Six Years Of GDPR: We Won’t Pay For Our Right To Data Protection

Six years after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) began to apply, companies continue to defy its core principles, undermining people’s data protection rights. The latest issue: “pay or consent” models, where companies compel people to pay for their privacy and data protection rights guaranteed by law. Today, 18 November, Access Now’s new report, Six years of the GDPR: priced out of privacy?, presents recommendations for the EU to address the incompatibility of these models with fundamental rights.

“Pay or consent models turn privacy into a luxury good, and coerce people to consent to invasive behavioural advertising or to pay for what is inherently their right,” said Chiara Manfredini, EU Policy Associate at Access Now. “These models have been allowed to thrive due to a fragmented, inadequate response from the EU. It’s critical that the EU moves forward in a unified way to tackle the core issues of pay or consent models, otherwise, they will continue to thrive, and violate people’s right to data protection.”

Meta rolled out its “pay or consent” model in October 2023, and is not the only offender; these models are widespread and almost standard practice for thousands of companies. Whilst the EU has started to address the issue, there remains no clear and comprehensive stance on the incompatibility of such models with human rights. The recent Meta announcement of a new version of “pay or consent” illustrates that by only addressing the symptoms of “pay or consent”, the core issues underpinning the model will never be rectified. As stated in the report, offering a reduced price and a third option with less personalised advertisement does not fix the problem.

Today, as the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) gathers input from stakeholders for feedback on their upcoming guidelines on these models for all Big Tech and other companies, Access Now urges them to comprehensively tackle the core systemic issue these models pose, namely, their incompatibility with the GDPR and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to guarantee people their fundamental rights to privacy and data protection.

Read the full report: https://www.accessnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/GDPR-6-Year-Report-Priced-ouf-of-privacy-2024.pdf

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