Meta has been temporarily banned from running behavioral advertising on Facebook and Instagram in Norway -- unless it obtains users' consent to the processing.
unless it obtains users’ consent to the processing
“Do you consent to the processing?”
‘No, I do not consent’
[Account Suspended]
“Wait, I CONSENT! Please, take all my data! Take all the data of my entire family and everyone I’ve ever associated with online! ANYTHING but suspend the account. PLEASE!”
It’s going to be closer to an E-mail saying “We are informing you that we have updated our privacy policy.” which nobody is going to read. And the change is going to be an added line of “With continuation of usage of our products and services in the Norway region you give meta the right to collect and processes your information for marketing purposes.”. Which also nobody is going to read. Voila, plausible consent.
For what it’s worth, a lot of countries with decent privacy laws are looking at closing that stupid loophole by requiring “affirmative consent” whenever something changes to the detriment of the consumer (i.e., more data, wider scope, etc.), meaning the companies would have to require the user to take some action to affirm they consent.
Those same proposals also have provisions prohibiting account suspension / blocking for not consenting. I.e., you can say “no” and continue to use the service exactly as before, though, newer features may be blocked.
From the linked techcrunch article:
From the order itself:
Misleading title.
“Do you consent to the processing?”
‘No, I do not consent’
[Account Suspended]
“Wait, I CONSENT! Please, take all my data! Take all the data of my entire family and everyone I’ve ever associated with online! ANYTHING but suspend the account. PLEASE!”
‘Thank you for your patronage.’
It’s going to be closer to an E-mail saying “We are informing you that we have updated our privacy policy.” which nobody is going to read. And the change is going to be an added line of “With continuation of usage of our products and services in the Norway region you give meta the right to collect and processes your information for marketing purposes.”. Which also nobody is going to read. Voila, plausible consent.
For what it’s worth, a lot of countries with decent privacy laws are looking at closing that stupid loophole by requiring “affirmative consent” whenever something changes to the detriment of the consumer (i.e., more data, wider scope, etc.), meaning the companies would have to require the user to take some action to affirm they consent.
Those same proposals also have provisions prohibiting account suspension / blocking for not consenting. I.e., you can say “no” and continue to use the service exactly as before, though, newer features may be blocked.