Nowadays, our daily lives already seem unable to do without social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram. These sites seem to provide users with free services, but these personalized services have in fact long already been clearly priced in secret—not money, but our data.
Scrolling short videos, checking Moments, receiving content recommendations and ad delivery, many people actually know that platforms are deliberately collecting user data, but what the vast majority do not know is what this means. Even fewer people realize: we actually have never truly had a real choice.
How Privacy Got a Price Tag
Image source: Photo by Swello on Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/a-person-holding-a-cell-phone-in-their-hand-dV-tM7xjqJ8
When a platform tells you: “Don’t want to be tracked by personalized ads? Then pay for a subscription.”—has privacy no longer been a basic right, but become a commodity to be sold at a price? The scale of this business is staggering: in the whole of 2025, Meta’s advertising revenue was about 196.2 billion US dollars, accounting for about 98% of its total revenue. (Meta Platforms, 2026) This means that the “free” services users see are entirely built on the analysis and monetization of personal data. When Meta asks users to pay in order to “not be tracked,” it is not recovering costs, but repricing a privacy right that originally belonged to users.
And Meta, the company of Instagram, has precisely exposed this deep contradiction through the pay-or-consent model it launched in Europe. It seems to provide a choice, but in reality it turns privacy into a service that needs to be additionally purchased. Indeed, users seem able to choose, but this choice is built on an inequality of rights between users and the company. In other words, the user’s consent at this moment is not consent in the true sense of being free.
The argument for this issue needs to trace back to 2023. Meta gave European users two roads: either pay €9.99 per month on the web or €12.99 on mobile to buy an ad-free version, or continue to use it for free, but allow the platform to use your data for personalized ad recommendations. (Associated Press, 2023)
And in this choice, the platform and the user are not on the same balance at all. We have no way of knowing how our data will be collected, how it will be analyzed, and how it will be used in ad recommendations. What users can see is only a simple interface: agree to personalized ads and continue using it, or pay. It is like a lottery: users can choose whether to draw or not, but what is unfair is that the prize pool and the winning odds are both a black box. That is to say, the platform and the user are unequal, the platform sets the rules, and the user can only make decisions within limited options and cannot make any meaningful challenge to the rules themselves. Course materials have actually already pointed this out: there is obvious information asymmetry between platforms and users. Platforms have stronger bargaining power, and also know more clearly how data is collected, invoked, and circulated, while users know almost nothing about who has the right to access data and how data flows.
In fact, the continuous determinations of regulators also confirm this point. In April 2024, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) stated that, in most cases, a binary “pay or consent” model would not meet the GDPR standard for valid consent. (European Data Protection Board, 2024) In April 2025, the European Commission, under the Digital Markets Act, fined Meta 200 million euros, pointing out that this model did not provide users with an “equivalent service option using less personal data.” (European Commission, 2025) It is worth noting that in November 2024, Meta cut the subscription price by 40%, trying to make the choice look “fairer”—but the price cut precisely proves that the initial pricing was not to cover service costs, but to force users to choose data exchange. Even so, in March 2026, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) issued a report pointing out that Meta’s latest changes were still illegal: it used “non-neutral language” and “behavioural techniques” in interface design, presenting the personalized advertising option more favorably, while hiding the privacy protection option in a secondary position. (BEUC, 2026) In other words, even under regulatory pressure, the platform still manipulates users’ choices through interface design. This is not “consent,” but “designed consent.”
What is more, many people continuing to use the free version does not mean that they are really willing to be tracked, but because they have no other choice. In today’s torrent of the internet, making users separate from life on online platforms is an idea as unrealistic as a fantasy. They have invested too much sunk cost into online life, and have already become used to this kind of internet life. Under such a background, users “agreeing” to the appearance of personalized ads is not established on the conditions of free choice, but is being forced under platform rules to accept a more affordable option. Compared with choice and consent, this is more like compromise and acceptance. In fact, the view of Marwick and danah boyd is even more to the point: truly “opting out” of digital platforms and data systems is itself increasingly becoming a privilege that is difficult to realize, (Marwick & boyd, 2018) that is to say, so-called opt out is not an ability that everyone realistically possesses.
