Facebook and Instagram To Offer Subscription for No Ads in Europe (fb.com) 69
Meta, in a blog post: To comply with evolving European regulations, we are introducing a new subscription option in the EU, EEA and Switzerland. In November, we will be offering people who use Facebook or Instagram and reside in these regions the choice to continue using these personalised services for free with ads, or subscribe to stop seeing ads. While people are subscribed, their information will not be used for ads.
People in these countries will be able to subscribe for a fee to use our products without ads. Depending on where you purchase it will cost $10.5/month on the web or $13.75/month on iOS and Android. Regardless of where you purchase, the subscription will apply to all linked Facebook and Instagram accounts in a user's Accounts Center. As is the case for many online subscriptions, the iOS and Android pricing take into account the fees that Apple and Google charge through respective purchasing policies.
People in these countries will be able to subscribe for a fee to use our products without ads. Depending on where you purchase it will cost $10.5/month on the web or $13.75/month on iOS and Android. Regardless of where you purchase, the subscription will apply to all linked Facebook and Instagram accounts in a user's Accounts Center. As is the case for many online subscriptions, the iOS and Android pricing take into account the fees that Apple and Google charge through respective purchasing policies.
Illegal in Germany (Score:2, Interesting)
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probably this bit
While people are subscribed, their information will not be used for ads.
you cant weaponize my data and information and use it against me just because i dont give you money.
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You're wrong on this unless you are talking about some Germany specific regulation above and beyond GDPR. GDPR allows you to consent to share your information. If you do not give consent, then you have to be offered another way to receive the service, which is exactly why Facebook created this offering - which is what an EU body recommended they do.
Please cite your source otherwise.
Re:Illegal in Germany (Score:4, Interesting)
This is purely a way for Meta to get another couple of years of benefit from milking our personal data, by pretending that they're trying to adhere to the GDPR, so they can spend another couple of years going back and forth with the relevant authorities.
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The European Commission disagrees with you.
Re:Illegal in Germany (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not the current interpretation of the GDPR. You're interpreting "asking for either money or data" as coercive, whereas intent as outlined in your link is when a more powerful organisation demands individual hand out the consent (i.e. mafia style "would be a shame if something happened to your current data if you didn't give us consent for more).
Selling additional services, such as going ad-free is fully GDPR compliant. The claim you're making is so spurious, I don't think it was even ever brought up in a court of law, as it's obvious it would be immediately thrown out on merits. You absolutely are allowed to charge for services and you are allowed to offer a better service in exchange for a direct payment. Precedent for this goes through entire existence period of EU to times long before it was formed.
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Once a payment is involved, it becomes easier to argue for a contract legal basis.
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Facebook's scheme would be coercive
No it wouldn't. Paying for an ad-free experience has never been seen as coercive in any EU country and certainly not by the EC or the GDPR.
Facebook offers you the ability to withdraw consent. All you need to do is close your account. If you do so within the EU you're sent a response with a timeline for deletion of your data. You can manually request it to be deleted earlier.
Re:Illegal in Germany (Score:4, Informative)
It could be because under GDPR rules they have to offer and opt-in for using your data to target ads, and if you opt out are not allowed to deny service.
So this offer appears to be offering to let you pay for what you can get for free just by not opting in. It will be legal assuming they make it clear you can get the same thing for free, albeit with non-targeted ads in your timeline.
Any attempt to trick you into paying by making your rights harder to exercise would be illegal.
Re:Illegal in Germany (Score:4, Informative)
The GDPR says that you can not deny service. It *DOES NOT SAY* you can not charge money for said service. After all, if it did then it would essentially be a law saying you had to give away the farm to anyone in Europe.
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You can charge for your service, but if you also offer it for free then you can't charge just to not have your personal data used for non-essential purposes like advertising.
They can charge for no ads, but they still can't use targeted ads without permission on the free tier. Only non-targeted, or targeted based on the page content only.
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You can charge for your service, but if you also offer it for free then you can't charge just to not have your personal data used for non-essential purposes like advertising.
They can charge for no ads, but they still can't use targeted ads without permission on the free tier. Only non-targeted, or targeted based on the page content only.
That doesn't seem to be the position taken by the European Commission which recommended this as a way to comply with EU laws.
I don't know how much weight the European Commission statement that this complies with the law, but I'm at least giving it substantial credence.
