Technology @lemmy.world Iceblade @lemmy.world 1y ago

If you live in the EU - you may also be faced with this Meta prompt. Info in text.

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.

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

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243 comments

You need to make a choice to continue using Facebook

This reminds me of the movie War Games, when WOPR says, "The only winning strategy is not to play." The only correct choice to make here is to delete your Facebook account.
- Indeed, I'd like to, and hopefully will be able to. Unfortunately it is basically the universal method of communication at my campus - unless you use instagram... or snapchat.... :(
  
  Hopefully it'll be possible to get others to make the move, but I'm not really that important in social contexts, nor are most privacy-focused folks.
- The evil of the lizard is too great to resist. The only way to win is to deny it battle.
- How anyone still has a FB account I’ll never understand—or, I should say, anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the insane, “well I have nothing to hide!”/“anyone reading my information will be SO BOOORED LOLOLOL!” mindset and that actually gives 1/10000th of a shit about privacy.
  
  Most of my sports and social activities are organized through various Facebook groups, and I'd lead a rather boring life without it.
  
  That's why.
  
  For me it is still holding on, barely, as a messaging app. I have a few friends and groups that just refuse to message on other things and that's keeping me around. I'm tired of evangelizing better options.
  
  It pops up every once in a while for things like old classmates getting together. If I weren't on it I wouldn't know about it.
  
  It's also useful for local events like neighborhood festivals that don't get posted on any other media.
  
  You can easily counter that sentiment by asking them if they also leave their door open when they use a public toilet. Since they got "nothing to hide".
  
  I literally had a job that distributed our schedule via a Facebook group exclusively and required an account for requesting changes or interaction about the schedule.
- Or stop caring about data being used for ads. Most people don't 🤷‍♂️
Third choice: Delete your account and never look back.
- Imagine how many artificially inflated egos would be deflated all at once if facebook/social media went away.
  
  probably be one the greatest things to happen to humanity.
  
  Isn't that incredible? Turns out that connecting people to one another in this way fosters some healthy interaction for those who choose it but also amplifies loads of unhealthy bs. I'm one of those idiots who 15 years ago thought the internet and social media would bring about something of a second enlightenment, a golden area of progressivism, being well-informed, connected to one another in new and beautiful ways.
When the "Subscribe" button is gray and the "Use for free" button is blue, you know something's up 🤔
- It's because they make more money from your user data, but it also doesn't cost you money
- One thing nobody has mentioned here is that paying users devalue the ads for non-paying users. Paying users are more likely to have desposableincomee, and are more valuable to advertisers. If advertisers know that the only people being shown ads are those without the money to buy their products, they won't be willing to buy the ad space.
  
  That's a really interesting point-- I can see that being the case.
What's absolutely scummy is that "laws are changing in your region" is not what happened. The law hasn't significantly changed. What has changes is that the regulator is finally enforcing the law.
- Also said law doesn't allow blocking access if you don't agree to the tracking rules, so let's see where this goes.
  
  Law opens for supplier to charge money, if necessary to support the service, which is what Meta is doing.
  
  However, fuck Meta.
Delete that garbage.
- I swore off all Meta products before they were called Meta. One of the better decisions I've ever made.
  
  lol, saying "before they were called meta" as if that was a long time ago. That was 2 years ago.
The text is also incredible misleading. The data will still be harvested and monetized, just not for ads.
- Even that claim I find dubious. Yes, your data won’t inform targeted ads on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be used for targeted ads elsewhere on the internet.
  
  And it most certainly will still be used to make general prediction for the rest of the population
I welcome this change. It makes it clear to the user in realistic terms how they want to engage with the site.

Pay up with your money

Pay up with your data

Don't use Facebook

I despise Meta and all their products but they are entitled to charge people for them. Shit ain't free to run, you know.

I'd much sooner they showed this banner and force people to make a decision than what they've been doing up until now, which is to "assume" everyone's fine with their personal data being harvested and exploited without their knowledge or consent.
- deleted
  
  Did you omit option 3 for brevity, or because you think it's not a valid option?
- That assumes that because they're paying they aren't also tracking. They might not use it for ads directly but they'll still sell it to others that will show you ads off Facebook.
  
