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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

If I block JS, and the way they've implemented means that the site is readable and usable despite me never seeing or opting in, are they in violation, or is it on me for 'tampering' or whatever?

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AFAIK, it's on them. They can't track you without explicit consent, and they can't force you to consent to improper tracking in order to use the service. By improper I mean something that's not literally required for the service to function; a newsletter obviously needs to know email addresses to work since that's the core operation of the service.

Isn’t revenue literally required for a service to function? Who pays for the server costs?

Nothing stops a site showing ads; they just have to think of creative ways to target them. It's a new opportunity, as all changes of environments are.

They are free to put up paywalls. GDPR legislates that personal information can't be used as currency - not that you can't ask for payment.

but it can. you just need consent.

You can't condition service on consent (if you only need the consent for revenue, not in order to provide actual service)

What is "the service"? Why can't personalized ads be part of my service? I can how selling personal data isn't part to the service, but the ad content displayed to a user is.

If you're a newspaper for example, personalized ads isn't part of your service which is to present news. So you can't make presenting the news conditional on accepting ad tracking.

You're free to have ad tracking as long as it is optional and by explicit consent only.

But you can use a paywall... So can you say 'pay, with either cash or personal information'?

I just said GDPR legislates that personal information is not a form of currency, so no, you can't ask for payment in the form of personal information.

Really? So you can no longer have opt-in ads, or a 'premium' ad-less version?

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