By charging customers for an ad-free experience, Meta seeks to get around the bloc’s privacy regulations.
The Wall Street Journal claimed on Monday that Meta is thinking about charging Facebook and Instagram users a monthly subscription fee to opt out of having their data mined for customised adverts. According to reports, Meta is promoting the concept as a way around the EU’s increasingly stringent privacy regulations.
For desktop users to access Facebook or Instagram on a desktop computer, Meta would charge €10 ($10.50) a month, plus €6 for each additional linked account. According to the publication, smartphone users would pay €13 for either app, and €19 for both.
If Apple’s and Google’s app stores’ commission on in-app purchases were taken into account, mobile subscriptions would be more expensive. Both apps would still be available to users who choose not to pay, but they would see personalised adverts based on their browsing history.
The core of Meta’s increasingly tense relationship with EU regulators is the tracking of user activity. Every user reportedly has 52,000 data points collected by Facebook alone. Unless they fill out a long consent form buried in the app’s help section, users are automatically opted in to this collecting. It was just made available in April, and it was added to comply with a board of EU privacy regulators’ December decision.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has since ordered that Meta must first obtain explicit authorization before collecting this data, and has given the platform until the end of November to comply. The EU’s Digital Markets Act, which takes effect the following year, also mandates that the business request user consent and directs the business to grant users access to the service even if the users decline to do so.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Meta presented its subscription model as a potential workaround to this legislation to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) last month. As Meta’s European offices are in Ireland, the DPC will be in charge of upholding the law.
According to reports, Meta informed the DPC that it will be implementing the SNA, or Subscription No Ads, model over the next few months. When the Wall Street Journal enquired about the proposal, neither the DPC nor Brussels’ authorities responded.
The company supports “free services that are supported by personalised ads,” according to a spokeswoman for Meta, but is looking into “options to ensure we comply with evolving regulatory requirements.”