  Facebook's data is way more valuable to Facebook; it doesn't sell data to third parties. If you think they're going to sell the non-monetisable data to third parties, you have to believe they're willing to introduce this (which is likely to be unpopular) in apparent compliance with data protection laws, while still flagrantly violating them in secret, without any of their many employees nor any of their partners' employees blowing the whistle (and Meta as a company leaks all the time). If they were doing that, why would they bother setting up the fake "pay to not be tracked" flow, when they could pretend to honour people's free requests not to be tracked?
- Don't use Facebook is the best answer but if you must then the next best option is:
  
  Choose a better Adblock
  
  You don't owe your enemy anything. Stop using spyware as a business model.
- Pay up with your money
  
  More like give us money, while also paying up with your data, that we won't use for tracking, only for resell to people that will sell us back tracking details in a maybe not currently illegal way. Also we also are the "people" that will buy the info and sell back the tracking.
  
  Fun fact: In Illinois we actually got pretty nice checks from Facebook over them violating a biometric law the state has. I believe most of us in the class action lawsuit got around $300 each.
- Yeah, even getting them to display this banner is a victory in itself.
this has to be illegal.

like, no, seriously. i'm not a lawyer but i was working on a (since failed) startup in 2018 and distinctly remember how much headache the gdpr caused. literally one of the main things was that you cannot coerce users into consenting to data processing, or make features conditional to them. the gdpr makes a distinction between processing you do to perform a contract (that's why no one asks for your consent for processing your email address to log you in, that's implied) and processing you do for other reasons, which require user consent (that's why everyone asks if they can spam you on the same email -- it doesn't matter that your email address is already on their server, processing it for marketing reasons requires consent of the data subject). opting into these kinds of processing needs to be granular, if it's not they lose the validity of your consent.

i seriously hope facebook gets slapped so hard over this that no one ever thinks about doing this again. "paying with your data" should never be a thing in any society that calls itself civilized.
- Yeah I really hope the EU smack'em down. Asking users to pay a fee only because their countries law limit an illegal practice is astonishing
- I don't think you understand how this works. I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook but even I know they're not a charity they're not a governmental entity. They're out there to make a profit and if they can't make a profit on their ad revenue then they have to make a profit in another way via a subscription service. So they're literally giving you the option to either continue using them with ads or continue using them as a subscription service. Your other option is to completely delete your Facebook. I don't see the problem here. You aren't entitled to a Facebook page, no matter how useful it is to your personal life.
  
  Edit: a word
  
  then offer the subscription service as the only option. if they want to do that, it's on them. but you can tell by the dark pattern on this ui element that that's not their main goal, they just want to use the threat of having to pay to coerce people into consenting to data processing.
  
  it's not about entitlement, it's about playing fair. removing the option to "pay with your data", and leaving only the subscription or cancellation as options would be fair play. it would also destroy facebook but that's on them, it's their decision to make. but if they decide to provide a free service of any kind, they cannot discriminate against those who wish to choose privacy.
  
  and if we're being realistic, they're not expecting even 1% of their user base to pay. they are, however, expecting to keep nearly 100% of their user base. that's what makes this about coercion -- if they didn't have the option to coerce people (and i'm fairly sure they don't have it legally, but again, i am not a lawyer) the options presented would be very different, because facebook itself wouldn't be able to afford to only give its service to paid users. you'd probably have a free tier with optional privacy included, which is missing some features, or a paid tier with extra features and privacy included (hopefully non-optionally, but it's facebook so they'd probably still try to track you).
  
  And I don't think you understand the problem. Nothing is preventing Facebook from displaying ads. Facebook's issue is collecting user data and using it to directly target ads. They can make it so that a user can opt out of personalized ads and still show ads to that person. Companies would still pay to display their ads, perhaps not at the same rate but that doesn't mean Facebook would be losing money by serving those users.
  
