Meta offering ‘less personalized ads’ for European Facebook and Instagram users

Meta has announced it’s going to offer European Facebook and Instagram users an option for ‘less personalized ads’. Furthermore, the company is lowering the price of a paid subscription without ads.

In November 2023, Meta came up with its ‘pay or okay’ model. Facebook and Instagram users either choose to pay a monthly subscription fee and see no ads on their timeline, or they opt in for a free account, which means Meta can collect user data in order to provide personalized ads.

By offering a choice between a paid subscription and free access to an online service funded by personalized ads, Meta is trying to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Digital Markets Act (DMA).

“Despite our concerted efforts to comply with EU regulation, we have continued to receive additional demands from regulators that go beyond what is written in the law. In response to this feedback and to continue providing our services for free to as many EU citizens as possible, we are launching an additional option for EU users,” Meta says in a blog post.

Over the coming weeks, European Facebook and Instagram users will be able to choose to see ‘less personalized ads’, meaning Meta will collect less user data to present users with ads. The ads that will be shown are based on context -what someone sees during a session on Facebook or Instagram-, how someone engages with ads, and personal information such as age, location, gender.

Some of the ads that people will see in the ‘less personalized ads experience’, are going to be unskippable for a few seconds, comparable with ads when playing a mobile game on a smartphone. “This change will help us continue to provide value to advertisers which ensures we can offer people a less personalized ads experience at no charge,” Meta argues.

Max Schrems, Chairman of Noyb, isn’t too thrilled with Meta’s plans.

“Overall this just looks like another attempt to ignore EU law by annoying people into consent with huge unskippable ads. Users must have an equal choice between ads that use their personal data and ads that do not. We doubt that Meta’s fourth iteration of trying to bypass EU law will be accepted,” he says in a statement.

In addition, Meta promises to reduce the price of a monthly subscription from € 9.99 to € 5.99 on the web, and from € 12.99 to € 7.99 on Android and iOS. Each additional Facebook or Instagram account will be charged at € 4 per month on the web and € 5 per month on Android and iOS.