And while you may hate Facebook, for many legitimate reasons, their legal team has posted extensively about why they don't believe any US company can be GDPR compliant, every lawyer I've asked about the reasoning of Facebook's legal team has s
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So this offer appears to be offering to let you pay for what you can get for free just by not opting in. It will be legal assuming they make it clear you can get the same thing for free, albeit with non-targeted ads in your timeline.
Based on the summary, there will be no ads if you subscribe. That is different then non-targeted ads.
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For now. Care to bet than in 6 months to 1 year we'll see various tiers of subscribtion based on the ammount of ads you'll be getting?
Remember cable TV?
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It could be because under GDPR rules they have to offer and opt-in for using your data to target ads, and if you opt out are not allowed to deny service.
So this offer appears to be offering to let you pay for what you can get for free just by not opting in. It will be legal assuming they make it clear you can get the same thing for free, albeit with non-targeted ads in your timeline.
Any attempt to trick you into paying by making your rights harder to exercise would be illegal.
The GDPR largely governs who you can permit to access the data, I.E. who you sell personal data and identifiable data to. So a paid tier will not get around GDPR restrictions. With Personally Identifiable Information the "controller" is largely responsible for where that data ends up, it's not illegal to use a 3rd party as a data processor, but the controller is responsible for what they do with that data as well so either party are not able to sell it willy nilly..
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GDPR regulates how data is processed too. Companies are not allowed to use data in ways that are not essential to providing the service, without opt-in permission.
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AmiMojo gaslighting at its finest. "It appears", "it could be" followed by statements on a completely different topic that is being discussed, coupled with reference to make observer think that he's actually addressing the topic.
The actual topic is "are you allowed to ask for monetary compensation for an ad free package under GDPR". The answer is unequivocal "yes", GDPR doesn't even consider the subject, nor does it legislate it. It's merely a red herring being used to argue for yet another case of "oppress
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Congratulations AmiMojo. Your Chinese comrade is here to tell you that you're using their methodology. Are you proud?
Re:Illegal in Germany (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually the opposite. Germany (and others in the EU) are the ones who asked (ordered, actually) Facebook to make this offering.
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This is 100% legal in Germany. You base your claim on your prima facie insane interpretation of the freedom of choice principle as you mention below.
Reality is that offering a better service in exchange for higher monetary compensation is not interpreted as coercive by any court of law. It is considered normal and reasonable practice, as banning this would render all interactions between people de jure illegal. I come to your restaurant and ask for you to serve me a dinner for free? You can't refuse, becaus
I Don't See Ads on Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
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Neither do I, and I even don't see the "Like on Facebook" or other FB related crap on the rest of the Internet because I've got the magic hosts file and a raft of ad blockers.
Go EU, but f facebook. A choice being privacy-raped on a free service, or privacy raped with lube on a paid service isn't terrible enticing.
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I do see ads on Facebook, but the targetting is hilarious.
Based on ads I've seen recently, Facebooik thinks I may be a divorce attorney, pastor of a small church, or an audio engineer.
The advertisers paying them for this stuff are really getting ripped off.
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Not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Ads are the scourge of the internet but that's not the reason meta properties are blocked at my firewall.
No, my top reasons are their collection of personal information, profiling and manipulation of people, and generally terrible actions and attitudes of the company.
I'm certain this subscription doesn't get you out of those.
Re:Not enough (Score:4, Informative)
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uBlock still works. Reset uBlock to default settings then purge your cache. Worked for me. No more Youtube blocking crap.
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Naah, by subscribing you're confirming a lot of info they have about you.
Just brilliant for Failbook: let them suckers pay us to give us that juicy PII.
This is might be fantastic news (Score:4, Interesting)
No one is going to subscribe to it. (Score:2)
Do you seriously expect people to pay $13+ / month for something they can get for free?
No one is ever going to subscribe to it. Everyone is just going to. "consent" and move on.
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On unrelated topic, how many people bought blue check mark on twitter after it started getting sold?
That didn't even offer no ads. It offered half ads.
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Reddit has had this forever.
$40/year, no ads, gold every month (when you could buy gold).
I started it ages ago when Reddit actually needed the $; I kept doing it because I hate ads.
I read a lot, comment occasionally, post rarely. Reddit slips new-to-me subs into my feed based on my other viewing - this is the only tracking I can detect.
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Considering you're logged in on their website and using it to view specific posts on specific subjects with specific angled, they don't need any third party tracking for you. You're telling them directly what it is that you're interested in, in what way you're interested and so on. That is likely their primary mode of tracking you to figure out things like what you're interested in. You know, the thing that likes of meta and google have to put third party trackers on websites that aren't theirs for.
