[piaste]

The "or you can give up your rights in exchange for a discount" part is the problem. You can't buy a car by agreeing to be a slave for 90 days either.

Commercial subscription services that don't violate your privacy are 100% fine, and incidentally, as xp84 noted, are way healthier because the user is at least a customer. (I dream of a day where companies spend $0 on advertising and instead all commercial websites and social media are run on small subscriptions or frictionless micropayments and the only person they need to keep happy is the customer.)

Of course "free" services have a massive advantage over paid ones. If Meta can profitably run Facebook just on generic ads without tracking, like a newspaper, that's allowed too. But if they can't, well, tough shit.

[pests]

> You can't buy a car by agreeing to be a slave for 90 days either.

Sorta??? It's not like I volunteer my time to my job.