Meta’s major cash cow, its ad-serving business, is in jeopardy in Europe. The company was recently fined for some of its practices in the region and incoming legislation calls for a greater ban on behavioural advertising. If it passes, Mark Zuckerberg’s income stream will be seriously curtailed. That was why the company attempted to run ahead of the change by implementing a subscription fee for ad-free access to Facebook and Instagram (separate payments, obviously).
At the time it was just a rumour but Meta has since rolled out the Subscription for No Ads (SNA) in Europe. But nothing is ever easy when you’re one of the largest companies on the planet. Despite coming up with a way around incoming European regulations, the social media giant faces a challenge to its plans to try and make its money without resorting to advertising.
Meta’s NOYB problem
Meta’s attempt at creating a loophole for itself faces opposition from a group called NOYB (None Of Your Business), privacy advocates based in Vienna. The group has filed a complaint with the GDPR claiming that Meta’s plans to ‘convince’ its users to give the company permission to serve ads based on their personal data are invalid under EU law.
Specifically, “consent to online tracking and personalized advertising is only valid if it is “freely given”,” says the group of NOYBs. The complaint likens the Subscription for No Ads program to a “privacy fee”, arguing that users are being forced to cough up if they wish to keep their personal information private. This… is technically correct. If it were a shady Italian fellow in your place of work commenting that something unpleasant might happen unless you gave him money every month, you’d have a different perspective on the transaction.
But that’s not the full extent of the argument. NOYB argues that if Meta is able to get away with giving users the choice of paying its “privacy fee” or letting the company continue harvesting data the way it has been, other companies will follow suit in Europe. Ensuring privacy will become a task that can only be accomplished by spending large sums of money, which is in opposition to the spirit of all the European Union’s new privacy laws.
A Meta spokesman, speaking to Reuters, pointed out that its subscription service costs about the same as similar subscription services in Europe. What was not addressed is that services like Google’s YouTube Premium, Spotify, and Netflix, all provide something relatively useful to end users. Facebook and Instagram are, broadly, an information stream that Meta siphons for advertising purposes while distracted users a) argue with each other or b) look at pictures other people have posted.