24 ms·

Facebook threatens to make iOS users pay. Please do it, Mr. Zuckerberg

477 points by MontagFTB 5y ago

financialize 5y ago
He doesn't have the guts.
exabrial 5y ago
This is literally a win for all parties.
- xzit 5y ago
  It's not even figuratively a win for all parties
supernintendo 5y ago
I wish Facebook would just stop existing at this point. It truly is a malignant tumor on the face of the humanity.
- katbyte 5y ago
  Takes the too spot in most evil tech companies for me by a very wide margin
- craftinator 5y ago
  We need to coin a new law: "Any sufficiently wealthy and monopolistic organization will tend towards evil at a rate inversely similar to it's MRR."
  - idrios 5y ago
    Would Wikipedia be an exception to this? To my understanding Wikipedia is extremely well off financially on just the backs of donations, it's inherently a monopoly, but it is not tending towards evil despite having solid MRR.
    - spencerflem 5y ago
      How is wikipedia monopolistic? All the articles are free and published permissively. They haven't bought out "competitors" or done anything like that. Also, I'm glad they're doing well but they're not making Facebook-levels of money
      - idrios 5y ago
        I'd call it a monopoly by the same standards I'd call Facebook one. It's the only general-purpose encyclopedia on the internet that any person has heard of. It found a need and met it so perfectly that nobody would ever bother try to compete with it, because not only does it do its job near perfectly but it's also free and open source. And they're not making Facebook money but they're making far more than small business money. My point was to be that maybe Wikipedia is a case study in how to make a lot of money without sacrificing your virtues, that maybe there are more specific factors that drive other businesses towards being evil besides just having tons of money.
      - procombo 5y ago
        Over time wikipedia trends towards inequality of participation. This includes access by scholars and researchers. [1] It also shows (seemingly regularly) political and religious bias worldwide. [2] Wikipedia also seems to regularly be a platform of misinformation. Mass purging of sources. And delisting of accurate information. [3] [4] [5] (sources taken at random, too many to list.) Wikipedia will always have problems, IMO. It's in it's nature. When I was a kid I would read encyclopedias like the other kids would read comics. It's clear to me that it's best to use Wikipedia as a conduit to sources, not as direct reference to fact. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26871092/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26871092/ [2] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-culture-war https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-culture-war [3] https://prn.fm/wikipedia-misinformation-prejudice-case-examples-drs-deepak-chopra-gary-null/ https://prn.fm/wikipedia-misinformation-prejudice-case-examp... [4] https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/the_wikipedia_purge.html https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/the_wikiped... [5] https://www.conservapedia.com/Wikipedia_prejudice_and_KAL_007 https://www.conservapedia.com/Wikipedia_prejudice_and_KAL_00...
temporalparts 5y ago
> Help keep instagram free of charge I think calling this a threat is hyperbolic and intended as clickbait (it's working). All this is doing is reminding people that IG/FB is free and that this helps their revenue.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ct0 5y ago
  But haven't we already "Paid"?
  - temporalparts 5y ago
    As economists say: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as...
    - inetsee 5y ago
      "The phrase and the acronym are central to Robert Heinlein's 1966 science-fiction novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which helped popularize it."
valine 5y ago
Sounds kinda like the Wikipedia donation banner, expect they're asking for permission to track you rather than for donations. How bizarre.
N1H1L 5y ago
It's just bluster. No way Facebook/Instagram is writing off a quarter of the world's smartphone users (who also probably on average have a higher net worth than the remaining 75%).
- spamalot159 5y ago
  Maybe iOS users are less price sensitive than Android users and therefore this might be the perfect way to test out the business model. It would be hilarious if they actually started making more money because Apple forced their hand.
  - benbristow 5y ago
    Since the payments would have to be made through the App Store platform (unless Facebook forced the user to subscribe through a web browser) Apple would most likely be profiting though.
    - N1H1L 5y ago
      30%. Either way Apple wins.
    - wernercd 5y ago
      "would have to be made through the app store platform" not necessarily. Netflix operates through the app store and doesn't sell subscriptions on the App Store as a big FU to the 30% gouge... Could Facebook make it happen and profitable in a way to get around Apples rules? I think so... I think Apple would change the rules shortly after though...
      - benbristow 5y ago
