28 NGOs urge EU DPAs to reject “Pay or Okay” on Meta

Forced Consent & Consent Bypass The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) will soon issue what is likely to be its most significant opinion to date: It will determine whether Europeans continue to have a realistic option to protect their right to privacy online. In November 2023, Meta adopted a “Pay or Okay” approach. Since then, users have been forced to either pay a ‘privacy fee’ of € 251.88 per year or agree to be tracked. The Dutch, Norwegian and Hamburg data protection authorities (DPAs) have therefore requested a binding EDPB opinion on this matter. If ‘Pay or Okay’ is legitimised, companies across all industry sectors could follow Meta’s lead – which could mark the end of genuine consent to the use of European’s data. noyb has now joined forces with 27 other NGOs (including Wikimedia Europe, Bits of Freedom and the Norwegian Consumer Council) to urge the EDPB to issue an opinion that protects the fundamental right to data protection. Joint letter to the European Data Protect