  Let's not act like Facebook is going to go bankrupt if some of their users opt out of data collection and targeted ads.
- I trust that Facebook's lawyers are payed enough to make sure that this is technically legal. These laws always have loopholes.
  
  It's a reaction to Facebook methods being deemed illegal in Europe. Although this does not mean than the new model is illegal, it's an interesting sample of Facebook not always being right even though they have good layers. Both Facebook, Google and many other big tech, operate on the edge of what is legal and often on the other side of it, because it can be profitable enough to just pay the fine if it turns out to be illegal.
  
  This last move, I believe, is more of a statement than it is an actual change.
- I would love for FB to be smacked down hard by the EU, but isn’t this just the inclusion of a new option that didn’t exist before, I.e. the subscription? If you push the right button, isn’t that the status quo that you’ve been using all along without any other option? I don’t understand how giving more options is more coercive than before.
  
  no, ever since 2018 when the gdpr actually went into effect, they had to allow users to opt out of data processing individually for different purposes. like, if you want to allow facebook to process your data for improving their site but not for marketing purposes, you need to be able to set that, and facebook needs to respect that. as such, you had the option to use the site without "paying for it with your data" at all.
  
  and if that's not a viable business model and they need to charge a subscription fee, that's alright. there's nothing in the gdpr that says you cannot charge for services. the problematic part here is that they do provide a free service but only if you consent to data processing. like i said, i'm not a lawyer, but i'm pretty sure that's illegal, and it absolutely should be illegal. if they decide to provide a free tier (or a paid tier for that matter), it needs to be available even if you don't consent for unrelated data processing. they're not obligated to provide anything, but if they do provide something, they cannot discriminate against users who don't want to share their data.
  
  that's the problematic bit here. privacy cannot be a premium feature. facebook is trying to charge for something here that should be available to all users, whether or not the underlying product is freely available or not.
- like, no, seriously.
  
  What does "like" mean here? What's it for?
  
  It's how people have been talking for, like, 20 years now at least
  
  flair, mostly. lol
  
  Assuming you're not a native English speaker. It's a filler word. It doesn't really mean anything, it's used more to communicate tone.
How much you wanna bet your info will still be used for ads even if you subscribe?
Lol the wording and design of it all. Subscribe to use without ads, picture of a credit card. Versus Use for free with ads, picture of a shooting star:

Discover products and brands through personalized ads, while using your Facebook account for free.

Plus the little "your current experience" highlighted in green. And finally "use for free" highlighted in blue.

They really want you to go with the second option so they can try to prove to the court that people want free stuff. When most of them were likely unconsciously coerced into it.
- The big mean regulator is trying to make us charge you money. Click here to pay up or click here to stay free.
They're actually holding your friends and family hostage, make plans to get them to safety.
- That's, uh, a little bit hyperbolic.
  
  Not really, like, you can't communicate with your family. In my case, i live in Germany, but my family lives in Brazil. It's the only thing keeping me on Facebook, until now.
  
  Thank God my family switched to WhatsApp for all family stuff. Since there are also family members in Colombia & USA, we have to keep a fixed online place, so we can communicate quickly.
  
  WhatsApp is owned, by meta, just like Instagram. So it is rather when and not if we'll start seeing ads everywhere.
  
  Is it? You have to pay or give up all of your rights to stay in contact with your friends and family. What would you call it? Glad to see pro-facebook people here on lemmy, there's dozens of you.
  
  I'm just glad they didn't use the term Literally.
Dark pattern of the week: button colors.

Can you guess which button Meta really wants you to press?
"It's free and always will be"
- It is free. You are not paying. You couldnt even get money for your information so its not like youre selling it
  
  You couldnt even get money for your information
  
  Well, you could. Taking part in surveys in exchange of monetary compensation is a side hustle for many.
  
  And on the other side is sourcing data a huge expense for many research endeavours.
  
  That's why everybody is buying from Google & Facebook. Because they offer it for relative low cost.
  
  Only if you think your time and personal information are free.
  