        Yes, that's why I mentioned Facebook forcing users to subscribe through a web browser as that would be out of Apple's control. AFAIK the rule is that users can subscribe to a service/product outside of an app and use their account's status on the app, but if the user wants to subscribe from within the app they need to go through the App Store subscription service.
spamalot159 5y ago
I would love if more companies let me pay them for products instead of having them extract money out of me by using my data. At this point I don't think I'd trust Facebook either way but there are a host of others that I would be happy to pay for service.
- conductr 5y ago
  This just sounds like you’re creating a second revenue stream for them. I don’t trust a single company to stop collecting and monetizing data that they are used to monetizing.
  - creaturemachine 5y ago
    Exactly. Nobody wants to blindly serve their ads to an anonymous "Paying Customer"
gchokov 5y ago
Even so, Apple will still get its 30% cut. Sorry Zuck. I hope you lose this time around.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
>The notice leans on users' vast enthusiasm for more personalized advertising Ha ha. I think a study should be commissioned to see whether FB has overall bettered the lives of its users financially or the opposite. This would be the most effective way to judge how necessary FB really is. (I'm not including the social aspect, because i personally think it hasn't helped anybody socially in the long run (obviously, short term benefits are possible))
- bertil 5y ago
  A lot of on-line businesses created in the last ten years would not be profitable without the ability to grow their customer base. Anyone selling products specialised enough to only be relevant for 10% of a demographic group or less.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    those businesses could have operated through any other large platform. 'the ability to grow their customer base' is more dependent on their business than on which platform they advertise. Google and apple can target users for you too. Facebook just happens to not do anything but social media and ads.
  - kodah 5y ago
    > Anyone selling products specialised enough to only be relevant for 10% of a demographic group or less. The question from here is, without Facebook could that have happened? Does Facebook's ecosystem contribute to this success? Does it also contribute to a lack of competitors in this space?
    - bertil 5y ago
      What space exactly? Individual niches are not as interesting because you might think that the market for your calligraphy kit is a forum for Japanese speakers (10% conversion rate, 10k people largest forum) but Manga-watchers have a much better potential (2%, 5M). It’s easy to assume who your niche is, but almost every campaign is a surprise. This is why Custom Audience powers most ads. Therefore your market is a service that knows about many people’s niche interest, but is itself quite generic: that’s Wordpress·com (freemium, not interested in ads), reddit (not good at monetisation for a long time), twitter (same delay), GMail to some extend and much later Slack, Discord, maybe SnapChat and TikTok. There is a duopoly in ads platforms because there’s a duopoly in effective ideas that scale to any support and any advertiser: keyword (Google) and personalisation. Many platforms have tried to base ads on the content of the page, but it’s hard to find ads that pair well with the war in Darfur. Many YouTube creators get away with promoted content, but it is murky more often than not. The most successful “editorial” attempt is OutBrain and Taboola that are essentially auto-generated articles with super-optimised clic-bait-y garbage. You can imagine hosting that information yourself, edit it, expose it to ad slots in your browser with a protocol. Dave Winner certainly dreams of it. But for me, the proof that this could work was Facebook letting anyone edit their ad preference and information: for years, you could just tell Facebook that you were _not_ into cars, baby clothes or stamp collection. No one used it. It was linked on every ad; you were linked to it if you right-clic to say an ad wasn’t relevant; it was easily findable on the website and the app… No one touched it. So much so that improving it was impossible without traffic. Privacy advocate who claimed this needed to exist ignored my comments when I told them it already did. There was major internal support for it, but even VPs can’t argue against data. You can look at the history: Facebook was created in 2004; they immediately had ads, but they only became a significant player on targeting from 2008 onwards. At that point, ads had been around since 1995 with Viaweb, so more than 15 years; Google had been around for since 1998, so 10 years and the acquisition that created AdWords five years earlier in 2003. If an alternative direction was easy, there was time to build something. I’m not saying another reality isn’t possible — I dream of a protocol emerging from Facebook opening its preference embeddings, after realising that there’s a worthwhile ecosystem of apps to let people optimise it the way they want. But not enough people wanted it, while billions of people seem comfortable with delegating decisions and targeting entirely.
hankchinaski 5y ago
