Netflix, Disney+, and Meta: What’s an ‘Appropriate Fee’ for a Subscription?

Mikołaj Barczentewicz December 12, 2023

How EU Law Influences Tech View Original Source

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“What is an appropriate fee?” is among the key questions in the current conversation around Meta’s move to introduce paid subscription options with no ads on Facebook and Instagram. As I discussed previously, the EU’s highest court suggested that businesses may be allowed under the GDPR to offer their users a choice between (1) agreeing to personalised advertising and (2) “if necessary” paying “an appropriate fee” for an alternative service tier. In that text, I also raised some of the legal and economic difficulties in determining an appropriate fee. Eric Seufert followed with a thoughtful analysis. (By the way, don’t miss the next episode of Eric’s podcast in which we’ll discuss this and related issues.) Eric proposed two alternative “conditions for calculating whether a ‘pay-or-okay’ price point represents an ‘appropriate fee’”:

1. The price achieves, at most, overall ARPU parity between the pre-subscription and post-subscription periods, and;
2. The fee doesn’t materially exceed those charged by comparable services.

Read the full piece here.