There is nothing on this cold, moist rock that will stop companies from harvesting and selling your data other than the inevitable embrace of death.

Actual answer over circle-jerk speculation: To be legal in EU, they must offer one option without required (=forced) consent to tracking. When you pay, you can actually opt-out from any measure that require consent under GDPR.

All European publishers do this. They don't want your money and probably don't care much about the tiny minority that actually pays for freedom from tracking. This option exist to create the illusion of choice.

Hold your horses, they only said "ad free", "tracking free" is beyond the scope, making this essentially a double dip.

yes

Yes. They absolutely will.

It was pretty clear what a toxic company facebook was 10 years ago. I'd say it was already becoming increasingly clear by the time The Social Network released in 2010.

Would've caught zero traction then lol. You can only do this if you have a very established and dedicated userbase already. Trying this from scratch with little users is a death sentence.

It's not like they're going to stop collecting data on you.

I mean Ill continue to take "not using the services" any day

Same here, but only if its reasonably priced. Otherweise I probably should stop using it.

In Instagram I only habe one Person I'd Miss from the family. In Facebook it's friends and family from other countries and so many that it's still practical to habe a facebook account. But let's see.

Someone made this point above, but if that were true this would've been implemented in every country, not just the ones with GDPR.