Correct, they don't have to offer free access. What they do need to do is pick a business model that is legal in countries they wish to operate in. Things like GDPR doesn't prevent ads. Maybe they make less money off non-personalized ads, but companies can't do whatever they want just because they make more money that way. I don't find it odd that laws can hamper the revenue of certain business models.

> Thats an odd thing to say. Websites don't need to allow free access either. I can't comment on any particular revenue model but I imagine many websites chose personalized ads as they provide better revenue returns than non-personalized ads.

Another way to get revenue, which doesn't itself transgress against these privacy-focused laws, is to charge directly for providing your service. That's totally legal! Well, but maybe some companies would find that they don't get enough subscribers to fund their business—then the solution, in a privacy-focused environment, is that those business don't exist, rather than that they get a shadow source of funding by accepting bribes for participating in scummy privacy violations. This would be a very different environment from the one in which we live—clearly better in some ways and clearly worse in others—but it's far from impossible.

> Another way to get revenue, which doesn't itself transgress against these privacy-focused laws, is to charge directly for providing your service. That's totally legal!

Is that what the consumer wants? Also - is depriving services to those who aren't able to pay the fee to participate the right thing to do when they don't mind something like privacy focused advertisements?

Judging by all the people unwilling to purchase Youtube Premium I would say no.

Why are people not allowed to choose for themselves? Should we start banning what people can share on social media too for their own protection? Also not everyone can pay for content so you're punishing people who can least afford it by having direct payment be the only way forward.

Privacy laws that remove freedom and opportunity aren't very good laws.

I absolutely think that site owners and visitors should not be allowed to enter an agreement where content is provided based on selling PII of the visitor. The reason is simple: the visitor can’t be properly made aware of what they are actually paying. So it should simply be banned. Yes, at the expense of maybe a majority of content online disappearing. And yes at the expense of people who can’t afford to pay for content in cash being denied it entirely.

No thanks, that sounds absolutely terrible. I, and billions of others on the planet, prefer to make our own choices.

You are still allowed to consent to tracking cookies under the GDPR, so nothing has to change for you if you don't want it to. The difference is that you now have a choice, companies are no longer allowed to make that choice for you. What is so terrible about that?

Please re-read the comment chain. You're either missing context or accidentally replying to wrong post.

> Privacy laws that remove freedom and opportunity aren't very good laws.

All laws remove somebody's freedom and somebody's opportunity, so either this argument is flawed or it indicates that we shouldn't have any laws.

I'm not a maximalist in allowing people to choose everything—the very notion of inalienable rights indicates something that a person cannot give up, not even by choice—but, even if I were, the problem with the current model isn't that I don't like the particular trade-offs people are making (though I don't), but that people aren't aware of those trade-offs. That, and the unfortunate confluence of companies' lack of desire to educate customers and customers' lack of desire to be educated, means that we're not really in a situation of informed choice.

Privacy isn't a singular action and should be a choice, which is a fundamental part of this legislation.

If you're talking about criminal laws then those are designed around harm and the greater good. There's no harm here because it's up to the individual, allows them to gain value from content, and their decision doesn't affect anyone else.

Informed choice is something else entirely, but people go throughout the day making choices out of complete ignorance and that alone isn't a valid reason for preventing their freedom. Considering the relatively trivial risk, this falls well under personal responsibility. I encourage more education around privacy but am absolutely against making the choice for them, because that's how we got into this mess in the first place.