The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta plans to move to a “Pay for your Rights” model, where EU users will have to pay $ 168 a year (€ 160 a year) if they don’t agree to give up their fundamental right to privacy on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. History has shown that Meta’s regulator, the Irish DPC, is likely to agree to any way that Meta can bypass the GDPR. However, the company may also be able to use six words from a recent Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling to support its approach.
This price is absurd, sure. Even if I trusted Meta, there’s no way I’m paying that.
Having said that, they can charge whatever they want for the service. As company, their prices are up them.
I don’t get why you (no OP specifically, but in general) put it as if you must pay or give up your rights. We can just not use Meta, as many of us already been doing.
GDPR should be there to protect and enforce informed consent. Not to remove people’s ability to decide.
Why sholuld we regulate Meta’s prices and not whatever other suscription service exists out there?
I haven’t used anything Meta-related in almost 10 years and my life has failed to disintegrate. It’s actually been lovely.
As absurd as the price may seem, that is actually about how much money they make from selling user data. Of course, given their track record I don’t feel inclined to trust this “pinkey promise” of not selling the data in some form anyways.
Even if you do not have a Facebook account, you are still being tracked through Ghost Profiles.
So no, you can not “just not use Meta”.
They are so ingrained in the internet, that you can not get away, no matter hard you try.
Ok, so I should use Meta services anyway guilty-free?
I’m not claiming I’m not being tracked. But in theory, the GDPR should have made that illegal (to my understading) as I’m in the EU.
If the law is just paper anyway, then what’s the point of the discussion?
You can alleviate this by using a VPN, configure you browser to minimize fingerprinting and use NoScript which allows you to block their trackers on third party websites.
Firefox’s creators also have an optional Facebook Container add-on which will sandbox all Facebook cookies in their own Fb-only bubble, for those who still want to use it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/facebook-container-prevent-facebook-tracking