The fact that numerous Facebook and Instagram users had to decide last year either to continue using the services with personalized advertising or to pay for advertising freedom was illegal, the consumer advice center (VZ) announced on Monday. “It cannot be the case that large companies like Meta do not adhere to the applicable rules,” said VZ-NRW board member Wolfgang Schuldzinski. A Meta spokeswoman, however, contradicted and emphasized that applicable law had been adhered to.
The subscriptions were designed to give people control over whether Meta could use their data for personalized advertising, the company representative said. According to a ruling by the EU Court of Justice, ad-free subscription models are a legal step to obtain people’s consent for personalized advertising.
No election possible on a voluntary basis
From the perspective of consumer advocates, a voluntary choice was not possible when it came to the “Pay or Consent” question. This constitutes a major breach of data protection. When designing the offer options, including a “disincentively high price”, Meta intended to ensure that users had no choice but to agree to free use – “and thereby allow Meta to carry out comprehensive user tracking for the purpose of personalized advertisements,” complains Consumer advice center.
They also criticize that Meta did not make it sufficiently clear with the ad-free subscription that data was still being collected. “Users who don’t know this may have the feeling that their user behavior is not being saved after taking out their subscription,” says Schuldzinski.
Data protection complaint in Austria
It’s not the first time that Meta has gotten into trouble with consumer advocates because of the “Pay or Consent” approach. In November, the data protection organization noyb filed a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority. The abbreviation noyb comes from the English expression “none of your business” – “none of your business”.
In addition, the North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center had filed a separate lawsuit against Meta – it also concerned the subscription process on Facebook and Instagram, but this involved a different aspect, namely an incorrectly labeled order button. The consumer advice center prevailed in the so-called interim legal protection before the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court.
My themes
For your saved topics were
new articles found.
info By clicking on the icon you can add the keyword to your topics.
info
By clicking on the icon you open your “my topics” page. They have of 15 keywords saved and would have to remove keywords.
info By clicking on the icon you can remove the keyword from your topics.
Add the topic to your topics.
Source: Nachrichten
