I had turned targeted ads off, on Facebook and Instagram. I still got ads but they were not targeted based on my data. I could live with that
Today I got a popup requiring me to pick an option of either accepting targeted ads or pay the equivalent of €13/$14 for an addfree experience across all meta platforms.
This is more than likely illegal in the EU…
As far as I know they are only doing it in EU as a response to a new law the EU had enforced on them.
It’s not a new law. The GDPR has been around for years, but meta only recently lost a legal case saying that they cannot contractually force users to provide their data in exchange for access to the service.
But the GDPR also says consent has to be freely given, some interpet this as meaning that forcing people to pay in order for their data not to be used for ads is not freely given consent.
Yeap, this is not legal and just round two in the fight META vs EU. The pop-up banner forcing you to opt-in or pay is Zucks way of giving europeans the middle finger. This will likely have to be reversed, but Meta speculates on users giving them the permission to continue collecting data before it happens. It will hurt meta more than europeans. Just do nothing for a while and try not using the apps until they remove the banner. They can’t risk losing engagement for too long because of advertisers.