that will not certainly offset lost ad revenue due to less effective advertising. If this happens maybe people will start to realise that you don't really need FB that badly after all. I cancelled all my FB/IG accounts a few years back, only whatsapp is holding me back but if I would be happy to pay for whatsapp to get out of tracking.
jonplackett 5y ago
You know, I’d be happy to fill in a quick survey of what I’m actually interested in hearing about. Less invasive and probably more accurate. So many ‘personalised’ ads I get are for stuff I would never buy.
- agilob 5y ago
  Naaaah too easy, better to use your microphone to listen to what you're doing at random times, then deduct what you would be interested in.
  - jonplackett 5y ago
    You’re right of course. Too easy, better to put a neural implant straight into your brain and watch your nightmares.
    - drawkbox 5y ago
      "Engagement" algorithm is like, "they are very active when nightmares are happening so they must like it". So the algorithm adds in more nightmares, engage.
young_unixer 5y ago
Why does this website ask me to enable DRM?
- donkarma 5y ago
  Sounds like fingerprinting?
- gspr 5y ago
  I suspect that it's because they embed some Spotify thing for their shitcast at the bottom of the page (I refuse to let them use the established term for such a DRM-walled ripoff of the real deal). I know for sure that Spotify's regular web interface requires Firefox's DRM plugin, because that's the reason I run it in its own VM.
schemescape 5y ago
I don't think it could achieve critical mass, but if there was some alternate Facebook with just as widespread of use that you had to pay for but it didn't track you or show you creepily personal ads I would strongly consider using it.
lizhang 5y ago
If ads companies like FB, GOOG pull all of their apps from the iOS app store, would customers move to android? Is the vendor lock-in strong enough that people would find iOS alternatives than buy an android phone?
sircastor 5y ago
I mean, sure this sounds great - if Facebook would let us pay for access instead of selling data on us - but I don't see that happening ever. Aside from this being an obvious bluff, I see the best case scenario is that Facebook charges for a premium access, but still tracks you as best it can get away with. If Facebook can figure out how to do it, they'd sell you a service and sell your info to the highest bidder. Also, Facebook doesn't track purely for better ads. That's the benign version. Facebook tracks because it wants to own the aggregate profile of "you" online.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  And do what with it?
- fossuser 5y ago
  Also the users willing to pay are the most valuable to advertise to. I think I also read the per user dollar value of ad revenue was $150/month? Way more than any individual would pay - and losing a subset would reduce this for the others. Also the preference for targeted ads is rationalized nonsense (imo) when the cost is user data: “To test if users truly find 'relevant ads' as value-add: make two products, one with ads and one without and charge for the one with ads - see how many people buy it. Why doesn't Hulu charge more many for their streaming service with ads instead of their service without? The behavior of these companies suggests they know on some level this value-add nonsense is a rationalization. Even if you say it's only value-add when compared to un-targeted ads - let users choose to have un-targeted ads without giving up their data privacy. I'd bet money on what choice they'd make.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27069492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27069492
  - anders_p 5y ago
    Your $150/month per user is way too high. According to their valuation it is closer to $50/user per year.
    - fossuser 5y ago
      Ah - thanks, I vaguely recalled $150 but not sure where I read that.
Animats 5y ago
"It's free and always will be" quietly disappeared in August 2019. "The first one is always free"?
DeathRay2K 5y ago
Let's be honest, even if Facebook started charging for access, they wouldn't shut down their other streams of revenue. That ship has sailed, Facebook is not and never can be a company that treats its users like the customers. Facebook users are the resources they exploit for profit, and they've been locked into that business model since inception.
Maarten88 5y ago
> How much more honest a relationship it might be if Facebook charged for its wares. The author seems to think that Facebook would suddenly stop doing all the other things it does to make money, once a user would pay. Of course they would not. On the contrary: Facebook would see those paying users as extra valuable for tracking, keep harassing and confusing them until they click the wrong button once, and then sell that "premium" user data for more.
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  I would actually consider using Facebook if I could pay for it and not be tracked or datamined. There is a let a legit use case for sharing photos, personal stories, and discussing news and information with a curated list of your friends and family.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Sure, but “and not be tracked” is the part @Maarten88 (and I) don’t believe will happen even if you do pay.
  - Sleepytime 5y ago