From this it can be seen that the core of the privacy issue here is not whether a secret has been peeped at, but control. Course materials distinguish between “access” (not being observed) and “control” (the individual deciding how information is used). Meta’s model happens to deprive the latter—users have never truly possessed control over their own information.
From this angle, the privacy problem in digital platforms is not simply whether personal information has been collected or seen. More importantly, users have never enjoyed control over their own information. There is also a clear distinguishment on two understandings of privacy when discussing privacy: the former emphasizes not being disturbed and not being observed, while the latter emphasizes that individuals should retain a certain degree of control over the collection and use of their own information. (Nissenbaum, 2018) And the reason why users’ privacy is important is not because the information itself is so sensitive, but because individuals themselves ought to have the right to decide how their information is used, under what circumstances it is collected, and users themselves should have the right to refuse such use. But in Meta’s case, under the pay-or-consent model, users have not truly grasped this control. Therefore, this practice is not only a commercial adjustment, but also involves a redefinition of digital rights.
A German court case further reveals the seriousness of the problem. In March 2026, the Higher Regional Court of Jena, Germany, ruled that Meta should compensate a consumer 3,000 euros. The court found that through its “Business Tools” toolkit, Meta still tracked users’ behavior on third-party websites on a large scale when users were not logged into Facebook or Instagram and had not given any form of consent, and even collected health information—for example, users searching for mental illness or seeking treatment help through doctor portals. The court held that this constituted a “data collection system without legitimate reason.” This means that users do not even have the chance to “choose whether to be tracked or not”: your data has already been taken away when you had no choice at all. The so-called “consent” in “pay or consent” was from the very beginning a false option preset after a framework of data collection had already been established. (Digital Policy Alert, 2026)
What Meta provides is not a choice under equal conditions, but a limited acceptance after the platform has preset the boundaries. What users see is an extremely simplified choice interface, but what the platform holds is the complete data flow, advertising system, and business logic. Precisely because of this, “consent” here does not naturally equal informed consent, much less free consent. The discussion in the course of privacy as a human right can also illustrate this point: if privacy itself ought to be regarded as a basic right, then it should not easily be repackaged in platform contracts and subscription mechanisms into something that can be traded and can be purchased at a higher price.
From the perspective of contextual integrity theory, users enter Facebook or Instagram for socializing and browsing content, not to actively participate in a fine-grained data profiling and advertising transaction system. (Nissenbaum, 2018) When the platform continuously turns interactive behavior into commercialized data, and asks users to pay in order to be “less used,” the way information is being used has long exceeded the reasonable expectations of most users.
Thus, a dangerous shift has occurred: privacy is no longer a right protected by default, but has become a privilege that only some people can afford. From a more macro theoretical perspective, the “surveillance capitalism” proposed by Shoshana Zuboff precisely depicts this logic: platforms do not profit through services, but profit through the commodification of the details of human life. (Zuboff, 2019) Users’ behavior, emotions, and social relationships all become raw materials that can be extracted and sold. Meta’s “pay or consent” model is precisely the blunt expression of this logic—if you are unwilling to become a commodity, then pay. But the problem is that in an economic system with surveillance as the core business model, “choosing not to become a commodity” should not in itself be a privilege that requires extra payment. From the rights framework of the GDPR, the core of digital privacy protection lies in whether users truly have the ability to be informed, object, restrict processing, and object to profiling. If the price of refusing behavioral targeted advertising is extra payment, then this right has obviously not been equally given to everyone. When users must pay extra in order to prevent their data from being further analyzed or used for ad profiling, the nature of user privacy has already changed from the above-mentioned nature of a right that users can choose, and it is no longer regarded as a right that ought to be protected by default, but has become a privilege that only some people can afford. And for users unwilling to pay, they are not freely choosing to give up privacy, but are forced to accept the fact that their privacy is being used. More importantly, from the rights framework of the GDPR, digital privacy protection is not merely about letting users see an interface of “continue using” or “subscribe,” but about whether users truly have the ability to be informed, object, restrict processing, and oppose profiling and automated decision-making. If the price of refusing behavioral targeted advertising becomes extra payment, then this right obviously has not been equally granted to all users.
