Recently a European Court has judged that Meta’s way of collecting and using people’s data in Europe has been in violation of privacy regulations between 2018 and 2023. Now Meta announced an option of Facebook and Instagram without personalized ads for 120 euros per year. European users would have the option to pay or agree to personalized ads. But is your right to privacy for sale? Let’s find out!
A monumental amount, or a tiny tax if the abuse doubles their profit…
The profit they’d need to make off EU users would need to increase by over $4.66 billion to make a 4% fine on of global revenue.
Even if every single person in the EU (including babies and anyone who doesn’t have a meta account) took up the paid tier it wouldn’t offset a 4% fine on global revenue. They’d need it make $10 profit extra per person per month. Their price is €10 (just over 10 USD) a month. Subtract from that 20% tax and another let’s say 5% for card handling fees and their general costs gives them €7.50. The you need to subtract from that what they were making off users before as we’re looking at increase.
20% of their revenue comes from the EU, almost all of it from ads. I’d argue that complying with the law would cost them more than a quarter of the EU ads revenue, without affecting their costs much -> that’d be 5% of global revenue. Breaking the law still pays.
Also, how do you conclude that 448 million people paying 90 EUR per year, for a total of 40 billion EUR, wouldn’t offset a 4.66 billion USD fine?
If the fine was 4% of global revenue every month, sure. So far it looks like it’d be every 3-5 years though…
Lol oh yeah, good point.