    I see this often, but the trust problem still exists. There's no universe where I can trust Facebook (or Google or...) To not track me. Others have their own standards, but I don't feel like it's unreasonable to consider them APTs no different than the spyware of old. They have datacenters dedicated to exactly that. How can my data be reliably segregated so that it's not 'accidentally' included later? Even if the data stays all first-party, they make so many copies and it gets put in so many datasets across the world that co-mingling and abuse of it just feels inevitable at that scale.
    - BTCOG 5y ago
      Uploading your daily business, personal photos, and down to what you eat to a profile on someone else's servers was never a good idea from the very start. I find it pretty amusing how it becomes outrage and parroting after the fact that bad news comes out about Facebook. We knew what Facebook was doing in 2008-2012 era as well but nobody parroted these old and tired narratives then.
zibzab 5y ago
I have always wondered how much my browser habits is worth to them and who is paying for such information. Maybe this move can indirectly give us some answers.
- quercusa 5y ago
  That would be very enlightening.
curuinor 5y ago
metafilter and something awful are great communities, in part because they're effectively immune to spam. far, far to the left of the majority of facebook, tho.
annadane 5y ago
Can I just note that it's noteworthy how Zuck has conflicts with everybody? The Winklevii, Systrom and Krieger, Acton and Koum...
yumraj 5y ago
I'm pretty sure that someone deep within Google is running the numbers that if they were to do this on Android what would be the hit to Google and the hit to FB and if it is worth to take that hit if it hurts their competitor, FB, more. I would be very surprised if Google is not looking into to. Google has other avenues to collect data and deep tentacles so the hit to them may not be much, but FB might be hurt more. And, on the flip side, it may also buy Google some privacy goodwill.
oneshoe 5y ago
"You must pay us to put this spyware on your phone so we can sell your data to other companies and use it to influence your purchasing behaviors and who you are friends with." gfys fb
rvz 5y ago
Best original idea from Facebook. Ever.
king_magic 5y ago
I’d happily pay if it meant no more FB/IG ads with no tracking whatsoever.
moskie 5y ago
Not a Facebook user, but I definitely appreciate services providing paid ad-free versions of their services. YouTube premium comes to mind. Sure, Google is still tracking me as best they can, but at least I don't have to deal with the normal ads I'd see otherwise. Would love to have this for other sites, like Twitter. I mean, I'm not _excited_ to pay these companies money, but there is a price I'd pay to not see ads on them.
unixhero 5y ago
Hahahaha the walled garden sucks so hard.
- local_dev 5y ago
  How is this relevant to the tracking popup that shows up when you open a newly installed app? The source of that app isn't relevant here.
MrGando 5y ago
I do use FB on a daily basis, mostly to stay in touch with friends in different countries. I haven't had facebook's app installed in my phone in over 4 years. I only use the website. It's full of dark patterns to make you install the app... but it's functional enough for me.
o_m 5y ago
I might return to Facebook if I can pay for it, and there are no incentive to sell my or my friends data.
malarial 5y ago
Even if FB did do this, people would just see more ads from Apple: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56995192 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56995192. I don't see any company as benevolent or altruistic; it's more like a turf war.
blendergeek 5y ago
This would be a dream come true for Apple. Previously, FB had a way to monetize iOS users without paying Apple. Presumably, FB's new iOS subscription would be through the App Store, and thus Apple would get a 30% cut.
- anders_p 5y ago
  Facebook could just as easily go the Netflix route and keep the subscription payments away from the app.
cblconfederate 5y ago
I don't think they need to do this at all. Their advertisers are locked in - where else are they going to go? It will be hard to prove loss of ROI anyway
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
...I do have to point out, I'm sure Apple would be delighted if Facebook began charging for its service. Apple would get 30%. The tracking prompts are great, but I don't feel great about Apple's motives.
- anders_p 5y ago
  It's in no way given, that Apple would get anything money, from facebook charging for their service. They could easily go the Netflix route and keep the subscription payment off the app. If Netflix can avoid the in-app surcharge, then facebook is surely large enough to do the same.
m1117 5y ago
Great idea, ios users are rich and should give more money to the poor, for the sake of equality.
pmarreck 5y ago
I'll pay if it means that I don't lose random friends and family over stupid political disagreements that were exacerbated by dopamine-stimulating media
ineedasername 5y ago
Yes, by all means start charging, so long as they stop doing the other stuff.
jcfrei 5y ago