The tug-of-war between regulators and the platform is still continuing. After being fined by the EU, Meta filed an appeal, while at the same time expanding this model to the UK (£2.99 per month on the web side, only half of the EU pricing). (Meta, 2025) The pricing difference between the UK and the EU suggests that the “price of privacy” is not decided by service costs alone, but by the strength of regulatory power in different regions—in markets where regulation is stricter, privacy is instead more expensive, and this paradox is worth deep thought.
So, what the Meta case truly reveals is not just whether targeted advertising is reasonable, but a more fundamental question: are digital platforms turning privacy—this right that ought to be protected by default—into a privilege sold according to ability to pay?
We have long become used to treating “using platforms for free” as the norm of digital life, and have also become used to handing over data in one “consent” after another. However, the reason why “pay or consent” is unsettling is precisely because it states this already-existing logic of exchange far too bluntly: if you want to be tracked less, then pay. The problem is that privacy should not be an additional service that only some people can afford. What truly needs to be asked may not be whether to pay 12.99 euros or hand over data, but whether we allow platforms to redefine the nature of privacy in this either-or way. If we do not question it today, tomorrow every kind of right may be tagged with a price and placed behind a paywall. And you and I are the ones who ultimately need to decide—whether or not to press “consent.”
References
Associated Press. (2023, October 30). Meta rolls out paid ad-free option for European Facebook and Instagram users after privacy ruling. https://apnews.com/article/09c2bf513b819d77c43884e3b84a79e5
BEUC. (2026, March 17). Users still stuck in the mud: An analysis of Meta’s 2026 changes to its consent-for-ads mechanism against EU law. https://www.beuc.eu/reports/users-still-stuck-mud-analysis-metas-2026-changes-its-consent-ads-mechanism-against-eu-law
Digital Policy Alert. (2026, March 2). Germany: Higher Regional Court of Jena ordered Meta Group to pay EUR 3’000 in damages and to provide information and delete personal data. https://digitalpolicyalert.org/event/38257-higher-regional-court-of-jena-ordered-meta-group-to-pay-eur-3000-in-damages-and-to-provide-information-and-delete-personal-data-case-no-3-u-3125
European Commission. (2025, April 23). Commission finds Apple and Meta in breach of the Digital Markets Act. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1085
European Data Protection Board. (2024, April 17). Opinion 08/2024 on valid consent in the context of consent or pay models implemented by large online platforms. https://www.edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/opinion-board-art-64/opinion-082024-valid-consent-context-consent-or_en
European Union. (2016). Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 (General Data Protection Regulation). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32016R0679
Flew, T. (2021). Regulating platforms. Polity.
Marwick, A. E., & boyd, d. (2018). Understanding privacy at the margins—Introduction. International Journal of Communication, 12, 1157–1165. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/7053
Meta. (2024, November 12). Facebook and Instagram to offer subscription for no ads in Europe. https://about.fb.com/news/2024/11/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/
Meta. (2025, September 26). Facebook and Instagram to offer subscription for no ads in the UK. https://about.fb.com/news/2025/09/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-the-uk/
Meta Platforms, Inc. (2026, January 28). Meta reports fourth quarter and full year 2025 results. https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2025-Results/default.aspx
Nissenbaum, H. (2018). Respecting context to protect privacy: Why meaning matters. Science and Engineering Ethics, 24(3), 831–852. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9674-9
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.
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