Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
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EU tells Meta it can't paywall privacy (www.theregister.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The EU's Data Protection Board (EDPB) has told large online platforms they should not offer users a binary choice between paying for a service and consenting to their personal data being used to provide targeted advertising.

In October last year, the social media giant said it would be possible to pay Meta to stop Instagram or Facebook feeds of personalized ads and prevent it from using personal data for marketing for users in the EU, EEA, or Switzerland. Meta then announced a subscription model of €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android for users who did not want their personal data used for targeted advertising.

At the time, Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at noyb, said: "EU law requires that consent is the genuine free will of the user. Contrary to this law, Meta charges a 'privacy fee' of up to €250 per year if anyone dares to exercise their fundamental right to data protection."

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[+] [email protected] -22 points 9 months ago (20 children)

I honestly don't understand how what Facebook is doing a bad thing. The deal has always been that targeted advertising is how you pay for a free service.

This isn't exclusive to Facebook.

Offering an ad free experience for a subscription fee is an extremely common practice. Do people really expect to be able to use an entertainment platform for free?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think there’s a difference between “generic ads we show you to support our platform” and “we’re selling your data to other people to give us revenue, so you have to offset that loss”. The latter involves your privacy around data which is the target.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yes, the nuance is that Facebook must offer an alternative that does not use personal data, even if it means losing some of the features compared to when you pay (either with money or authorizing them to sell your data).

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