Facebook should just pay users who enable / allow all the trackers. Something like a fraction of a cent each day on which it's enabled. Making users pay is certainly not gonna work and because there's no argument to be made why a user should allow tracking this might be the only thing that works.
ed-209 5y ago
desperation is a good look for FB
akomtu 5y ago
It's Facebook who will end up paying to Apple for the privilege to spy on iOS users.
backtoyoujim 5y ago
So facebook is going to keep a file on you. And instead of letting you edit it for free they are going to charge some users a fee to update the file for facebook. All I can think is that J Edgar Hoover must would feel so ripped off right now.
tofuahdude 5y ago
Anyone else off-put by the final comment making a physical dig at Zuck for wearing a lot of sunscreen?
Havoc 5y ago
Now you get to pay to be the product!
knoebber 5y ago
I use safari when I want to check FaceBook on my iPhone. You have to request the desktop version to access messages, but it works well enough. It's much better than trying to using web version of Reddit at least.
yalogin 5y ago
I still don't understand why Zuckerberg is scared like this. Did they do some user studies to gauge the repercussions from this? May be they did and so are scared for a reason. IMO, a vast majority of the users don't care about privacy and that they are tracked. Users wants free much more than privacy. Once they are addicted to FB and Instagram they cannot quit. I am sure there will be an initial lull in activity but am sure it will go back to the regular volume almost immediately.
- eric_h 5y ago
  > a vast majority of the users don't care about privacy and that they are tracked. But a vast majority of those same users are still replying "no" to tracking on the dialog when explicitly asked. [edit: tweaked for clarity]
  - throwaway744678 5y ago
    I am pretty sure most people don't understand the implications of clicking yes or no, but the wording of the popup is scary enough to push the majority towards refusing. EDIT: misread your comment; I actually agree with you that, when asked, most people don't want to be tracked. Even if they don't consider it really harmful to them, it brings them no tangible benefits.
- balozi 5y ago
  I bet iOS users are Facebook's most-prized "asset".
crazygringo 5y ago
I'm curious, does Apple's App Store policy allow apps like Facebook to "unlock" "premium" features if the user enables tracking? I'm assuming/hoping not, or that the app can't even detect it. Because while FB would never charge for the base experience, I could absolutely see them trying to charge in some way, and ultimately that's going to depend on what Apple even allows them to do.
KorematsuFred 5y ago
Facebook surely needs to figure out a way to break the duopoly of application walled gardens otherwise it will remain at the mercy of Google and Apple who are only going to tighten the screws going forward.
croes 5y ago
I doubt that FB will do that. If the users pay, they are customers, a whole new level of problems for FB if they ban paying customers.
tomashubelbauer 5y ago
For a long time, the Facebook home page when signed out said "Free forever". I know that blurb on the home page is not a legal contract, but it would be hilarious if someone sued Facebook over not honoring that if they decided to charge for the service. But I can't see that ever happening.
tippytippytango 5y ago
I’d love that. I’d rather pay for a product than be the product.
- balozi 5y ago
  C'mon, man! With Facebook you will end up both paying for the product AND being the product.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
The only way I use Facebook is via browser, in an isolated container, through a VPN and with zero permissions. If they will ever disable mobile browser version and will push me to use the app... Well, i think I'll stop using Facebook on mobile at all.
- justinzollars 5y ago
  If you are going to go through with all of that, you might as well delete it.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    It's not that bad. I see the feed and can even comment. Mentioning people is a pain, but I can live with that.
- travisporter 5y ago
  My sister does this on ios safari after I convinced her to delete the app but she can't quit it. No VPN tho. does FB still track you with IP?
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    It does and always shows me ads targeted at London inhabitants, even though I'm 5 timezones away from it.
pb77 5y ago
i would be ok if facebook charges and not track, i am sure we might end up in a state where we are paying and getting tracked. It would be like the roomba who said they will sell the floor plans.
permo-w 5y ago
Guess who takes a 30% cut if and when they do start charging?
Serenntop 5y ago
It's so funny to me that they're trying this. I don't know a single person that would pay even a dollar a month to use Facebook. Even those who actually like using it will just move on to different social media if they have to pay. Facebook isn't an essential service and it's not providing unique content, like Netflix or Spotify.
sas41 5y ago
I mean, Apple is still evil to the core, but for once it feels like the user can take advantage of their evil for their own benefit and take control of their privacy to some degree. I feel like Apple's long con is selling iPhone user data themselves instead.
npv789 5y ago
yesh, fcuk zuck

