Recital 37

Provision of a less personalised alternative service and consent*

The less personalised alternative should not be different or of degraded quality compared to the service provided to the end users who provide consent, unless a degradation of quality is a direct consequence of the gatekeeper not being able to process such personal data or signing in end users to a service. Not giving consent should not be more difficult than giving consent. When the gatekeeper requests consent, it should proactively present a user-friendly solution to the end user to provide, modify or withdraw consent in an explicit, clear and straightforward manner. In particular, consent should be given by a clear affirmative action or statement establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of agreement by the end user, as defined in Regulation (EU) 2016/679. At the time of giving consent, and only where applicable, the end user should be informed that not giving consent can lead to a less personalised offer, but that otherwise the core platform service will remain unchanged and that no functionalities will be suppressed. Exceptionally, if consent cannot be given directly to the gatekeeper’s core platform service, end users should be able to give consent through each third-party service that makes use of that core platform service, to allow the gatekeeper to process personal data for the purposes of providing online advertising services.

Lastly, it should be as easy to withdraw consent as to give it. Gatekeepers should not design, organise or operate their online interfaces in a way that deceives, manipulates or otherwise materially distorts or impairs the ability of end users to freely give consent. In particular, gatekeepers should not be allowed to prompt end users more than once a year to give consent for the same processing purpose in respect of which they initially did not give consent or withdrew their consent. This Regulation is without prejudice to Regulation (EU) 2016/679, including its enforcement framework, which remains fully applicable with respect to any claims by data subjects relating to an infringement of their rights under that Regulation.

* This title is an unofficial description.