If you, like me, live in the EU, Facebook is now entirely clamping down and forcing free users to make their personal data available for monetization.
Attempting to access any Facebook domain and perhaps also other meta products will redirect you to the following prompt with a choice between either accepting the monetization of your user data, or coughing up a region-dependent monthly subscription fee: base (for me ~10€) + an additional fee (~7€) for each additional facebook or instagram account you have.
Now, the hidden third option. At an initial glance, it seems like there is no other option but to click one of the buttons - however, certain links still work, and grant access to important pieces of functionality through your web browser.
If anyone has information to add regarding Facebook or Instagram, please do share it. I’ve only (begrudgingly) used the former up until now, but I know many others use Instagram and don’t feel like giving a single cent (nor their personal info) to Meta.
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https://www.facebook.com/dyi - perhaps most important of all, now is a good time to make a request to download your Facebook data. Don’t forget to switch to data for “all time” and “high quality” if you intend to permanently delete your account.
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https://www.facebook.com/your_information - here you can find and manage your information, but crucially also access Facebook messenger.
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The messenger app: Still hasn’t prompted me with anything, though I expect that will change in the not too far future.
Currently my plan is to use messenger to inform any important friends that I intend to leave FB, and where they’ll be able to reach me in the future.
You need to make a choice to continue using Facebook
This reminds me of the movie War Games, when WOPR says, “The only winning strategy is not to play.” The only correct choice to make here is to delete your Facebook account.
Indeed, I’d like to, and hopefully will be able to. Unfortunately it is basically the universal method of communication at my campus - unless you use instagram… or snapchat… :(
Hopefully it’ll be possible to get others to make the move, but I’m not really that important in social contexts, nor are most privacy-focused folks.
The evil of the lizard is too great to resist. The only way to win is to deny it battle.
How anyone still has a FB account I’ll never understand—or, I should say, anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the insane, “well I have nothing to hide!”/“anyone reading my information will be SO BOOORED LOLOLOL!” mindset and that actually gives 1/10000th of a shit about privacy.
Most of my sports and social activities are organized through various Facebook groups, and I’d lead a rather boring life without it.
That’s why.
For me it is still holding on, barely, as a messaging app. I have a few friends and groups that just refuse to message on other things and that’s keeping me around. I’m tired of evangelizing better options.
I have friends like that. They never get a response from me.
It pops up every once in a while for things like old classmates getting together. If I weren’t on it I wouldn’t know about it.
It’s also useful for local events like neighborhood festivals that don’t get posted on any other media.
I literally had a job that distributed our schedule via a Facebook group exclusively and required an account for requesting changes or interaction about the schedule.
You can easily counter that sentiment by asking them if they also leave their door open when they use a public toilet. Since they got “nothing to hide”.
“Anyone that wants to watch me pee is god be SOO BORRED LOLOL!”
Third choice: Delete your account and never look back.
Imagine how many artificially inflated egos would be deflated all at once if facebook/social media went away.
probably be one the greatest things to happen to humanity.
Isn’t that incredible? Turns out that connecting people to one another in this way fosters some healthy interaction for those who choose it but also amplifies loads of unhealthy bs. I’m one of those idiots who 15 years ago thought the internet and social media would bring about something of a second enlightenment, a golden area of progressivism, being well-informed, connected to one another in new and beautiful ways.
25ish years ago we all thought the internet would be a wonderful marketplace of ideas where people wouldn’t be judged by their age, gender, race or whatever, but on the merit of their ideas.
And it did feel that way for a while back when it took a bit of intelligence to get online. However, now that anyone can get online with just a few clicks the morons have learned how to amplify their moronity.
Its both a marketplace of ideas and the cesspool of moronity.
100% because of social media. see my reply to schnapsman
It would have been that. Or at least a lot more like that…
If social media hadnt been invented, and if social media hadn’t gamified human interaction with upvotes/likes/etc, which ended up doing nothing but creating a dopamine feedback loop that is directly responsible for the extremity of online discourse today.
