signing up to pay is itself effort, a barrier, and regardless of cost it is much easier to skip that and click "Yes, take all my data and use it for anything you like". If only the question was that honest.
signing up to pay is also giving away privacy, just not quite as godawfully harmful and abusive, maybe. I've not read about what happens to information gathered by payment processors, and banks etc so maybe it's really bad too.
@daringfireball This take is such a let down. There are so many reasons folks can’t afford to pay $$ to avoid tracking, but also can’t afford to miss out on social media. When people I know take breaks from social media they stop being invited to social gatherings, they lose contact with family members, they lose access to job opportunities. It’d be great if the whole world would quit Meta, but that’s just not happening.
@daringfireball@gruber I think what this misses is the EU’s opinion that Meta is a “gatekeeper”. The basic premise is that people need to use their products. The EU’s position seems to be that “pay or track” might be fine for a random website that people can opt not to use but it’s not ok for Meta.
Not sure I agree, but I think that’s what you’re missing in your article.
@gruber Spotify has competitors that offer the same content. For various reasons, online video has tended toward monopoly in a way that music streaming hasn’t.
Online video may not be “essential” like an electric utility, but it’s pretty core to modern culture and there’s minimal competition.
@daringfireball@gruber Thanks for clarifying! I understand your point, even while I disagree with the understanding of “consent” it hinges on.
But what about @ian‘s other points (that the comparisons with Spotify & Der Spiegel fundamentally misunderstand antitrust law, and that your “protection racketeers” rhetoric is clearly disproven by the EU’s long history of antitrust enforcement)?
@JostMigenda@ian What I see as a protection racket is specific to “big tech” and thus recent. I’m not arguing that EU regulators have never gone after EU companies. Most of the time that’s what they do, because EU companies are who EU denizens deal with.
I’m saying the DMA in particular (and perhaps its sibling, the DSA) are entirely constructed to target a handful of non-EU tech companies.
@gruber@ian It’s certainly constructed to target “big tech”. But you seem to imply that they’re being targeted because they’re non-EU companies? And that just doesn’t pass the sniff test to me; not when the US targets the exact same companies with congressional hearings and DOJ lawsuits, for broadly similar reasons.
@daringfireball In what sense do you think people can be informed about Facebook tracking? It’s an impossibly Byzantine, ruthlessly comprehensive, globe-spanning spy network that has never existed in the history of the world or even in the feverish fantasies of Stasi directors. You need a Master’s to understand how it could exist. “We will cement your every thought and glance into a secret forever-log that was created before you were born and will persist decades after you depart this earth”
@daringfireball you’re trying hard, but nothing you’ve said negates the hard stance you took in your linked piece, @gruber. Can you please address that your business partner has close access to Zuckerberg and tell us why we should believe that doesn’t affect your editorial position? Shouldn’t you be disclosing it?
@2happy1sad@daringfireball@gruber referencing the quote in my image, how do you mean? He called FB entitled fuckers with “zero right, none, to the tracking they've been getting away with”
@delric@2happy1sad And as I wrote just the other day, what I wish I'd clarified back then was that it was lack of consent or transparency, not the tracking itself. If people want to consent to targeted ad tracking, let them. Just require that it be clear.
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