The bigtech that operate in Europe have to abide by the laws in force in the old continent, as is the case of the Digital Services Law (DSA) or the RGPD (General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union), two that surely give them more headaches. So according to the New York Times, Meta has found the solution, a solution that will also make those fed up with ads very happy: an ad-free and paid version of products like Facebook or Instagram.
As The New York Times recounted in a report published a few hours ago, Meta is considering launching paid versions of its social networks in the European Union without advertising. Of course, there is no data regarding the price of these paid versions of Instagram and Facebook nor what their execution schedule would be like, confidential according to this leak.
After the revelation of this secret source to the New York Times, the newspaper contacted Meta in search of this information, obtaining silence as a response. We also We have contacted the Meta Spain representation team looking for more data, although at the moment we have no answer (we will update when we have the answer).
A lucrative way to offer an alternative that conforms to the law
The plan doesn’t sound far-fetched, given that allowing an ad-free experience on its platforms would allow Mark Zuckerberg’s conglomerate to offer an alternative that meets the privacy expectations of EU regulators.
This leak comes after years of battle between Meta and the European Union over massive data collection by the Zuckerberg emporium after the General Data Protection Regulation came into force back in 2019. Since then, EU regulators have applied the GDPR to strengthen online privacy and data protection for users and users in the old continent.
And this has been very expensive for Meta. In May of this year, it received the largest economic sanction in the history of the European Union: Meta was fined 1.2 billion euros and was ordered to stop transferring data collected from Facebook users in Europe to the United States. In July, the EU prohibited it from combining user data on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The arrival of the DSA Law a few days ago forced Meta to implement a chronological feed on Instagram and Facebook, to show search results based only on the words entered (and not with an algorithm) and to display stories and reels only from the accounts they follow. .
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