Social media is also responsible for using its algorithms to link isolated village idiots and conspiracy nuts, and giving them secure echochambers with which to bounce off of eachother free of outside criticism or view, until they ended up completely disconnected from any hint of reality.
I mean, it sort of did, it’s just not quite that simple. A lot of amazing things have come about because of social media. So many artists able to reach people directly without needing gatekeepers like publishers. Movements able to be organized where previously those people would have never interacted.
When the “Subscribe” button is gray and the “Use for free” button is blue, you know something’s up 🤔
Probably because the lost revenue from not showings ads exceeds the monthly subscription cost.
You think they make 10€ per user in ads? I don’t believe that, the ad market is very competitive and banner ads don’t pay well.
Maybe, maybe not. But the UX pattern they use clearly indicates that they rather have users continue to use the adds version instead of getting 10 euros per month. And that’s certainly not because of the goodness of their heart but because it is better for them as a company. And “better for the company” pretty much always means “making more money”.
I don’t know, I don’t even believe, that they are going to stop using your data, even if you pay. So I don’t really know what to think. Also im very happy, that I’m done with meta as a whole.
That pricing (or any pricing) is unsustainable, all it is there for is to give illusion of choice to try and comply with the law. Your data are useless if too many people choose to pay and Facebook dies, on the contrary the more people allows for refined monetization, the stronger Facebook’s business becomes (or get back to before GDPR status).
Oh of course they will still use the data of paying costumers. I’m sure that data is more important to them then any add revenue.
Also that is just money for serving you ads, i think the real money is advertisers buying your data.
How do they target you, are you the demographic they want to sell to, when are you active online, what do you look at, what are your interests, what values are important to you, etc.
youtube only makes around 2€ per user per month by the most optimistic estimates, and they serve full tv-like video ads which are also clickable and targeted, and a lot of them. that’s literally the final form of advertising and it still doesn’t reach a monthly 10€/user, the addressable market is just not that big.
the dark pattern is real though. they’re going for your data and they’re not doing it for money. make of that what you will (i certainly have ideas and they’re not pleasant)
Also those are video ads, that get you waaaay more money, opposed to the banner ads on Facebook (at least some)
They also make a great deal of money using people’s user data to match them to pages that pay to promote and have their page shown to more people. It’s 14 bucks to have a single post “boosted” for a page otherwise your posts will be held at the bottom of the algorithm.
If you give them access to your info, they can keep using it after you’ve stopped paying.
I’ve worked for a successful scaleup that was pouring millions into Google ads every month. I have no idea who click ads, but it worked for them.
It’s because they make more money from your user data, but it also doesn’t cost you money
One thing nobody has mentioned here is that paying users devalue the ads for non-paying users. Paying users are more likely to have desposableincomee, and are more valuable to advertisers. If advertisers know that the only people being shown ads are those without the money to buy their products, they won’t be willing to buy the ad space.
That’s a really interesting point-- I can see that being the case.
What’s absolutely scummy is that “laws are changing in your region” is not what happened. The law hasn’t significantly changed. What has changes is that the regulator is finally enforcing the law.
Also said law doesn’t allow blocking access if you don’t agree to the tracking rules, so let’s see where this goes.
Law opens for supplier to charge money, if necessary to support the service, which is the loophole Meta uses.
Fuck Meta.
Honestly I don’t disagree with that bit.
A website shouldn’t be forced to operate at a loss, which is what Facebook would be doing if they couldn’t strip mine data OR charge access to use the service.
Shh, people don’t wanna hear that. Lol
That’s not a loophole, it’s a key provision of the law.
Delete that garbage.
I swore off all Meta products before they were called Meta. One of the better decisions I’ve ever made.
lol, saying “before they were called meta” as if that was a long time ago. That was 2 years ago.
Pepperidge farms remembers
The text is also incredible misleading. The data will still be harvested and monetized, just not for ads.
Even that claim I find dubious. Yes, your data won’t inform targeted ads on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be used for targeted ads elsewhere on the internet.
I welcome this change. It makes it clear to the user in realistic terms how they want to engage with the site.
