Meta’s blackmail exposed in eight European countries
Meta: the gift that keeps on giving. This time it’s in trouble over its policy of requiring users in the European Union to pay €12.99 per month or accept being spied on so that the company can traffic their data has been, as expected, been taken to court by the consumer protection agencies of Denmark, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Norway, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The reasons are clear and compelling: users are not making a choice based on informed consent, because the company maintains absolute secrecy about the processing it carries out of user data that “mysteriously” ends up in the hands of anyone after it is supplemented by data provided by more than 48,000 companies, a huge industrial complex that tries to eliminate anything resembling privacy. Basically, users are being coerced to accept the processing of their personal data.
The law requires that user consent meet the highest standards, which require it to be free, specific, informed and unambiguous, which is not at all the case here. In these circumstances, the choice about how consumers want their data to be…
