Users of Facebook and Instagram across the UK will soon face a new choice that will fundamentally change their relationship with the platforms: pay a monthly subscription fee or continue to accept a feed filled with personalised ads. Meta, the parent company, has announced this new two-track system as its solution to regulatory demands for greater user control over personal data.
The price for an ad-free experience has been set at £2.99 per month for web access and £3.99 per month for mobile app users. For those who use both Facebook and Instagram, Meta has clarified that a single subscription will remove ads from both services, provided the accounts are linked. The alternative remains the same: free access in exchange for allowing the company to crunch your data to serve targeted ads.
This move has received a positive nod from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection watchdog. The ICO has been clear that Meta’s previous model—where ad targeting was an unavoidable part of the user agreement—was not compliant with UK law. The regulator welcomed the subscription as a step in the right direction, giving users a tangible way to opt out, a right recently reinforced by a legal settlement with a UK citizen.
This endorsement from the UK contrasts sharply with the situation in the European Union. There, the same subscription offering was met with a €200m fine from the European Commission, which deemed it a violation of the bloc’s Digital Markets Act. The EU’s argument is that charging for privacy is not a fair choice and that a less data-intensive, free version should be available to all users.
This divergence is seen by experts as a deliberate policy choice by the UK. Gareth Oldale, a partner at law firm TLT, noted that the ICO’s position is “pro-business” and aligns with the UK government’s aim to stimulate the digital economy. It marks another step in the separation of the UK’s digital regulatory framework from that of the EU, creating a different set of rules for big tech operating in Britain.