Meta’s blackmail exposed in eight European countries
Meta: the gift that keeps on giving. This time it’s in trouble over its policy of requiring users in the European Union to pay €12.99 per month or accept being spied on so that the company can traffic their data has been, as expected, been taken to court by the consumer protection agencies of Denmark, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Norway, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The reasons are clear and compelling: users are not making a choice based on informed consent, because the company maintains absolute secrecy about the processing it carries out of user data that “mysteriously” ends up in the hands of anyone after it is supplemented by data provided by more than 48,000 companies, a huge industrial complex that tries to eliminate anything resembling privacy. Basically, users are being coerced to accept the processing of their personal data.
The law requires that user consent meet the highest standards, which require it to be free, specific, informed and unambiguous, which is not at all the case here. In these circumstances, the choice about how consumers want their data to be processed becomes meaningless and therefore not free. As I have said before, no one can coerce another person into agreeing to give up their fundamental rights, and in the European Union, privacy is clearly considered as such.
In the case of Meta, moreover, it is true that the purpose of the data obtained is by no means limited or specified, the capture of that data is in no way minimized — but, in fact, the opposite, clearly maximized — and the processing is not only unfair, and much less transparent.
In those circumstances, penalties for the offending company for confirmed non-compliance with the regulation can reach up to 4% of global annual turnover, and more importantly, companies can be ordered to stop the illegal processing of user data. I wonder what Americans will think when they realize that European citizens can fight to protect their right to privacy, but stealing Americans personal data, including everything from political or sexual preferences to health issues, is perfectly fine according to their regulators.
Here’s the position of the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC),
Meta has tried time and again to justify the mass commercial surveillance it subjects its users to. Its unfair choice of “pay or consent” is the company’s latest effort to legalize its business model. But Meta’s offer to consumers is smoke and mirrors to cover up what is, in essence, the same old hoarding of all sorts of sensitive information about people’s lives that it then monetizes through its invasive advertising model. Surveillance-based business models pose all sorts of issues under the GPDR, and it’s time for data protection authorities to stop Meta’s unfair processing of data and its infringement of people’s fundamental rights.”
Which is exactly what I’ve been saying for some time: Meta’s business model is ILLEGAL, and it needs to be dismantled. If Meta’s latest crude attempt at consent based on coercion fails and the accusations are accepted by the courts, the company could finally be forced to opt for other advertising formats not based on surveillance.
That, in addition to being a very hard blow to their predatory business model, would also mean the fall of an evil empire of companies dedicated to spying on users with all kinds of apps, pages and cookies, a model that was always against the social consensus, which makes many paranoid, believing that their devices listen to them, and that we should never have accepted. Now is the time to make it stop.
(En español, aquí)