If meta offers facebook in the EU, then according to law, people have a fundamental right to use it without personalised advertising. Meta has the fundamental right to pull out of the EU completely and shake their fist at the sky if they disagree.

Idea is that facebook can give free access to its platform or they can choose to ask for payment, but they can not accept as a payment that users would wave their right to privacy. Privacy cant be for sale like you cant (legally) sell your kidney.

> you cant (legally) sell your kidney.

If Milei gets his way, you can go to Argentina!

Not a fundamental right, but a fundamental part of many peoples lives, at least here in Norway. Do you have children in school? Part of a local club? And so forth.

In many situations, there are no alternatives if you want to participate in society. This is of course outrageous, but non the less a reality. I have managed to stay of Metas products since 2018, but I do not have children :)

Your fundamental rights also apply to private businesses. A gaming arcade can’t refuse entry based on your ethnicity.

> Is Facebook a fundamental right?

No, but privacy is.

Then don't use facebook.

x restaurant will only let you eat if you show your bank account details beforehand "to make sure youll be able to pay afterwards". obviously you wont go to that restaurant, but maybe thats the workplace restaurant (environment forces you to use it).

that doesnt sound good, no?

privacy laws must be enforced

You just described all buffet/AYCE restaurants in the world.

all buffets will know my salary if i eat there?

did facebook require your salary level before signing up? Also it is not like buffet doesn't ask for your email/phone number to register in order to get in line, they do.

facebook will track all my interactions, make a profile of my habits and sell them to bidders. before signing up.

i dont see how needing a email/phone number to register for something is related to anything were talking about.

there are plenty of places where you pay before you get your food

yeah but in my example they dont make you pay beforehand: they want to know how much do you make, how much you spend, what places you spend on... is an example of being forced to comply with abusive clausules

No, it's the other way around. Either FB offers something that aligns with the law, or they GTFO. Why it's the me(g|t)acorp that sets rules and not elected governments? Because it's their product? Because we the people are the product and not people?

Good, so EU can go and ban Facebook operating in EU straight up, not dancing around privacy.

The EU protectionism around internet service is due to its lack of competitiveness in the whole internet economy. Or they might just outright start this trade war with US, and see how it goes.

What you're saying is thay exploitation is profitable for the exploiters, making them more "competitive" on the world stage. All I can say in response is that so was slavery.

> EU can go and ban Facebook

EU and Member States thereof can also use less drastic means to compel people and companies to follow the law.

BTW we also retired capital punishment for people. We don't need 0/1 either-or constructs in law.

The main thing you're missing is that Facebook is the big corporation the GDPR was largely written to try and reign in AND that any judgement affecting Facebook is going to have downstream effects on other providers (there's been a few news sites trying the scheme in Europe too). This is gonna be the "do or die" for the pay-or-okay scheme. Given Facebook is doing it, I wouldn't put my chances on the "do" part; they are the extreme example and EU judges don't tend to look kindly on big corporations thinking they're capable of "outsmarting" their laws.

Is right to privacy while using Facebook services a fundamental right? Well, given some of the services they own - maybe they should be. WhatsApp is massive in the EU, while Instagram seems to be the replacement for Twitter for a lot of people now that Twitter itself is flooded with fools that nobody likes to interact with. We've already had Facebook suprise drop a "EULA change" on WhatsApp users that let them use WA data in the Facebook algorithms. The specific field Facebook is even in makes it unusually hard to leave. It's somewhat socially acceptable to not have a Facebook account. Its less acceptable to not have an Instagram and I don't think you can function in west-european society without WhatsApp at the moment; basically everyone expects you to have it.

So yes, privacy when using Facebook is extremely important (GDPR literally exists to codify privacy as a right) and pay-or-okay is holding it hostage.

I agree with the gist of your reply, but I object to this part:

> It's somewhat socially acceptable to not have a Facebook account. Its less acceptable to not have an Instagram and I don't think you can function in west-european society without WhatsApp at the moment; basically everyone expects you to have it.

I can assure you that it is perfectly viable to live a normal life in a west-european society without using any Meta product. It gets a bit more difficult if you have kids at school, though, with teachers and parents not being flexible.

Can you explain to a university student in Western Europe how to exist without WhatsApp and Instagram?

For example, parties are organized in Whatsapp group chats and the local library’s events are posted to Instagram.

If you mean anything to your friends they will use one of the multiple other ways to notify you. A library that is exclusively using a social media platform for announcements is doing it wrong and complaining or even suing might help.

While I agree with you, it’s substantially different between countries. WhatsApp is pretty much unused in Sweden, while Facebook is basically a necessity.

Broadly agree, except:

> Facebook is the big corporation the GDPR was largely written to try and reign in

As I understand it, GDPR was to keep all the different EU member states' rules on the same page and up to date, and was continuing the same path that had already been stated with the Data Protection Directive in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive

Most of the core ideas were already present before Zuckerberg finished[0] high school.

[0] and possibly started, but I don't know how US schools work.

> is that Facebook is the big corporation the GDPR was largely written to try and reign

Actually GDPR text was largely written before shitting on Facebook became the cool kids thing.

The text was adopted by European Parliament in 2014. In 2011, EDPS publishes an opinion on political wants towards GDPR. It's very likely the text becomes written circa 2012-2013. That's waaaaay before any general public's disgruntlemnt with Facebook or any Big Tech giants. The public opinion against Big Tech starts to shift around 2015, after CJEU decides the so called "Google Spain" case (users being allowed to remove their search results from search engines). For reference, Cambridge Analytica story gets broken in 2018.

It is very likely that if GDPR was to be introduced today, the legal text would be much stricter and harsher. We need to realize that GDPR is a general data protection law. It does not prescribe industry-specific measures. It is written to apply to a bread baker so much as it is written to apply for a Big Tech giant. And that means race to the bottom in terms of legal standard.

Privacy is a fundamental right, advertising is okay but tracking people or pay up is not

That, I suppose, is why ad-companies typically invest in anonymization. It may not be perfect, but it is good enough in terms of reaching an acceptable balance between respecting privacy and someone being able to monetize an app or a website imo.

Anonymization of data is largely impossible. That's an opinion of many data protection experts. Combining datasets, using open-source data from gov't sources and likes allows to "single out" individuals in no time. Further, what industry does is largely pseudonimization, not anonymization. Anonymized data is not under the scope of GDPR, whereas pseudonymized data is.

GDPR does not allow discrimination against users who do not want to be tracked and you have the right not to be tracked. Wether the workaround ,that makes €10 then‘ is viable has not yet been tested in the courts. General assumption is that it is not. This would result in facebook to either allow non-sanctioned opt-out or pull out of the EU.