with.
  - toyg 3y ago
    > we had to pay for [newspapers] despite having ads on them Absolutely. The main difference is that I could decide, day by day, whether I wanted to read newspaper A or B, or nothing at all; now I have to pledge monthly contributions to one paper, which are often very hard to cancel. The industry cannot get their act together to solve microtransactions, and that's their doom; if a few major newspapers pooled together to, say, subsidize a browser feature that gives us back that model, they wouldn't be in the dire shape they're in now. > at some point as a society we decided that we must tip a restaurant 25% As an American society maybe, tips in Europe are not as common nor expected.

nickpsecurity 3y ago

I’ve long promoted this. Many others did, too. I went as far as suggesting they charge above the per-user profit of the surveillance business just to increase odds it would be profitable. I wanted that for Google apps on alternative Android’s and Facebook. That they won’t release such products despite the demand shows they’re just evil. They believe they can squeeze more money and power out of ever-increasing surveillance.

tacocataco 3y ago
Perhaps there is another incentive/coercion to encourage this behavior that we are not aware of.