Meta has found a “subscription solution” to escape a legal quagmire in the United Kingdom. Faced with the determination that its long-standing ad-targeting model was unlawful, the company has offered a paid ad-free service as its way out of the mess.
The quagmire stemmed from the UK’s data protection laws, which grant users the right to object to their data being processed for marketing. Meta’s old model offered no easy way to do this. The new subscription, costing up to £3.99 a month, is designed as a clear, albeit commercialised, objection mechanism.
This solution has been accepted by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the very body that created the quagmire for Meta. The ICO has stated that the subscription model is a valid way to provide user choice and brings Meta’s operations into compliance with the law.
This solution was not accepted in the EU, where regulators viewed it as deepening the problem rather than solving it. A €200m fine from the European Commission made it clear that the subscription was not a valid answer to the legal questions being asked there.
For Meta in the UK, the subscription is a lifeline. It provides a workable, profitable, and regulator-approved path out of a legal swamp that threatened to engulf its core business model.