A Harris Interactive survey showed that most French people are willing to pay for a subscription to use online services without intrusive advertising and the collection of personal data. The study found that more than 56% of users in France already have subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Disney+ or YouTube, and 27% to Spotify or other audio platforms. For gaming services (Steam, etc.), the figure is 18%.
About a third of those surveyed said they were willing to pay between €5.50 and €9 per month to use social media, the press, AI services or fitness apps without being tracked.
The French regulator CNIL called this a “significant shift”: people are increasingly choosing to pay for privacy rather than exchange their data for “free” content. The “consent or pay” model — where a user either consents to data collection or pays for access — was previously used mainly in the online press. Now it is actively being implemented by social networks and other services. At the same time, critics, in particular the Austrian human rights activist Max Schrems, claim that such a scheme creates the illusion of choice: more than 99% of users agree to tracking, although in reality only 0.16-7% want it.
The change in attitude towards privacy in France could be the beginning of a broader European trend: users are willing to pay not for content, but for control over their own data. This is a challenge for a business that has lived for decades on advertising built on tracking.
