Yes the term is “freely given consent” indeed, but more importantly: Why would you not trust the EU Data Protection Board if they say themselves that consent-or-pay is not okay?

They can put all the ads they want to finance their services, but if they want to use targeted ones, they have to ask for unbiased users consent.

I am in the same situation, If you just want to delete your account, it seems accessing this url: https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account does not trigger the consent message.

If you want to access Facebook and Instagram without accepting the ads, there are some weird ways I found that kind of works:

• For Instagram in a browser you can go to https://www.instagram.com/consent/?flow= this will go to a page that says “Sorry, this page isn’t available.” but you can then go to the homepage without triggering the consent message. (some actions like loading a story will though) Another way on mobile (tested on Firefox android) is to start from the browser and when the consent message shows up click on the 3 dots → “Open in an application” the app then open to a blank page and you can go back to home.

• For Facebook this tricks doesn’t seem to work, but other ways seems to, like using https://mbasic.facebook.com/