April 17, 2024 – 10:46 pm
Published on Wednesday In her decision The European Data Protection Board has chosen the model that Facebook also uses, whereby users cannot stop the processing of all their personal data unless they pay for it. According to the board, this does not comply with EU regulations, but Meta does The decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) last year He claims to be so, he says EURACTIV.
Along with other big tech companies, Meta also introduced a subscription system last fall as a response to stricter data protection regulations in the European Union. At that time, everyone could see the pop-up, where they had to declare whether they agreed to Facebook continuing to use their data as before, or whether they would block it for a monthly fee of 10 euros.
On the other hand, the European Data Protection Board concluded, on Wednesday, based on reports from the Dutch, Norwegian and Hamburg data protection authorities, that this practice in this form is not acceptable, because in the so-called “subscribe or pay”, users are not given a real choice. Since consent is required to use the service, they tend to go into it without understanding the consequences of their decision.
This should not be the primary solution for providers, they wrote, and instead they should provide an equal alternative that does not require payment. Or if so, they should add a third option to the two already known. According to the Board, obtaining consent does not exempt a person from complying with the provisions of the GDPR. However, according to Meta, they are bound by this, and a decision by the European Court of Justice last year stated that they are bound by this
The subscription form is a sufficient legal means of obtaining approval, and the decision of the Board of Directors does not change this decision.
After introducing the subscription system, we discussed in a separate article what a person can do if he does not want to pay but is also afraid of his data. You can read this here.
