Meta’s proposal to offer users in Europe a subscription system to use Facebook and Instagram without ads would be an abuse that goes against the protection of personal data, according to the Association for Technology and the Internet (ApTI), which together with 24 other NGOs sent uri to the EU an open letter requesting negative opinion of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).

• “As you know, in November 2023 Facebook/Meta introduced a new approach called Pay or Good, forcing its users to either pay a monthly subscription or consent to the collection and use of their personal data to serve them personalized advertising. .
• Under these circumstances, platform users lose the “real or free choice” to accept or refuse the processing of their personal data, which was the cornerstone of the GDPR reform and repeatedly confirmed by the Court of the European Union”, says Bohdan Manoleja, a lawyer specializing in IT legislation and executive director Association of Technology and Internet (ApTI).

According to him, users must pay 251.88 euros per year, approximately 1,260 lei, to Meta in exchange for the platform’s no-monitoring service.

“If the model adopted by Meta is accepted by the EDPB as legitimate, most companies will adopt a similar approach. If we imagine that there are about 35 apps on a person’s phone, from social networking apps to apps related to shopping, sports, health subscriptions, banking services, etc., the Pay or Good model will cost about 44,100 lei per year. . In 2022, the average net salary in Romania was approximately 45,600 RON per year. It is easy to understand that many Romanian citizens will in fact be forced to sacrifice their control over personal data and the right not to be controlled,” he warns.

Adopting a “pay or fine” practice would significantly weaken the safeguards offered by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“This practice treats privacy as a paid service – a commodity, normalizing the vision according to which EU citizens do not have the right to data protection, but must ‘buy’ their fundamental rights from companies,” says Bohdan Manoleya.

ApTI, together with noyb and 23 other non-governmental organizations in the European Union, published an open letter asking the EDPB to issue an opinion protecting the fundamental right to data protection.

• AN OPEN LETTER AGAINST THE PAY OR OKAY PRACTICE.

Meta announced subscriptions for Facebook and Instagram users / How much to pay to get rid of ads

Meta Platforms announced on October 30, 2023 that it will offer users in Europe an ad-free subscription system to use Facebook and Instagram, a decision made by the online giant to comply with European Union regulations.

Monthly subscription plans will cost €9.99 for web users, while iOS and Android users will have to shell out €12.99 per month.

EU rules threaten to limit Meta’s ability to tailor ads to users without their consent and affect its main source of revenue.

Offering a choice between an ad-supported free plan and an ad-free paid plan may encourage users to choose the former, helping Meta stay compliant without affecting its ad business.

Meta was fined €390 million earlier this year by Ireland’s data privacy commissioner and told it could not use a so-called “contract” as a legal basis to send ads to users based on their online activity.

Meta and Google built their empire — and, to a large extent, the economic structure of the Internet — on this model: targeting billions of users with personalized ads based on the personal data companies collect about them, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported earlier this month that introduction of subscription.

But the European Union (EU) has been fighting for years against tracking internet users without their consent, first with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016, then with the Digital Markets Regulation (DMA), which took effect this summer.

Meta has until March 6, 2024 to fulfill its new obligations.