Facebook Users Fighting ‘Consent or Pay’ Model

First of all, this is not happening in the U.S. because the U.S. does not have a national general privacy law. For all of its flaws, Europe’s GDPR at least has possibility of reigning in big tech a little bit.

In most parts of the world, Meta users (Facebook and Instagram) have two choices – either be the product or don’t use Meta programs. Said differently, if you want to use Facebook or Instagram, you MUST consent to them profiling you so that they can sell ads based on the profile.

GDPR says that consent must be given freely and Meta lost the battle to claim that consent was given freely (to the tune of a billion plus dollars) or profiling you is necessary to deliver the service. It is necessary in order that their business model succeeds, but GDPR doesn’t have an exception for that.

SO, Meta came up with an idea. As an alternative to profiling you, pay for the service. I think it is about $11-$14 a month.

Max Schrems privacy non-profit, None Of Your Business or NOYB, filed suit last year saying that forcing users to pay for something Max would like to be free is not GDPR compliant. NOYB also filed a suit in January saying that you can’t withdraw consent – a pillar of GDPR – (without switching to the pay model).

My thought is that the alternative is valid and GDPR compliant – maybe, but I don’t even play a lawyer on the Internet. The courts have not ruled on these cases yet. I am sure that Meta is already burning the midnight oil looking for alternatives in case these lawsuits don’t turn out the way they would like them to.

Eight more lawsuits were filed in February claiming their practices violate GDPR and lack transparency. They could certainly fix the second one even though they don’t want to. The first one is up to the courts to determine. More lawsuits will, apparently, be filed also.

I think the rub with Facebook’s subscription model is that they are still using your data to “personalize their experience”, whatever that means. It won’t be used to show you ads or ad measurement. The EU’s highest court already ruled in one case that this didn’t run afoul of GDPR, but people want to box Meta in even more.

Facebook/Meta’s business model is the typical model all over the Internet except where you have to pay to access the services. For the most part, if you have to pay, companies make enough money that they don’t have to sell your data – although many still do. After all, more is better and it is not illegal in most countries around the globe.

It will be years until these lawsuits are over; in the meantime, users in at least some EU countries (the model is in beta right now) can choose either to pay not to be profiled for ads or to see ads.

Here is the problem for Meta and many companies like them.

If Facebook is free, I might use it. If I have to pay for it, it is very UNlikely that I would be willing to pay to use it – it doesn’t have enough value. If enough people agree with me, their business model – and ultimately their business – fails. Some people would be just fine with that. But not their investors.

Stay tuned. This is far from over, but Facebook’s legal bills continue to rise.

Credit: The Register

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