I have no issue with "consent or pay".
They have to pay the bills somehow. The alternative to "consent or pay" is "pay". I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong.
I am actually having difficulty writing this, as "consent to share your data" is ultimately a way to track and collect data on you. But what can you do? They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data.
Isn't this choice better than companies just always tracking you, and also trying to get you to buy something?
Deep down I know most people don't understand the amount of data and other information companies collect on them nor what they do with it. But at a certain point we have autonomy. I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying. There is always the third option of not consuming the content. The choices we make.
> I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...
On the same page that the ICO gives guidance that "consent or pay" is legal, "take it or leave it", in which you are invited to pay with your data or go elsewhere, is not.
This seems very weird to me. Either data is a form of payment or it isn't, and I had laboured under the (mis?)apprehension that the GDPR removed it from this sort of situation - that one had a right to say "no" to invasive tracking and that shouldn't affect the service provided one way or another. This muddies the water over true consent to track and it seems the ICO agrees -
"When the only alternative to consent is paying a single price which combines access to the core product with a fee for avoiding sharing personal data for the purposes of personalised advertising, it can be difficult to demonstrate freely given consent."
> They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data.
In this case I do pay for it with money
> I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying.
Personally I'd rather government legislate away the tracking unless it can be genuinely demonstrated that someone opted in, with no form of coercion at all, and those who wanted to be paid to host advertising switch to a more context-sensitive rather than audience-sensitive model. And I had thought that was where we were going. This feels a bit like backsliding on that.
(I'm not going to argue this is black and white "OMG so wrong!", I can definitely see there's room for differing opinions here, and I am aware I carry an anti-advertising, anti-tracking bias.)
I do agree with you. This is an issue that I need to think more on before I decide my stance. My initial comment was my immediate reaction but I do agree this is a difficult and nuanced decision. Even reading the quotes you provided gave me a feeling of the amount of time and decision making that went into the law and the various guidelines.
On one hand, content creators need to be paid. On the other, users should be able to protect their privacy. In the case of news, all should be welcome to participate in their society.
Is there a limit in where providing data in compensation opposed to money makes sense? I wouldn't trade my data for the weather, they can get a zip code. On the other hand, I do trade my data to my financial institutions so they can do fraud checks. So we do exist on a spectrum of data intrusion and getting our needs met.
Is trading data for news closer to checking the weather or doing banking? In todays world, I would say access to news is important and if you can't pay with money, its okay to pay with data in order to be informed about the news.
> They have to pay the bills somehow. The alternative to "consent or pay" is "pay".
There was plenty of ad funded media before tracking.
Tracking inevitably involves shovelling money from the rest of the world to America. It’s unpatriotic to allow it.
Agreed. The advertisement oligopolies Alphabet and Meta basically destroyed special interest journalism, and regional journalism. These kinds of papers (special interest, regional) had an interest in long-term relationships with their readers, and at least somewhat of an incentive for honest and fair reporting. That's gone out of the window, leading to the SEO and algorithmic engagement wars of today.
> I have no issue with "consent or pay".
I have an issue with control over my browser. If you are sending me bytes, I am and should be free to render it as I see fit. If you send me bytes containing your product, you should understand this. If you want me to pay for your product, then place it behind an actual paywall. Don't offer the product together with some instructions that show commercials. I won't look at them, and no reasonable argument will make me.
I have no issue with paywalls and paying. I have an issue with attempting to control how I render what your webserver sends me.
There was the third option. "consent or pay or go away."
If you want to continue benefiting off others work for free, that's on you. The server didn't just send bytes to your browser, you asked your browser to do so.