[msdrigg]

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?

[gpm]

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...

[toyg]

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).

[margana]

The news sites I frequent are doing something slightly different though. Some of them are detecting adblockers and give a similar popup saying "either you subscribe or turn off adblocker". This is fine as they don't force you to allow tracking, just seeing ads.

What you described may be out there as well, I just haven't stumbled on it personally.

[bcye]

In Germany, it is nearly never like that, and always about accepting profiling. You don't even get ad-free. You pay 3€ a month to not get profiling on one site, it's completely absurd.

[toyg]

I've just tested a few (gazzetta.it, repubblica.it, corriere.it) and they all trigger without adblockers. The text explicitly mentions profiling cookies.

[antoniojtorres]

It is indeed different, the interesting nuance is that the difference is permitting advertising interest based tracking vs non-personalized lower yield ads if you decline the cookie banner. It’s interesting to see that the money without serving personalized ads is not enough to keep publishers afloat, grim, at least for websites trying to offer ad supported content AND user choice

[niutech]

Newspapers aren't gatekeepers, unlike Meta.

[account42]

> 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).

Good. They'll be replaced with others that can either provide enough value that people don't mind paying for them or can reduce their costs to survive without tracking like they did before the Internet. Win/win either way.

[itopaloglu83]

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]

> 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.

[account42]

a) Not all newspapers were paid.

b) If someone handed me a newspaper I was not expected to pay for it as well.

c) The newspaper dosn't fucking track you.

[pashadee]

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

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_... (also linked via the tweet elsewhere in this discussion)

[bluesign]

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]

> 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.

[9dev]

> 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.

And that's a good thing! If people really get value out of Facebook, they'll pay for it. If Facebook cannot deliver value without invading their users privacy and selling their data, maybe their business premise was flawed in the first place. Is it so alien to accept that the era of "free" online services might end after all?

Regarding the CTF specifically: I don't think Apple will get away with this after all, but we'll see.

[bluesign]

I think as long as they don't discriminate, they can get away with it. But will they choose to go this way is another question.

[itopaloglu83]

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]

"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

[bluesign]

> 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.

Your case only valid with "zero consent" case. This is proved with Apple's tracking protection for apps already; given that you have some x% of users consenting to tracking, CPM value for non-tracking users are within 85-95% range.

[bcye]

> The CPM on ads where you don't know the audience

Contextual Advertising is also a thing, see CarbonAds and others

[acedTrex]

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?

[idle_zealot]

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.

[9dev]

That is exactly what EU laws say — privacy is a right. You cannot give up your rights in exchange for money, just like you cannot legally sell yourself as a slave to someone, as that would be illegal for both parties.

[rreichman]

Ad tracking has nothing to do with privacy. The app is already tracking your every move to serve relevant content. Serving relevant ads is the same thing and is no more of an infringement on your privacy.

[9dev]

> Ad tracking has nothing to do with privacy.

It has; it directly violates my privacy by tracking me against my will. This implies collecting data about me without my consent.

> The app is already tracking your every move to serve relevant content.

Which is also illegal under the GDPR: An app may not track anything it doesn't immediately require to provide a value to the user, it may not track anything it didn't get explicit consent to track, and must disclose why it is tracking what, how, why, as well as where and how long it keeps that data.

> Serving relevant ads is the same thing and is no more of an infringement on your privacy.

Serving relevant ads is fine, if you can do it within the boundaries I described in the previous paragraph. If you cannot, you cannot do this legally in the EU. There is no wiggle room here; apparently some people refuse to understand that some American business practices are simply not feasible in the EU - period.

[rreichman]

I'm saying that the app looks at what you like in order to serve you content in the feed. Do you dispute this?

[nickff]

>"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'?

[msdrigg]

Obviously within the context of this discussion, we are talking about states (in this case the EU) making laws.

As to whether or not, they have a right to make laws? I think that’s outside of the scope of this discussion because they clearly already made the law and meta isn’t challenging their right to do so.

[nickff]

I did not think it was obvious, and thought that the parent's definition of 'society' was significant to the discussion. The EU is not a state, though it does make laws. As to whether it has a 'right' to make laws, that depends on your view of rights, and may involve Political Authority (which is somewhat problematic).

I was replying to a comment, not directly addressing Meta.

[SiempreViernes]

Are you genuinely, in good faith, asking if societies can define rules?!

[nickff]

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.

[mr_toad]

‘We hold these truths to be self evident’

The bottom line is that all rights are an invention.

[idle_zealot]

The right I am referencing is that to self-governance.

[throwway120385]

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.

[jermaustin1]

> It is well within our rights as a society to deem such a model unacceptable.

Then... pay for it?

[Fargren]

No one is saying it's illegal for companies to demand pay as cost of access. What they can't legally do is take your privacy in lieu of payment. So "pay or don't use" is legal, and always has been. "Surrender your data to use" is not, and following that "Surrender your data or pay to use" isn't either.

[what]

Aren’t there actually three options?

1. Pay

2. Give them data

3. Do not use

Why are people not allowed to consent to (2)?

[idle_zealot]

Because basically everyone giving up all privacy for a modicum of convenience makes the world a worse place. It's a seatbelt situation; people consistently make the wrong decision, so the option is removed. In the abstract it's distasteful to remove autonomy like that, but on occasion we need to make collective calculated decisions like this.

[itopaloglu83]

Although the decision sounds so simple the underlying principle cannot be accepted. Privacy is an inalienable human right, just like being a free person. We, as a modern society, decided that some things are illegal regardless of my much both parties agree to do so. One cannot own another person, or work without compensation, or sell their organs to evade prison time. What EU is saying is that such a transaction is illegal. And just like the slavery, numerous companies are doing everything in their power to keep it.

[asadotzler]

Same reason you can't sell your organs or sell your physical freedom / time in prison (falsely admit guilt because someone paid you to do so in order for them to avoid prison) or even end your own life. The country you live has citizens who have banded together to created laws and regulations that say these various freedom-y things, if engaged in at scale by people who might have individual reason themselves to do it, are considered harmful to society and so prohibited.

[burnerthrow008]

The same reason they're not allowed to choose a phone with a walled-garden ecosystem: A few bureaucrats in Brussels don't like it.

[msdrigg]

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-consum...)

[PeterisP]

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.

[epolanski]

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]

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]

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]

Meta's EU business is orders of magnitudes larger than any Italian newspaper. They should be able to afford much better legal counsel.

[nickpsecurity]

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]

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

[verisimi]

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