  You might want to work on your self-worth and business sense if you think that.
Recently uninstalled:

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter/X

Reddit

I feel free. My phone feels lighter, almost. My brain feels lighter.
- Same! I am enjoying the fediverse as a largely nontoxic replacement.
  
  Agreed. It's not too mainstream (yet) so not too much drivel has started seeping through lol. Here's hoping it'll stay this way. Feels very wholesome so far! Feeling at home already.
- don't forget to delete the accounts too! I've seen people just deleting the app and thinking their account is gone too.
  
  Very good tip! To be honest, I'm not ready to delete the accounts yet. I'll just run the services on my computer in containers (Firefox) and with μBlock Origin, so there's minimal impact of this change for me.
  
  But it does feel very nice not to be able to do much when I pull out my phone as a reflex. I feel limited in a positive way. Much rather be talking to you fine folk than the drivel I was often interacting with on Reddit. 😁
The real question, in EU, is not Facebook (or even Instagram). It’s WhatsApp. Business talk with WhatsApp, family talk with WhatsApp, meet a person in a bar? Yep WhatsApp or you are the weirdo

As soon I got the banners, I uninstalled the app and switched to friendly. Not sure if I have such luxury with WhatsApp…. Maybe time to explore matrix? 🤷
- I would love to ditch WhatsApp, but then I wouldn't be in touch with my family half as much, and it would be a lot more difficult to get anything done.
  I am in Spain where people simply assume you have WA, and the majority of small business use it extensively.
  
  Remind those businesses that if they don't have explicit consent from the people saved in their contacts, they are violating article 44 of the GDPR.
  
  Same if their websites use Google Analytics without asking for consent first.
  
  What can facebook really gather from whatsapp? Asfaik messages are encrypted, and other than that I'm not really giving info to whatsapp, like my estado and date of birth but that's pretty much it.
  
  Like I get it from facebook, you are constantly looking things up that can tell what u like, hobbies, or political affiliation, but whatsapp?
- WA is also owned by Meta, and was only being used by my privacy-oriented friends. We swapped it for Signal pretty much instantly when the news came, but getting others to move over has been a slow fight.
  
  Yeah… the result is that now I have WhatsApp, signal, telegram. 99% of my contacts are on WhatsApp, maybe 20% are on telegram (and a number of group chat are there) and 1% take it or leave it has signal (and no group chat).
  
  In practice the only one I can get rid of is signal (that is also the one I would like better 🙄🙄)
- Matrix is pretty good! I use Element. It's pretty much as usable as anything else I've used for similar purposes: Discord, Slack, Messenger, etc.
  
  Hard part is obviously getting people to switch over. But it's ready for normies!
  
  The ElementX developemnt is looking really really good!
  
  I was more thinking about using the matrix <> WhatsApp bridge for avoiding the pop up. It’s impossible to migrate people (especially strangers)
LOL why are people using Facebook?
- To communicate with people, to follow various pages and groups that notify me of the current events regarding the topics that interest me, to buy and sell stuff in some groups, etc. At least in my case.
- I use it for one single purpose, browsing marketplace. I look for local used game stuff and that's really it. If something peaks my interest I have my girlfriend message them since she uses messenger, I refuse to have it on my phone.
  
  Even then, I'm using Firefox with UBO so even if they do use my browsing data for ads, I ain't seeing them anyway.
  
  Turns out you can in fact, cuck the Zuck
  
  Don't forget to use a facebook container on FF as well.
  
  Firefox with the right extension can do wonders but for Facebook, it is like trying to save yourself from an atomic bomb with a shield made from led. They hire the best developers out there including OSS people to get your personal data one way or another. The day I learned advertisers abuse html5 canvas using miniscule differences between CPUs, I understood the money and development involved.
- Memes
I'm surprised the EU hasn't pounced on them for GRPR infringement, maybe there's a loophole Meta's exploiting. Being total assholes ain't a crime.
- This is their reaction to new privacy laws in the EU. I'm not sure I'll fly.
  
  Maybe, but there are whispers that EU is not happy with this since it seems to violate the GDPR.
- I don't know about the rest of EU, but in France for some reason it was decided that this type of choice, i.e. "pay a subscription or accept all trackers", was in the spirit of GDPR.
  
