[estel]

From the Independent (and presumably elsewhere):

> Meta said it has cooperated with regulators and pointed to its announced plans to give Europeans the opportunity to consent to data collection and, later this month, to offer an ad-free subscription service in Europe that will cost 9.99 euros ($10.59) a month for access to all its products

> Tobias Judin, head of the international section at the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, said Meta's proposed steps likely won't meet European legal standards. For instance, he said, consent would have to be freely given, which wouldn't be the case if existing users had to choose between giving up their privacy rights or paying a financial penalty in the form of a subscription.

[timeon]

> For instance, he said, consent would have to be freely given, which wouldn't be the case if existing users had to choose between giving up their privacy rights or paying a financial penalty in the form of a subscription.

This is already present in EU. Spiegel.de and others are like that. Pay or be tracked.

[signal11]

> This is already present in EU. Spiegel.de and others are like that. Pay or be tracked.

And legal challenges to that are in the works. Some have even been partially upheld. “Pay or okay” done as a binary choice isn’t okay, like anything else, granular consent is important:

https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=DSB_(Austria)_-_2023-0.17...

[staunton]

The problem in that case is how it's possible "not to track" somebody who pays for the service and accesses content via a paid account, and how it's possible to demonstrate to users how their data is handled. I guess only big companies that subject themselves to public oversight can really achieve it.

An alternative might be homomorphic encryption, which would already be doable with current technology for something like a newspaper.

[bluelu]

Pay or to be tracked is only allowed for newspapers...

[sharemywin]

exactly facebook(US company) illegal, EU companies legal. let's not kid ourselves on how these dog and pony shows work.

[neaumusic]

this is similar to tiktok getting banned because the data doesnt reside in the US anymore, meanwhile the NSA has unrestricted access and data privacy doesn't apply to foreigners (we can snoop on anybody who's not a US citizen). honestly private data should be illegal, public behavioral data should be public, and censorship is always wrong

[erinnh]

The practice has been very controversial in the EU ever since GDPR took effect.

It’s simply that nobody has been sued to the end for it yet.

[dotancohen]

Ad-free does not promise nor even imply tracking-free.

In fact, it would still make sense to track ad-free users, if for no other reason than to better target ads to their family members, coworkers, and friends. They probably like what you like.

And "Bob's birthday is coming up, he would love a Barcelona team t-shirt" would be very convincing.