- Pay up with your money
- Pay up with your data
- Don’t use Facebook
I despise Meta and all their products but they are entitled to charge people for them. Shit ain’t free to run, you know.
I’d much sooner they showed this banner and force people to make a decision than what they’ve been doing up until now, which is to “assume” everyone’s fine with their personal data being harvested and exploited without their knowledge or consent.
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Did you omit option 3 for brevity, or because you think it’s not a valid option?
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Offline activity stays offline if it never goes online. If you don’t have a facebook account, then your probably have thousands of facebook accounts. It will generate an identity for each unique advertising ID you use, and you can always generate new ones in most devices.
Those accounts get combined through fingerprinting and other dark systems.
That assumes that because they’re paying they aren’t also tracking. They might not use it for ads directly but they’ll still sell it to others that will show you ads off Facebook.
Facebook’s data is way more valuable to Facebook; it doesn’t sell data to third parties. If you think they’re going to sell the non-monetisable data to third parties, you have to believe they’re willing to introduce this (which is likely to be unpopular) in apparent compliance with data protection laws, while still flagrantly violating them in secret, without any of their many employees nor any of their partners’ employees blowing the whistle (and Meta as a company leaks all the time). If they were doing that, why would they bother setting up the fake “pay to not be tracked” flow, when they could pretend to honour people’s free requests not to be tracked?
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That information is not Personally Identifiable Information and so it’s out of scope of privacy protecting law like the GDPR and is probably not what anyone should be worrying about when it comes to data companies.
For those not familiar with the terminology, this means that an advertiser may receive information like, “there exists a person who is 25-30 years old, likes animals, is politically left wing, lives in Michigan” etc - they don’t get that person’s name or other details that allows the advertiser to go away and advertise to you separately. Nor does it allow the government to find out that you like animals by grabbing the traffic.
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Thanks for this detail - I didn’t know it included IP address and accurate Lat/Long (though I guess only if you enable location services)
I agree that that would be very de-anonymisable and probably does fall under the remit of GDPR etc.
In the present context, I think whether or not Meta is using such granular data for real time bidding currently, they’d be arguing that all the RTB data is sufficiently covered by their privacy policy. But this new dialog says “your data won’t be used for ads” which categorically rules out this possibility. I don’t doubt that Meta could be breaking the law where they have a legal argument they can use to claim they aren’t - what I do doubt is that they are breaking the law when all it would take is a single leak to demonstrate that they are lying in their privacy policy. 4% of global revenue is not to be trifled with!
why would they bother setting up the fake “pay to not be tracked” flow
They didn’t. That was not an option.
Don’t use Facebook is the best answer but if you must then the next best option is:
- Choose a better Adblock
You don’t owe your enemy anything. Stop using spyware as a business model.
Yeah, even getting them to display this banner is a victory in itself.
- Pay up with your money
More like give us money, while also paying up with your data, that we won’t use for tracking, only for resell to people that will sell us back tracking details in a maybe not currently illegal way. Also we also are the “people” that will buy the info and sell back the tracking.
Fun fact: In Illinois we actually got pretty nice checks from Facebook over them violating a biometric law the state has. I believe most of us in the class action lawsuit got around $300 each.
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this has to be illegal.
like, no, seriously. i’m not a lawyer but i was working on a (since failed) startup in 2018 and distinctly remember how much headache the gdpr caused. literally one of the main things was that you cannot coerce users into consenting to data processing, or make features conditional to them. the gdpr makes a distinction between processing you do to perform a contract (that’s why no one asks for your consent for processing your email address to log you in, that’s implied) and processing you do for other reasons, which require user consent (that’s why everyone asks if they can spam you on the same email – it doesn’t matter that your email address is already on their server, processing it for marketing reasons requires consent of the data subject). opting into these kinds of processing needs to be granular, if it’s not they lose the validity of your consent.
i seriously hope facebook gets slapped so hard over this that no one ever thinks about doing this again. “paying with your data” should never be a thing in any society that calls itself civilized.
