Ya I am also not following what the problem is with this approach. Is that not the entire point of options? Do people feel entitled to have all free services with no obligations of their own?
If the policy is "you can't sell you privacy" that would be pretty cool. It would require tech companies to come up with a business model that doesn't profit from pervasive surveillance. It is well within our rights as a society to deem such a model unacceptable.
That is exactly what EU laws say — privacy is a right. You cannot give up your rights in exchange for money, just like you cannot legally sell yourself as a slave to someone, as that would be illegal for both parties.
Ad tracking has nothing to do with privacy. The app is already tracking your every move to serve relevant content. Serving relevant ads is the same thing and is no more of an infringement on your privacy.
It has; it directly violates my privacy by tracking me against my will. This implies collecting data about me without my consent.
> The app is already tracking your every move to serve relevant content.
Which is also illegal under the GDPR: An app may not track anything it doesn't immediately require to provide a value to the user, it may not track anything it didn't get explicit consent to track, and must disclose why it is tracking what, how, why, as well as where and how long it keeps that data.
> Serving relevant ads is the same thing and is no more of an infringement on your privacy.
Serving relevant ads is fine, if you can do it within the boundaries I described in the previous paragraph. If you cannot, you cannot do this legally in the EU. There is no wiggle room here; apparently some people refuse to understand that some American business practices are simply not feasible in the EU - period.
>"It is well within our rights as a society to deem such a model unacceptable"
Do societies have rights? Where are these rights defined, and how are they limited (if they are at all)? Are you talking about constitutions (and therefore states), or 'international law'?
Obviously within the context of this discussion, we are talking about states (in this case the EU) making laws.
As to whether or not, they have a right to make laws? I think that’s outside of the scope of this discussion because they clearly already made the law and meta isn’t challenging their right to do so.
I did not think it was obvious, and thought that the parent's definition of 'society' was significant to the discussion. The EU is not a state, though it does make laws. As to whether it has a 'right' to make laws, that depends on your view of rights, and may involve Political Authority (which is somewhat problematic).
I was replying to a comment, not directly addressing Meta.
Anyone or any group can make a rule; highwaymen and pirates can make rules. The parent comment was about a “right” to do so, which begged the question as to the origin of the right.
The reason I think it's reasonable to limit your right to sell yourself as a slave is because if it wasn't limited then a lot of people in very precarious economic situations would sell themselves and there would be a very real interest in creating those situations to force more people into slavery. You can see that with the usurious interest charged by payday loan companies. Usury is also usually illegal in civilized societies for a similar reason.
Similarly you shouldn't be allowed to abrogate your right to privacy because it creates an incentive to force other people to do so as well.
No one is saying it's illegal for companies to demand pay as cost of access. What they can't legally do is take your privacy in lieu of payment. So "pay or don't use" is legal, and always has been. "Surrender your data to use" is not, and following that "Surrender your data or pay to use" isn't either.
Because basically everyone giving up all privacy for a modicum of convenience makes the world a worse place. It's a seatbelt situation; people consistently make the wrong decision, so the option is removed. In the abstract it's distasteful to remove autonomy like that, but on occasion we need to make collective calculated decisions like this.
Maybe you'll understand it when I replace one inalienable right with another in that sentence:
"I don't get how it makes me worse off if someone else voluntarily consents to selling themselves to slavery?"
It is much easier for your government to institute a repressive regime if most of your fellow citizens have given up their privacy. Once instituted, the regime can prevent you from leaving the country and harm you in many ways even if you personally were very careful to preserve your privacy.
Although the decision sounds so simple the underlying principle cannot be accepted. Privacy is an inalienable human right, just like being a free person. We, as a modern society, decided that some things are illegal regardless of my much both parties agree to do so. One cannot own another person, or work without compensation, or sell their organs to evade prison time. What EU is saying is that such a transaction is illegal. And just like the slavery, numerous companies are doing everything in their power to keep it.
Same reason you can't sell your organs or sell your physical freedom / time in prison (falsely admit guilt because someone paid you to do so in order for them to avoid prison) or even end your own life. The country you live has citizens who have banded together to created laws and regulations that say these various freedom-y things, if engaged in at scale by people who might have individual reason themselves to do it, are considered harmful to society and so prohibited.
So from the articles I can find about the complaints filed against Meta [1] I can't find any explanation of what would be an acceptable price for non-consent besides free.
I mean like it's their right as a government to say 'you can't charge for consent. either charge everyone or no-one', but I wonder how it'll all pan out.
Meta is free to charge money and/or run ads, but what it can't do is do mass tracking of EU people unless they somehow really want to and freely opt in to that. Charging for an ad-free experience is fine, but charging so that you don't get tracked is not a legal option in EU, privacy is an unalienable human right that's not for sale no matter what contracts they write.
I think the idea is that you cannot have these options like denying access to content only if user pays with $ or personal data.
But the issue I find here is that Meta has not premiered this technique, the first offenders were Italian digital newspapers either requiring your data or a subscription.
I'm never fond of these sort of comparisons, because size does matter. Meta services billions of customers around the globe - a sizable chunk of the entire human species, with a defacto monopoly in terms of raw reach and scale. For them to be held to a higher standard than e.g. an Italian newspaper is not at all unreasonable.
In an ideal world the rules and regulations companies have to follow would be strongly correlated against their size, with penalties growing increasingly harsh for violations. In reality, it's the exact opposite. Small companies can get destroyed by even minor rule violations, whereas massive corporations will endlessly litigate out even absolutely overt violations, and even when they lose the cases after dragging them out endlessly, the penalties they face are entirely inconsequential - a few days of revenue at worst. That's just so wrong on so many levels.
