Why Instagram and Facebook are asking us to choose between advertising and subscriptions
When opening the Instagram or Facebook app, the message inviting you to "check if we can process your data for ads" appears, many immediately think it's a mistake or, worse, a phishing attempt. In reality, it's the most visible manifestation of a secret negotiation that has pitted Meta against European regulators for years. On one side stands a giant built on personalized marketing; on the other, a package of regulations—GDPR, Digital Markets Act, and Digital Services Act—that aims to reduce the excessive power of online "gatekeepers." The window of opportunity that offers two options—continue viewing ads for free or pay €7.99 a month to stop viewing them—is therefore not a sudden commercial breakthrough, but the result of court rulings, administrative decisions, and political pressure demanding a freer and more transparent form of consent.
In July 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that a subscription can only be considered "consent" to data processing if there is a functionally equivalent free version available alongside it. A few months later, in November 2023, Meta launched its "no ads" subscription across the EU, initially selling for €12.99 on mobile and €9.99 online. The company believed it had thus met regulatory requirements, but the Commission challenged the "pay or take" model because it did not allow users to opt out of personalized advertising without additional costs. Faced with the risk of fines of up to 5% of daily revenue, Meta reduced the price of its subscription by 40% (now €7.99 on smartphones and €5.99 via browser) and introduced a third option, "less personalized ads," which are ads based on a minimal set of data—age, gender, approximate city, and content viewed in the last two hours— with the addition of short, unskippable video spots .
The moment a user clicks "Get Started," they're reaffirming a choice they made a year ago. Deciding to stay free means accepting that the algorithmic engine will continue to intertwine likes, comments, page views, and external browsing habits to create a detailed advertising profile. Opting out of ads, on the other hand, means paying a monthly fee, which covers both Instagram and Facebook, and seeing all forms of behavioral targeting eliminated, at least in theory. In between lies the gray area of "contextual" ads, those that rely only on immediate context and limited personal information. For users, this means less relevant ads, more intrusive interruptions, and the perception of being treated to a feed more akin to generalist television than a customized catalog.
The price of privacyThat an algorithm can assign a monetary value to our data package is not a new idea, but it has never been so transparently explained. By reducing prices, Meta implicitly states that the average monetization of each European profile will be around €72 per year, a figure close to the per capita advertising revenue estimates revealed in recent financial statements. It's no coincidence that analysts interviewed by CNBC estimate a potential 10-15% impact on European advertising revenue if a significant number of people were to pay for the subscription. However, the company is betting that the majority, as happened with YouTube Premium or Spotify, will continue to prefer the free version, putting up with a slightly less user-friendly experience to avoid paying a monthly fee.
The regulatory frameworkBehind the screen everyone sees lies a mosaic of rules worth recapping. The GDPR, which came into force in 2018, established the principle of "free, specific, informed, and unambiguous consent." The DMA, introduced in 2023, requires gatekeepers—a category into which Meta fully falls—to offer an alternative to the indiscriminate combination of personal data. The DSA, effective from February 2024, prohibits profiling based on sensitive data and protects minors from any behavioral targeting. The convergence of these regulations has forced Meta to translate what the law describes as a fundamental right into a binary choice (pay or accept): to decide to what extent one's data can fuel the attention economy.
The criticismsSince its initial announcement, organizations like BEUC, NOYB, and Assoutenti have criticized the interface, calling it a "dark pattern," a design that subtly pushes users toward the most profitable option for the company. The button to continue with the ads is large and colorful, the button to pay is less prominent, and there was no middle ground. The new alternative with less personalized ads should have quelled the protests, but it has raised other questions: why introduce unskippable ads, if not to intentionally make the experience annoying and push for a license fee?
Practical implications for audiences, businesses, and creatorsFor users, the main change is the awareness that privacy comes at an explicit price. Those who pay get a relatively "clean" feed, without cross-service tracking, although the sponsored content of influencers they follow remains visible because it doesn't pass through Ad Manager. Those who remain on the free tier agree to surrender their data or, if they choose the less personalized route, suffer longer advertising interruptions. Brands will have to split their budgets between three strands: traditional profile-based campaigns, contextual ads, and organic branded content, with a likely increase in the cost per thousand impressions in the first two categories. Finally, creators will find that in a feed free of ads, their sponsored posts stand out more, increasing the value of commercial collaborations, but they will have to label them with the transparency required by the DSA.
YouTube has offered a subscription that removes ads and adds offline downloads since 2018, but it costs €11.99, almost double the price Meta charges online. TikTok is testing something similar in the UK, while X (formerly Twitter) combines partial ad removal with extra features like long posts and a blue tick, for €9.68.
Possible developmentsMuch will depend on the European Commission's final decision on the "less personalized" alternative. If it is deemed insufficiently equivalent, penalties of up to €22.5 million per day will be imposed. Observers envision a possible compromise with a fourth button, "decide later," which would give users a choice over time. In the meantime, Meta could invest in an advertising marketplace based solely on contextual signals, using generative artificial intelligence to interpret the content of a Reel or photo in real time and match it with the most relevant sponsor, without reading the viewer's entire social history.
The cost of freeWhether you pay for a subscription or not, the daily experience of social media in Europe will never be the same. The message appearing on screens reminds us that free access has always come with a hidden cost: the surrender of data; now that cost is quantified to two decimal places and can be paid in cash. The negotiation between individual rights and business models, which began on the continent, could spill over into other jurisdictions. If the idea that personalized advertising survives only as a premium option were to gain traction, the ad-tech economy would be forced to reinvent itself. For users, knowing the consequences of each choice remains the first step to consciously navigating this new digital landscape.
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