@zverik

It s very common, just phrased in various ways, and legal afaik.

@zverik

Pretty much. The claim is that they offer their paid magazine in an ad-based version - which is hard to argue with, even if not doing that would nuke their sales.

Most infamously Facebook did the same thing when the EU required them to get consent from their users. Pay for a monthly subscription, or consent to tracking.

@zverik No way, because you need to give them your personal info to do so (and thus allowing them to sell it in the process), and the GDPR authorities and EU courts have said multiple times that you you can't coerce a pseudo-choice from someone when it comes to GDPR.

Paying vs. consenting to having your data mined is NOT a choice you can actually freely make. Not to mention it's a moot one because they'll still get your data anyway, and you can bet there's something in the ToS that says they can sell that data to third parties if you subscribe to their service.

Of course, however, until someone like @noybeu takes them to court, that will not change, unfortunately.

My reaction to that kind of shenanigans is to simply not use the site. If your business model revolves around selling user data one way or another, and extorting money for not doing so (as if you'd actually not sell it once you have it!), then I don't want to be anywhere near your business.