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Google and Meta could behave like normal companies and require users to pay them money and not sell PII. If that makes them far less successful that's good news for competitors.

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You actually can pay Meta €9.99/month for ad-free Facebook+Instagram in the EU. I would hope this also causes them to track and use much less PII, but I couldn't find anything substantiating that.

As far as I understand the problem with that scheme is that by not paying you not only agree to see the ads but also to the tracking.

Ads on the internet are worth a lot less these days if they don’t come with measurement of whether they are causing conversions (aka tracking). Apparently this measurement is a human rights violation when Google or Meta sell the ads but not when Apple or the NYT do.

That is certainly the case, but seems to be perfectly legal. This scheme is implemented by a number of companies, but most charge only €2/mo or so.

> That is certainly the case, but seems to be perfectly legal.

I don't think its legal, considering that not too long ago even here on HN there was a post about "Pay or Okay" not being considered legal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38458660

Some further articles/document about it:

https://noyb.eu/en/statement-edpb-pay-or-okay-opinion

https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-04/edpb_opinion...

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