  I think it's bullshit, but hey, it helped me choose whose services I will never use any more (really, most of those were already shit before they tried to pull that one, no big surprise here).
  
  In Italy lots of online newspapers do the same: either you subscribe, or you accept the tracking
Easy fix. Stop using crap like meta, or Reddit, or TikTok, or Twitter or another degenerated social media platform...
- Great. Now tell that to my uni please.
  
  your uni is using facebook?
- That includes lemmy, right?
  
  Right?
  
  Nah, Lemmy can somtimes be a little cringe and insulting but has no narcisitic sociopaths in charge like the others have 😅
Laws are changing in your region, so we're introducinga new choice about how we use your info for ads.

Which law?
- None. The statement is false. The law didn't change. What did change was the enforcement thereof.
- You know, the law. That one. That law that changed. The law that changed in your region. That law. That recently changed.
- No law changed, they simply are now obligated to respect the GDPR (at least formally).
Sounds like a lot of hassle, when the real answer is to just get rid of Facebook
I always choose 'fuck whoever is giving me an ultimatum'. That's the control freak. That's the source of problems.
- lol, that's just not true. If I give my alcoholic friend the ultimatum of "you need to get sober or we can't be friends" I am not a control freak or the source of problems. Also, every online service gives you an ultimatum. It's called the Terms of Service. Either you agree, or you don't use it. Yes, even here. Guess you can't use anything, or go anywhere. Don't get me wrong, Meta is the scum of the earth that we as people desperately need to get rid of, but you're really picking the wrong fight with the "ultimatum".
"Your info won't be used for ads" - but it will be used in other ways
This forced me to look into hosting an own social media as a replacement for me, my friends and acquaintances. Where we can chat, upload files, organise events, and make posts about all sorts of things.

Anyone got a recommendation for software, preferably open source?

Humhub looked promising, but the "free" version only allows 5 people, which is just dumb.
- How did this specifically make it worse? They didn't follow the GDPR before so choosing free is the exact same as before.
  
  This is just their latest attempt at avoiding the GDPR and last I checked taking payment for not tracking someone is a grey zone in the GDPR. After looking at the law it shouldn't be allowed but it might be. Who knows. Other sites do it as well.
  
  If anything this has bought them time.
  
  Because I was willing to pay, but not for the exuberant amount they ask.
  
  It also made it worse in the sense that now friends were discussing it on their own, which did not happen before.
- Friendica should fit the bill right there for you. Or if you don't want ActivityPub, check out diaspora*. There's also Hubzilla which uses AP as well, but internally it uses its own Zot protocol.
  
  I was looking into Friendica, and it also looks promising. But the lack of an ios app may be a dealbreaker for some of my friends.
  
  Diaspora has the same issue, although the integration with other social media is interesting.
  
  Huzilla is a bit more for filesharing, isn't it?
  
  All in all, I think Friendica is indeed one of the better bets.
- you can use create a matrix server for e2e conversations.
- Mastodon?
  
  Sadly no groupchat features.
  
  Otherwise, solid choice!
You can delete your account(s) clicking on "accounts in this Account Center" btw
- doesn't that just hibernate your account?
  
  It said "Delete" but Meta could very well be lying to me
They were already monetizing your data, just like websites were already using cookies to track you before the EU made it mandatory to inform visitors about this.
My relatives are using FB as crazy. Like too much. I was telling them how Facebook is tracking and selling users data, thats why i dont use FB and all i have seen in their eyes was wanting me to shut the f*ck up
- Same. That look that says:"I don't care, I dont want to know, I just want to use (insert any social media). They have no idea what's collected and used without their knowledge.
  
  Same for TikTok. I tried to warn them about the Chinese government watching with TikTok over their preferences and I still get that same "I don't care" look. But then they receive a promotional mail and complain they get spammed.
  
  They figure looking at funny cat videos is worth the spam. Of course, I like the idea of paying users for their data. If data is the new oil, and we are the oil wells, it's time they paid for it.
  
