This is all I want from companies, give me a choice. "We can mine the fuck out of your data and bombard you with adds or you can pay us $X a month to get the fully customisable user experience you want" and let me decide wether or not I want to pay the money.
Only as long as there is also the third option: having nothing to do with them. With Facebook's tendrils and tentacles spread across 90% of the Internet, this is not really an option, even if you never ever visit their actual website.
I didn't look too deeply into it, but as I understand it, it is acceptable to make people pay a reasonable price to compensate for losses from lack of targetted advertising. The problem with what facebook did is that the price was completely dispropotionate and obviously meant to make sure most people don't pay it.
The European Union says it has notified Meta that its “pay or consent” model for Facebook and Instagram might violate consumer protection laws.
The EU’s Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network says the company has until September 1st, 2024, to propose changes to its model, which it calls “misleading” and “confusing” for users, or face potential fines.
CPC regulators, who began their investigation after complaints from consumer watchdog groups, claim the company uses confusing language to explain how both the paid and “free” versions of Facebook and Instagram work and that its rollout pressured people to make a choice without enough time to consider how it would affect them.
They also say that calling the ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram “free” is misleading since it still requires users to consent to the use of their data for targeted ads.
Didier Reynders, EU Commissioner for Justice, says customers shouldn’t be “lured into” thinking they won’t see ads if they pay the subscription, or that it’s free despite the company profiting from their personal data.
“Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries,” Meta spokesperson Matt Pollard told The Verge in an email, “Subscription for no ads follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and we are confident it complies with European regulation.”
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The only way this has a shot in hell of ever working is via the use of a state made API that independently confirms a user's age based on a state issued unique identification, with strong penalties for providing access without age verification via the API
Frankly that age gate API should also block access to online purchases, and to algorithm based content presentation models. That alone will significantly help the screen time crisis with today's youngins.
Rather than implement the api, porn software administrators would block connections from the UK, at which point everyone would use a vpn to get around it pretty easily.
You can't fix it with mandatory access control. It's not up to the government anyway, it's up to parents to properly use device lockdowns. That's what they should be doing, a free state sponsored, maintained and up to date opt in software program that allows parents to lock down purchases and porn on their own children's device. This program would be taxpayer funded and paid humans would maintain a list of approved/blocked websites and automatic third party application configuration, with client side verification for CSAM or abuse material of the child's device.
The public at large is not responsible for the education and protection of children they do not have. That's a parent's and only a parent's duty, which means the control should be opt in by parents.
theverge.com
Heiß