I don’t think you understand how this works. I’m not the biggest fan of Facebook but even I know they’re not a charity they’re not a governmental entity. They’re out there to make a profit and if they can’t make a profit on their ad revenue then they have to make a profit in another way via a subscription service. So they’re literally giving you the option to either continue using them with ads or continue using them as a subscription service. Your other option is to completely delete your Facebook. I don’t see the problem here. You aren’t entitled to a Facebook page, no matter how useful it is to your personal life.
Edit: a word
then offer the subscription service as the only option. if they want to do that, it’s on them. but you can tell by the dark pattern on this ui element that that’s not their main goal, they just want to use the threat of having to pay to coerce people into consenting to data processing.
it’s not about entitlement, it’s about playing fair. removing the option to “pay with your data”, and leaving only the subscription or cancellation as options would be fair play. it would also destroy facebook but that’s on them, it’s their decision to make. but if they decide to provide a free service of any kind, they cannot discriminate against those who wish to choose privacy.
and if we’re being realistic, they’re not expecting even 1% of their user base to pay. they are, however, expecting to keep nearly 100% of their user base. that’s what makes this about coercion – if they didn’t have the option to coerce people (and i’m fairly sure they don’t have it legally, but again, i am not a lawyer) the options presented would be very different, because facebook itself wouldn’t be able to afford to only give its service to paid users. you’d probably have a free tier with optional privacy included, which is missing some features, or a paid tier with extra features and privacy included (hopefully non-optionally, but it’s facebook so they’d probably still try to track you).
Every argument you make here is completely silly.
This is a for-profit company and it has always been a for-profit company. They have no obligation to host you on their site and they can stipulate any conditions they like. If they want to make it a choice between paying a subscription fee or you consciously acquiescing to their collecting your data and advertising to you using that data, then that is 100% their right. Equally you have the right to opt out by closing your Facebook page and deleting all of your data on their site. I will reiterate, you are not entitled to a Facebook page!! This is not right, it’s a privilege granted to you by this greedy-ass corporation in exchange for monetary compensation, either through targeted ad revenue or a subscription fee. Deal with it.
And I don’t think you understand the problem. Nothing is preventing Facebook from displaying ads. Facebook’s issue is collecting user data and using it to directly target ads. They can make it so that a user can opt out of personalized ads and still show ads to that person. Companies would still pay to display their ads, perhaps not at the same rate but that doesn’t mean Facebook would be losing money by serving those users.
Let’s not act like Facebook is going to go bankrupt if some of their users opt out of data collection and targeted ads.
Facebook’s issue is collecting user data and using it to directly target ads.
Literally nearly every website on the internet does this. Even the ones you pay a fee to subscribe to.
You have the choice to close your account with Facebook if you don’t like their policy. Again, this is a completely for profit company, they have no obligation to host you on their site.
Yeah I really hope the EU smack’em down. Asking users to pay a fee only because their countries law limit an illegal practice is astonishing
I would love for FB to be smacked down hard by the EU, but isn’t this just the inclusion of a new option that didn’t exist before, I.e. the subscription? If you push the right button, isn’t that the status quo that you’ve been using all along without any other option? I don’t understand how giving more options is more coercive than before.
I trust that Facebook’s lawyers are payed enough to make sure that this is technically legal. These laws always have loopholes.
It’s a reaction to Facebook methods being deemed illegal in Europe. Although this does not mean than the new model is illegal, it’s an interesting sample of Facebook not always being right even though they have good layers. Both Facebook, Google and many other big tech, operate on the edge of what is legal and often on the other side of it, because it can be profitable enough to just pay the fine if it turns out to be illegal.
This last move, I believe, is more of a statement than it is an actual change.
like, no, seriously.
What does “like” mean here? What’s it for?
It’s how people have been talking for, like, 20 years now at least
flair, mostly. lol
Assuming you’re not a native English speaker. It’s a filler word. It doesn’t really mean anything, it’s used more to communicate tone.
They’re actually holding your friends and family hostage, make plans to get them to safety.
That’s, uh, a little bit hyperbolic.
Not really, like, you can’t communicate with your family. In my case, i live in Germany, but my family lives in Brazil. It’s the only thing keeping me on Facebook, until now.
