If you, like me, live in the EU, Facebook is now entirely clamping down and forcing free users to make their personal data available for monetization.

Attempting to access any Facebook domain and perhaps also other meta products will redirect you to the following prompt with a choice between either accepting the monetization of your user data, or coughing up a region-dependent monthly subscription fee: base (for me ~10€) + an additional fee (~7€) for each additional facebook or instagram account you have.

Now, the hidden third option. At an initial glance, it seems like there is no other option but to click one of the buttons - however, certain links still work, and grant access to important pieces of functionality through your web browser.

If anyone has information to add regarding Facebook or Instagram, please do share it. I’ve only (begrudgingly) used the former up until now, but I know many others use Instagram and don’t feel like giving a single cent (nor their personal info) to Meta.

  1. https://www.facebook.com/dyi - perhaps most important of all, now is a good time to make a request to download your Facebook data. Don’t forget to switch to data for “all time” and “high quality” if you intend to permanently delete your account.

  2. https://www.facebook.com/your_information - here you can find and manage your information, but crucially also access Facebook messenger.

  3. The messenger app: Still hasn’t prompted me with anything, though I expect that will change in the not too far future.

Currently my plan is to use messenger to inform any important friends that I intend to leave FB, and where they’ll be able to reach me in the future.

  • @buddascrayonEnglish
    1•6 months ago

    Where exactly is the coercion here? The choices in order to maintain a Facebook account you either pay a fee or let them use your data to advertise to you. The other option is to completely close your Facebook account and delete all of your data on their servers. An argument can be made that they should make it easier to remove all of your data and several people that I know have made that argument. But other than that I don’t see anything they are doing as being illegal, in the EU or otherwise. Sure the way they presented is a pretty scummy but what do you want? It’s Facebook and it’s run by greedy corporate dick heads. If you don’t like it delete your Facebook profile.

    I also find it hilarious that you don’t think they have lawyers who specialize in European Union law that don’t know exactly what the fuck they’re doing. This is a multi-billion dollar company, they can afford the best goddamn lawyers.

    • b3nsn0wEnglish
      0•6 months ago

      Where exactly is the coercion here? The choices in order to maintain a Facebook account you either pay a fee or let them use your data to advertise to you.

      right there. you’re a parody of yourself lmao.

      a facebook account cannot simultaneously hold enough value that it’s worth compromising your privacy for and not hold value so that the threat of taking it away is not coercion. the enemy cannot be both strong and weak at once. the only way to resolve this dichotomy is to posit your privacy itself holds no value and is therefore a fair price to pay for something that also holds no value, but that’s just absolutely ridiculous to begin with.

      you also had your answers to your questions about which part should be illegal, multiple times. to then ask the same questions again because you “don’t see it”, playing dumb like that, is just manipulative. why are you so dead set on corporate bootlicking?

      • @buddascrayonEnglish
        1•6 months ago

        Read carefully:

        You 👏 do 👏 not 👏 require 👏 a 👏 Facebook 👏 page 👏 to 👏 live.

        It is the very definition of superfluous luxury service. Just delete your page and be done with it.

        • b3nsn0wEnglish
          1•6 months ago

          Read carefully:

          You 👏 cannot 👏 make 👏 personal 👏 data 👏 the 👏 price 👏 of 👏 a 👏 service.

          It’s literally that simple. This is not about whether the product is essential or not, it never was. It’s whether this business practice is legitimate or not. The GDPR clearly believes it’s not and it’s for a reason.

          If you do not need a facebook page to live, why provide it for free at all? Just make people either pay or delete their page. Do not bribe them with free shit to manipulate them into giving up their data. That’s all there is to it.

            • b3nsn0wEnglish
              1•6 months ago

              And you have a right to object to that.

              https://gdpr.eu/article-21-right-to-object/
              https://gdpr.eu/Recital-42-Burden-of-proof-and-requirements-for-consent/

              Threatening to disable a user’s means of communication as retaliation for an objection is antithetical to Article 21 of the GDPR, and goes directly against Recital 42. Removing your facebook page is a detriment. If there is a detriment to not consenting, consent is considered invalid, therefore facebook has no legal basis to process the data of anyone who clicked “use for free” on the prompt in the original post.

              • @buddascrayonEnglish
                1•6 months ago

                If your only means of communication is Facebook, then that is an absolute failure of your government and society and you have much bigger fish to fry than Facebook’s shitty ad policy.

                • b3nsn0wEnglish
                  1•6 months ago

                  you’re just hell-bent on missing the point, aren’t you?

                  just stop. your idea that the loss of a facebook account is not a detriment will never stand up in court, nor should it.

                  • @buddascrayonEnglish
                    1•6 months ago

                    LoL, it’s never going to make it to court. 🤣

                    You people are hilarious.