(San Francisco) Meta plans to offer paid subscriptions to Europeans to use Instagram and Facebook without advertising and thus comply with European legislation on personal data and targeted advertising, according to a source familiar with the matter.
According to information first revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Meta is working on several formulas.
Subscribers could pay around 10 euros per month for their Instagram or Facebook account on their computer, and 13 euros for mobile applications on smartphones. Each additional account would add around €6 to the monthly bill.
Users who do not consent to the American group collecting their personal data for advertising targeting purposes would thus retain access to the platforms, for a fee.
Meta and Google built their empires – and, in large part, the economic structure of the web – on this model: targeting billions of users with finely targeted and personalized advertisements using the personal data that the companies collect about them.
Meta has until March 6, 2024 to comply with its new obligations. The California company outlined this proposal to regulators in September. Brussels has not reacted officially on this subject.
Last July, the EU Court of Justice issued a ruling confirming that Meta did not have the right to share personal information about its users between its platforms.
Users “must be free to individually refuse […] to give their consent to particular processing of data which is not necessary for the execution of the contract, without being obliged to completely refrain from using the service”, a the court said on July 4.
Accordingly, these users must “be offered, where appropriate for an appropriate fee, an equivalent alternative option not accompanied by such data processing”.