Thank God my family switched to WhatsApp for all family stuff. Since there are also family members in Colombia & USA, we have to keep a fixed online place, so we can communicate quickly.
WhatsApp is owned, by meta, just like Instagram. So it is rather when and not if we’ll start seeing ads everywhere.
Yes, really. Your family can find any number of other ways to communicate. Facebook does not have a monopoly on international communication.
I know, but the problem is to convince everyone to use something different. 70, 60, 50 ,40, 30 year olds ( i think anyone up to 30 is much more open and used to deal with software ) a plenty, living in different countries.
I really tried.
That’s not Facebook’s fault. You can’t say that a service is holding people hostage when the actual situation is that those people aren’t interested in trying other services.
It may not be fb’s fault directly, but they hold the keys to an enormous resource which should be properly regulated. Telling op to just make the choice ignores the structural issue at hand. It’s a bit like saying if you don’t like all the problems of your country, just emigrate. That’s everyone’s choice, but it isn’t practical as a general solution. Emigrating in a digital sense is far easier, but do we wait for these common goods to be enshittificated and reinvented or can we skip some suffering and seize control already.
Lol my guy, I have actually completed an emigration process. Comparing it to finding a different free communication service is fucking bonkers. Facebook doesn’t hold the keys to anything. If the users leave, they have nothing. Finding a replacement is practical and its not anything like emigrating to another country, holy shit.
Not really, like, you can’t communicate with your family.
LOL that is the fault of your family, not Meta
Is it? You have to pay or give up all of your rights to stay in contact with your friends and family. What would you call it? Glad to see pro-facebook people here on lemmy, there’s dozens of you.
give up all of your rights to stay in contact with your friends and family
You’re making it sound line Zuckerberg has your family locked in a basement. If that’s the case, maybe you should go to the police, rather than complain about it on Lemmy.
On a more serious note: if you’re one of the family members that is “only” reachable on meta, you’re part of the problem. If you want to be part of the solution, tell people where else they can reach you, then delete Facebook.
So, just excommunicate everyone who won’t go through the trouble of emigrating elsewhere. This is practical to you?
What is practical is that they don’t need to “emigrate”. They can stay on Facebook for all I care. But if they want to stay in touch, they just have to add me in 1 out of several apps.
Like I said, you can stay on Facebook and be part of the problem, or you can leave and be part of the solution. The more people who do it, the easier it will be be for the remainders.
Lol for the record pal, Facebook can get fucked. I haven’t used it in years. Maybe don’t assume someone’s stance just because they said you were being hyperbolic - which you’re still being.
I’m just glad they didn’t use the term Literally.
“actually” serves the same purpose in their sentence.
Damnit, you’re right.
Dark pattern of the week: button colors.
Can you guess which button Meta really wants you to press?
The real question, in EU, is not Facebook (or even Instagram). It’s WhatsApp. Business talk with WhatsApp, family talk with WhatsApp, meet a person in a bar? Yep WhatsApp or you are the weirdo
As soon I got the banners, I uninstalled the app and switched to friendly. Not sure if I have such luxury with WhatsApp…. Maybe time to explore matrix? 🤷
I would love to ditch WhatsApp, but then I wouldn’t be in touch with my family half as much, and it would be a lot more difficult to get anything done.
I am in Spain where people simply assume you have WA, and the majority of small business use it extensively.Remind those businesses that if they don’t have explicit consent from the people saved in their contacts, they are violating article 44 of the GDPR.
Same if their websites use Google Analytics without asking for consent first.
What can facebook really gather from whatsapp? Asfaik messages are encrypted, and other than that I’m not really giving info to whatsapp, like my estado and date of birth but that’s pretty much it.
Like I get it from facebook, you are constantly looking things up that can tell what u like, hobbies, or political affiliation, but whatsapp?
They’re “encrypted” meaning they claim so and nobody was able to prove otherwise.
Even assuming they really are encrypted end-to-end, the app can still spy on you directly on your phone. It has access to all your conversation history and everything you type. 😊
Now, I’m not saying they’re sending that verbatim to Facebook but it’s enough to get the gist of a conversation. Like, that you were talking about hair products. That’s enough to be able to sell some ads to you and your conversation partner.