  They say "I have nothing to hide" but talks sh*t about China and comunism 😁
- I took a five year break for this reason. As I embraced being an artist it seemed the only way to know what is going on locally in my stupid medium-sized Texas town is Facebook. Even local government news was only on Facebook. So if I wanted to find calls for art locally to submit for galleries then I had to join. Luckily with two fences and uBlock Origin the only information they get is by logging any text I put in. It's a lot of work to try to maintain my privacy though and no official app ever. I use a couple container apps from F-Droid, but they barely work most of the time so it mostly has to be on Desktop. I've tried to get a few friends to switch to federated apps and they look at me the same way. Even my partner's casino job requires a Facebook account because if you want someone to take a shift for you it's the only way. Also any company news. It should be regulated as a utility.
  
  Exactly. I was looking for renting an appartment. I was looking on specific real estate websites how it should be but my girlfriend found the best one to rent on Facebook. Shouldn't be like that
- The real dark, unexplainable and one of the most complex software after Google services is Facebook.apk. No baseless privacy claim that Google promises is valid if one installs and runs Facebook as it isn't in its nature. Anyone, organisation pushes or even requires an application in today's age is spyware. The Guardian even says "less ads" and they are supposed to be a bit better guys. How does it show less ads? Because it accesses these https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.guardian It isn't just an Android thing, Apple tried their best to stop Facebook from leeching but there isn't anything to do when you "check in" at home.
  
  It's actually much much worse to use the preload version that came with your phone versus the Play store version. The play store has many rules they force devs to comply with that aren't true for preloads.
There should be a "neither, close my account now" option.
Yep I saw that a few days ago (I live in rep. of Ireland), I then deleted my account because fb for me is just a time waster. My mother decided to opt for the free version and so now she sees more ads than friend activities. She'll probably deactivate her fb account so she can continue to use messenger.
- Unrelated but we just crossed to northern Ireland today after road tripping the wild Atlantic way and some other bits in ROI, dear god your country is gorgeous 😍 and everyone was so nice too.
The boasts of having already left Facebook and the calls for others to abandon it are predictable and tedious. Everyone already knows Lemmy is full of people who wouldn't touch Facebook with a 10 foot pole. Y'all are not contributing anything by crowing about it; you're just making noise.
- It is good to know what's going on out there, I haven't touched facebook in years and I didn't know there was now the possibility to oay for it and you'd get a screen like this.
  
  This info can alwaya be valuable and I'm thankful this guy posted it
  
  I was complaining about the comments, not the post itself.
I recently discovered Pixelfed and Friendica on the Fediverse. They are the equivalent to Instagram and Facebook, respectively. Perhaps now would be a good time to migrate over to those platforms?
- Just give them a try!
  
  will mainstream public make a move though? it will be great if my friends make a move to pixelfed but they just won't.
- Any time sooner than later is a fantastic time to have nothing at all to do with facebook.
Isn’t this just an additional paid option and the ad option is what everyone already had and everyone outside the EU still has?
- No. Where I live it has previously been possible to opt-out of personalized advertisements in favor of generic ones. That has now been removed.
  
  That option is still there for me (in addition to the new option to pay) in the Instagram app, in the settings there is an ad settings option which sends you to the website where you can configure that.
- Yup. Basically, you need to enable ads to use the free, ad supported platform.
Yup. Got it last week. Found this shit so disingemuous it almost pissed me off more than the privacy violation itself. I dont use any of Meta’s stuff except for WhatsApp out of necessity (some groups from the kids’ school), but i keep getting dumped into FB by busineses that dont have a proper webpage…
There's a missing third option: Don't use it at all.
Oh no! Anyway...
Same on IG
Why even use facebook products
If only I still had a Facebook account that required me to use this awful website.
y'all I think that we might finally be leaving the era of the internet where everything is free. overall, I think this is a good thing. the problem is that unless there's legislation preventing them these companies are absolutely gonna double dip; they'll charge you a fee and then sell your data anyway.
- Yeah that what I tought: if I pay, what is my guarantee you won't collect and sell my info on top of that?

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