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Sure, Reddit knows what I read.
They aren't showing me ads, though, and without that it's very difficult for them to monetize that knowledge by selling it.
It's like what Apple does. They know a lot about me because of Apple Pay, but they don't show me ads based on that info. They say explicitly that they do not save that info long-term, too - they keep it just long enough to enable the transaction.
This is different from what Google Pay does, BTW - Google Pay is run through a Google-owned bank, which can se
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I don't know about reddit's data selling policy, so I can't really comment, but if I were google or facebook, I'd gradly pay reddit for the kind of data it collects. This is some of the best quality data on person's interests you can get, since it's voluntary looking at specific subjects, and posting on those subjects that provides context of the interest on top of it.
I'm not talking about payment systems. Those are exceedingly harshly regulated in EU where I live in terms of what data can be shared with wh
I don't think there are other options (Score:2)
I suspect this is just a permanent reduction in their revenue across Europe but they can't do anything about.. but if you're the head of the division in charge of revenue you can't just put your hands up and say, oh well we tried now our reve
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Especially not for the kind of revenue Facebook wants. I don't think Facebook generates enough value for people to pay $13 a year for. And I seriously doubt that's what a user is worth to Facebook in terms of marketing data and advertisements and what they can sell. .
It's per month not per year
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I don't think it really does that. Notice the carefully chosen wording.
While people are subscribed, their information will not be used for ads.
All they're saying is they won't use it to show you ads. It doesn't say they won't still collect every bit of data they can about it. It doesn't say they won't use it in other ways, like selling it to data brokers. You aren't getting more privacy. You're just getting fewer ads.
Great idea (Score:3)
I had a Scroll subscription that allowed me to view hundreds of sites without ads for $5 a month ( https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com] ) but it sadly got acquired by Shitter and shut down.
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I like the idea, but even with it I'd still run privacy enhancements on those websites because even if they get paid they will probably still try to track you.
The math (Score:2)
I don't use any of their products but pretty cool that they stand up for the Apple/Google tax and charge more when bought in their stores.
However, AFAIK Apple charges 30%, so for EUR 10.5 to remain, they would need to ask for EUR 15 = 10.5 / (1 - 0.30).
So they're selling ads to advertisers and... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Why not? Even if everyone in Europe signs up they can still sell ads for the rest of the world, and if not everyone signs up they can sell ads for the ones who don't.
Re: So they're selling ads to advertisers and... (Score:2)
You don't know how ad networks work. It's entirely feasible to sell a slice on your inventory (eg: users) to advertisers. You do this even if you're tracking all your users, because that's literally what selling targetted advertising is. People you're not tracking is just another slice, and if you don't want to serve them ads, you just .. dont. I wrote ad servers for a living for 7 years.
How long... (Score:2)
Of course, they'll spin it as something else but paying users will still end up being shown ads.
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Then they will lose a LOT more money when the EU fines them for such an action. This entire thing is being driven by the EU demanding Facebook provide an alternative to data collection + advertising model.
And EU fines are percentages of worldwide revenue, so no, they won't get ignored either.
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Re: How long... (Score:2)
Ah yes the old "anyone can do anything they want. Some people even like!" argument. Really brings a lot to the table.
Re: How long... (Score:2)
s/like/lie
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*We're not saying whose popular demand.
Just like the mafia (Score:2, Funny)
Pay to end the abuse.
Re: Just like the mafia (Score:3)
You can just not visit Facebook. The comparison is fucking stupid.
Re: Just like the mafia (Score:1)
Weasel words (Score:5, Interesting)
While people are subscribed, their information will not be used for ads.
While.
WHILE.
As soon as you drop your subscription everything you've done while subscribed will be used for ads.
Maybe the most interesting thing they've ever done (Score:3)
Someone years ago took Facebook's annual revenue, divided by its current userbase and said "this is roughly what Facebook will sell your privacy out for, to anyone who'll buy." I don't remember the figure (and never scrutinised the math or if the revenue & user number were credible), but I remember thinking it was a pittance.
Too many self-described business "leaders" in management positions of internet businesses wouldn't dare take a risk like exploring a business model based on not selling users data to anyone who'll pay unless they've got some Very Famous Figure doing it first as a way of covering their ass should things not work out.
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Fast forward 5 years (Score:1)