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Pechente@feddit.de to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 592 points –

To be clear: I prefer to pay for things instead of having to see ads but 13€ / month!? For a meta product that has inherently user-hostile design patterns even without ads?

Who does this appeal to?

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I don't think the European GDPR allows this (forcing ppl to pay for privacy).

Nobody is forcing anyone, you are free to not use the service at any time.

What they're doing is turning it into an explicitly paid sevice, and letting you choose whether you'd rather pay in money, or in personal data.

In an ideal world, everyone would have the option to decide getting their personal data gathered, or not, in exchange for some money/crypto, with competing data gatherers offering different packages and rewards, and they could use it to subscribe to whatever services they wished.

As far as my interpretation of the law goes... You can either block your website to all non paying visitors OR you also allow non paying visitors but you are not allowed to blackmail the free visitors to give up their privacy. Either everyone pays, or you have the right to privacy. Otherwise, long term, the internet will become divided and inaccessible to low income households. And that's something the EU definitely doesn't want to happen (net neutrality). I think the Dutch verdicts will be overruled by Europe one of these days... Or years :)

IANAL, but... I don't think the law says that? My understanding is that the points are not related to each other:

  • You need prior explicit consent in order to gather non-essential tracking data
  • You can charge any amount for any functionality

That would mean all these combinations would be allowed:

  1. Free, no tracking and no consent
  2. Free, prior consent for tracking
  3. Paid, no tracking and no consent
  4. Paid, prior consent for tracking

If a site decides to only implement numbers 2 and 3... there wouldn't be any conflict.

Either everyone pays, or you have the right to privacy. Otherwise, long term, the internet will become divided and inaccessible to low income households. And that's something the EU definitely doesn't want to happen (net neutrality)

Net neutrality doesn't apply to services, only to carriers, who are considered more like utilities, but still aren't required to offer a "free" tier. Services don't need to offer an option accessible to everyone at all, they can specify whatever requirements they want (with only a few exceptions related to discrimination).

Large social media platforms... is where current legislative efforts are in. Above a certain number of users, they're getting defined more as utilities, and subject to more requirements, but still no "free" tier.

The internet divide exists already: some households can afford 1Gbps unmetered symmetric fiber with Netflix, HBO and Disney+ and a few mobile lines with unlimited calls and 50GB/month data for 100€/month... while others can barely affford a prepaid 100MB/month mobile connection for 1€/month... but it's fine as long as it's a divide based on service pricing, not carrier traffic discrimination.

Sorry for the downvote, especially seen that case law hasn't been settled yet nor if your, or my, reasoning is the correct one. I just hate your arguments though it looks like you work as a part-time Dutch judge :))

Don't be sorry, just don't use downvotes to express your opinion... use your words.

If you don't like my arguments, go ahead and propose others.

For starters, I see you referring to "case law", which sounds like a US thing. In the EU, case decisions generally don't shape the law, except Supreme Court decisions, and even then lawmakers can inform or reform those decisions. It's usually more accurate to define a logical reasoning from the bare law, rather than expect decisions in one case to influence others.

What do you base your reasoning on?

I'm not an English native speaker nor a Lawyer. I base it on how I understood the law through articles in the years since it was introduced. We can go back and forth, but there's nothing I can add that isn't in the article I also linked in the replies. Thanks :)