[TekMol]

I think this is a "trick" to get around the GDPR. Many European newspapers already do this:

The GDPR says that it is not allowed that the user who denies their personal data to be stored experiences negative consequences because of that.

So in theory, behavioral advertising is dead in Europe. Because nobody would voluntarily agree to be tracked.

For some reason, many companies go the "Our service is available in two flavours: With behavioral advertising and as a paid service" route. And it seems that has not been challenged in court yet.

I wonder how it could be legal, because not having free access is a negative consequence, isn't it?

[jerf]

"I wonder how it could be legal, because not having free access is a negative consequence, isn't it?"

I think even in Europe the claim that any company has an obligation to serve you for 100% free, getting nothing out of it whatsoever, is not going to fly very far.

It isn't even a moral issue per se; it's just impossible. Companies need some sort of income. One can speculate on how nice it would be if that were not the case, but if it weren't we'd live in a very different world anyhow, beyond the realm of speculation (it isn't necessarily all better than ours in every way).

[paxys]

If you look at the number of official government announcements, emergency broadcasts, breaking news, communications by politicians and various state and local bodies etc. from all over the world that are posted exclusively on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, you can easily make a case that free access to them is necessary.

[jsnell]

It's not that there is an obligation to serve you for free. But the only alternative to personalized ads can't be a subscription.

What do you do if a user refuses the use of their data for ad targeting? In the worst car you show them untargeted ads. Ideally you target ads on ways that don't require that user's personal data, such as being based solely on the page content.

The newspapers are blatantly violating the GDPR, and it is kind of disgusting that the DPAs are choosing to selectively not enforce the law due to political reasons (governments can't afford to be seen as being against the local media).