WhatsApp is truly end-to-end encrypted using the signal protocol. The same protocol Signal uses (believe it or not). Meta truly cannot read your messages. But they CAN see who you are messaging, how often you message them, when you are messaging them, where you are when you message them, and plenty more. They can collect metadata. Metadata is the data they actually care about. Honestly, it doesn’t matter as much if you’re asking your friend if they want to hang or sending nudes. The metadata is what they want, and it’s exactly what they’re collecting.
hmmm got it, might be intrtrsting to do an experiment where u look up your facebook feed, see what products u get ads for, yhrn talk with a friend over on whatsapp about a certain product or typr of product u want to buy, and then check if u start getting ads for said product
It has happened to me.
r u sure u only talked/mentioned it through whatsapp, and didn’t do any prior or post searches of related things in a browser?
just saying cause it’ easy to miss
Positive.
WA is also owned by Meta, and was only being used by my privacy-oriented friends. We swapped it for Signal pretty much instantly when the news came, but getting others to move over has been a slow fight.
Yeah… the result is that now I have WhatsApp, signal, telegram. 99% of my contacts are on WhatsApp, maybe 20% are on telegram (and a number of group chat are there) and 1% take it or leave it has signal (and no group chat).
In practice the only one I can get rid of is signal (that is also the one I would like better 🙄🙄)
Matrix is pretty good! I use Element. It’s pretty much as usable as anything else I’ve used for similar purposes: Discord, Slack, Messenger, etc.
Hard part is obviously getting people to switch over. But it’s ready for normies!
The ElementX developemnt is looking really really good!
Lol the wording and design of it all. Subscribe to use without ads, picture of a credit card. Versus Use for free with ads, picture of a shooting star:
Discover products and brands through personalized ads, while using your Facebook account for free.
Plus the little “your current experience” highlighted in green. And finally “use for free” highlighted in blue.
They really want you to go with the second option so they can try to prove to the court that people want free stuff. When most of them were likely unconsciously coerced into it.
I’m surprised the EU hasn’t pounced on them for GRPR infringement, maybe there’s a loophole Meta’s exploiting. Being total assholes ain’t a crime.
This is their reaction to new privacy laws in the EU. I’m not sure I’ll fly.
Maybe, but there are whispers that EU is not happy with this since it seems to violate the GDPR.
I don’t know about the rest of EU, but in France for some reason it was decided that this type of choice, i.e. “pay a subscription or accept all trackers”, was in the spirit of GDPR.
I think it’s bullshit, but hey, it helped me choose whose services I will never use any more (really, most of those were already shit before they tried to pull that one, no big surprise here).
In Italy lots of online newspapers do the same: either you subscribe, or you accept the tracking
LOL why are people using Facebook?
To communicate with people, to follow various pages and groups that notify me of the current events regarding the topics that interest me, to buy and sell stuff in some groups, etc. At least in my case.
I use it for one single purpose, browsing marketplace. I look for local used game stuff and that’s really it. If something peaks my interest I have my girlfriend message them since she uses messenger, I refuse to have it on my phone.
Even then, I’m using Firefox with UBO so even if they do use my browsing data for ads, I ain’t seeing them anyway.
Turns out you can in fact, cuck the Zuck
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Actually no I’m just horribly illiterate 😂
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It’s okay. I’ve misspelled “peek” as “peak” multiple times in the last week.
English just be like that.
You’re an icon. 🥰
Don’t forget to use a facebook container on FF as well.
Firefox with the right extension can do wonders but for Facebook, it is like trying to save yourself from an atomic bomb with a shield made from led. They hire the best developers out there including OSS people to get your personal data one way or another. The day I learned advertisers abuse html5 canvas using miniscule differences between CPUs, I understood the money and development involved.
Because my friends and family, unfortunately use Facebook. Moreso IG these days actually. And if I’m not on there I get left out of fun activities.
Memes
Sounds like a lot of hassle, when the real answer is to just get rid of Facebook
