Targeted advertising conducted by the tech giants has
been under heated discussion the past years. Meta introduced the
so-called "consent or pay" model under which an European
user could decide to pay to use the platform without ads or give
consent to behavioral advertising. The discussion surrounding this
has continued as the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted
its opinion (08/2024) by request from several European Data
Protection Authorities.
The question in short was whether this model can constitute a
valid consent on large online platforms which attract a large
number of users within the EEA and the data is used for behavioral
advertising. It may have not come as a surprise that the EDPB
concluded that this way of working does not "in most
cases" fulfill the requirements for a valid consent under the
GDPR, according to which consent must be freely given, specific,
informed, and unambiguous.
