Facebook and Instagram users in the UK are to be offered advert-free versions of the social networks for up to £3.99 a month.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has responded to regulatory warnings about personalised adverts, in which users’ data is crunched to produce targeted ads, by launching an ad-free subscription service.
Web users will be charged £2.99 a month, and mobile phone users £3.99 a month, to scroll through Facebook and Instagram without ads. If the accounts are linked, users only need to pay one monthly fee.
“This will give people based in the UK the choice between continuing to use Facebook and Instagram for free with personalised ads, or subscribing to stop seeing ads,” said Meta.
Meta said the service will be rolled out over the coming weeks. Users who do not take up the subscription will still see ads.
The subscription offering is similar to a service offered by Meta in the EU, which has been deemed in breach of the digital markets act – a piece of legislation designed to rein in big tech – by the bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission.
The commission fined Meta €200m this year, stating the company should have launched a free version of its sites that used less detailed personal data, such as gender, age and location, for making targeted ads.
The UK’s data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), said it welcomed the move.
“This moves Meta away from targeting users with ads as part of the standard terms and conditions for using its Facebook and Instagram services, which we’ve been clear is not in line with UK law,” said an ICO spokesperson.
This year the ICO said internet users should have an “opt out” from their data being used to create targeted ads, after Meta settled a court case with a UK citizen over targeted ads.
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Meta agreed to stop targeting Tanya O’Carroll, a human rights campaigner, who had alleged the company breached UK data laws by failing to respect her right to demand that Facebook stop collecting her data for personalised ads. Following the settlement Meta said it was considering launching an ad-free subscription to its social networks.
Gareth Oldale, a partner at the UK law firm TLT, said the ICO’s support for the Meta subscription service showed divergence between the EU and UK.
“This position in certainly pro-business and illustrative of the UK government’s direction to regulators to support economic growth and development of the digital economy,” he said. “It does, however, mean that the divergence between the UK and the EU positions has grown a little wider.”