477 points by MontagFTB 5y ago

financialize 5y ago

He doesn't have the guts.

exabrial 5y ago

This is literally a win for all parties.

xzit 5y ago
It's not even figuratively a win for all parties

supernintendo 5y ago

I wish Facebook would just stop existing at this point. It truly is a malignant tumor on the face of the humanity.

katbyte 5y ago
Takes the too spot in most evil tech companies for me by a very wide margin
craftinator 5y ago
We need to coin a new law: "Any sufficiently wealthy and monopolistic organization will tend towards evil at a rate inversely similar to it's MRR."
- idrios 5y ago
  Would Wikipedia be an exception to this? To my understanding Wikipedia is extremely well off financially on just the backs of donations, it's inherently a monopoly, but it is not tending towards evil despite having solid MRR.
  - spencerflem 5y ago
    How is wikipedia monopolistic? All the articles are free and published permissively. They haven't bought out "competitors" or done anything like that. Also, I'm glad they're doing well but they're not making Facebook-levels of money
    - idrios 5y ago
      I'd call it a monopoly by the same standards I'd call Facebook one. It's the only general-purpose encyclopedia on the internet that any person has heard of. It found a need and met it so perfectly that nobody would ever bother try to compete with it, because not only does it do its job near perfectly but it's also free and open source. And they're not making Facebook money but they're making far more than small business money. My point was to be that maybe Wikipedia is a case study in how to make a lot of money without sacrificing your virtues, that maybe there are more specific factors that drive other businesses towards being evil besides just having tons of money.
    - procombo 5y ago
      Over time wikipedia trends towards inequality of participation. This includes access by scholars and researchers. [1] It also shows (seemingly regularly) political and religious bias worldwide. [2] Wikipedia also seems to regularly be a platform of misinformation. Mass purging of sources. And delisting of accurate information. [3] [4] [5] (sources taken at random, too many to list.) Wikipedia will always have problems, IMO. It's in it's nature. When I was a kid I would read encyclopedias like the other kids would read comics. It's clear to me that it's best to use Wikipedia as a conduit to sources, not as direct reference to fact. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26871092/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26871092/ [2] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-culture-war https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-culture-war [3] https://prn.fm/wikipedia-misinformation-prejudice-case-examples-drs-deepak-chopra-gary-null/ https://prn.fm/wikipedia-misinformation-prejudice-case-examp... [4] https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/the_wikipedia_purge.html https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/the_wikiped... [5] https://www.conservapedia.com/Wikipedia_prejudice_and_KAL_007 https://www.conservapedia.com/Wikipedia_prejudice_and_KAL_00...

temporalparts 5y ago

> Help keep instagram free of charge I think calling this a threat is hyperbolic and intended as clickbait (it's working). All this is doing is reminding people that IG/FB is free and that this helps their revenue.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ct0 5y ago
But haven't we already "Paid"?
- temporalparts 5y ago
  As economists say: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as...
  - inetsee 5y ago
    "The phrase and the acronym are central to Robert Heinlein's 1966 science-fiction novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which helped popularize it."

valine 5y ago

Sounds kinda like the Wikipedia donation banner, expect they're asking for permission to track you rather than for donations. How bizarre.

N1H1L 5y ago

It's just bluster. No way Facebook/Instagram is writing off a quarter of the world's smartphone users (who also probably on average have a higher net worth than the remaining 75%).

spamalot159 5y ago
Maybe iOS users are less price sensitive than Android users and therefore this might be the perfect way to test out the business model. It would be hilarious if they actually started making more money because Apple forced their hand.
- benbristow 5y ago
  Since the payments would have to be made through the App Store platform (unless Facebook forced the user to subscribe through a web browser) Apple would most likely be profiting though.
  - N1H1L 5y ago
    30%. Either way Apple wins.
  - wernercd 5y ago
    "would have to be made through the app store platform" not necessarily. Netflix operates through the app store and doesn't sell subscriptions on the App Store as a big FU to the 30% gouge... Could Facebook make it happen and profitable in a way to get around Apples rules? I think so... I think Apple would change the rules shortly after though...
    - benbristow 5y ago
      Yes, that's why I mentioned Facebook forcing users to subscribe through a web browser as that would be out of Apple's control. AFAIK the rule is that users can subscribe to a service/product outside of an app and use their account's status on the app, but if the user wants to subscribe from within the app they need to go through the App Store subscription service.

spamalot159 5y ago

I would love if more companies let me pay them for products instead of having them extract money out of me by using my data. At this point I don't think I'd trust Facebook either way but there are a host of others that I would be happy to pay for service.

conductr 5y ago
This just sounds like you’re creating a second revenue stream for them. I don’t trust a single company to stop collecting and monetizing data that they are used to monetizing.
- creaturemachine 5y ago
  Exactly. Nobody wants to blindly serve their ads to an anonymous "Paying Customer"

gchokov 5y ago

Even so, Apple will still get its 30% cut. Sorry Zuck. I hope you lose this time around.

