Recently a European Court has judged that Meta’s way of collecting and using people’s data in Europe has been in violation of privacy regulations between 2018 and 2023. Now Meta announced an option of Facebook and Instagram without personalized ads for 120 euros per year. European users would have the option to pay or agree to personalized ads. But is your right to privacy for sale? Let’s find out!
So, that blog post is by Tutanota who, as we’re all aware, also offer a paid-for product. But there’s a lot of difference between a paid-for product that will only respect your privacy if you pay for it (and even that is questionable) and a paid-for product that just does respect your privacy, even on their free tier.
And, as others have said, Meta have made little to no mention of several things about this paid-for model:
point 3 is actually irrelevent unless this is done for propaganda reasons (highly likely though). theres no reason they wouldnt want to make a large amount of money and offering a choice that wasnt there before isnt a scenario where we’re somehow worse off - at the worse we’re the same
Is it really a choice though if you want to be private but you can’t afford 13 euros a month?
It’s not the fact they’re charging that’s the issue, it’s the fact they’re charging such a massive amount of money.