FridayoLeary 5y ago

>The notice leans on users' vast enthusiasm for more personalized advertising Ha ha. I think a study should be commissioned to see whether FB has overall bettered the lives of its users financially or the opposite. This would be the most effective way to judge how necessary FB really is. (I'm not including the social aspect, because i personally think it hasn't helped anybody socially in the long run (obviously, short term benefits are possible))

bertil 5y ago
A lot of on-line businesses created in the last ten years would not be profitable without the ability to grow their customer base. Anyone selling products specialised enough to only be relevant for 10% of a demographic group or less.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  those businesses could have operated through any other large platform. 'the ability to grow their customer base' is more dependent on their business than on which platform they advertise. Google and apple can target users for you too. Facebook just happens to not do anything but social media and ads.
- kodah 5y ago
  > Anyone selling products specialised enough to only be relevant for 10% of a demographic group or less. The question from here is, without Facebook could that have happened? Does Facebook's ecosystem contribute to this success? Does it also contribute to a lack of competitors in this space?
  - bertil 5y ago
    What space exactly? Individual niches are not as interesting because you might think that the market for your calligraphy kit is a forum for Japanese speakers (10% conversion rate, 10k people largest forum) but Manga-watchers have a much better potential (2%, 5M). It’s easy to assume who your niche is, but almost every campaign is a surprise. This is why Custom Audience powers most ads. Therefore your market is a service that knows about many people’s niche interest, but is itself quite generic: that’s Wordpress·com (freemium, not interested in ads), reddit (not good at monetisation for a long time), twitter (same delay), GMail to some extend and much later Slack, Discord, maybe SnapChat and TikTok. There is a duopoly in ads platforms because there’s a duopoly in effective ideas that scale to any support and any advertiser: keyword (Google) and personalisation. Many platforms have tried to base ads on the content of the page, but it’s hard to find ads that pair well with the war in Darfur. Many YouTube creators get away with promoted content, but it is murky more often than not. The most successful “editorial” attempt is OutBrain and Taboola that are essentially auto-generated articles with super-optimised clic-bait-y garbage. You can imagine hosting that information yourself, edit it, expose it to ad slots in your browser with a protocol. Dave Winner certainly dreams of it. But for me, the proof that this could work was Facebook letting anyone edit their ad preference and information: for years, you could just tell Facebook that you were _not_ into cars, baby clothes or stamp collection. No one used it. It was linked on every ad; you were linked to it if you right-clic to say an ad wasn’t relevant; it was easily findable on the website and the app… No one touched it. So much so that improving it was impossible without traffic. Privacy advocate who claimed this needed to exist ignored my comments when I told them it already did. There was major internal support for it, but even VPs can’t argue against data. You can look at the history: Facebook was created in 2004; they immediately had ads, but they only became a significant player on targeting from 2008 onwards. At that point, ads had been around since 1995 with Viaweb, so more than 15 years; Google had been around for since 1998, so 10 years and the acquisition that created AdWords five years earlier in 2003. If an alternative direction was easy, there was time to build something. I’m not saying another reality isn’t possible — I dream of a protocol emerging from Facebook opening its preference embeddings, after realising that there’s a worthwhile ecosystem of apps to let people optimise it the way they want. But not enough people wanted it, while billions of people seem comfortable with delegating decisions and targeting entirely.

hankchinaski 5y ago

that will not certainly offset lost ad revenue due to less effective advertising. If this happens maybe people will start to realise that you don't really need FB that badly after all. I cancelled all my FB/IG accounts a few years back, only whatsapp is holding me back but if I would be happy to pay for whatsapp to get out of tracking.

jonplackett 5y ago

You know, I’d be happy to fill in a quick survey of what I’m actually interested in hearing about. Less invasive and probably more accurate. So many ‘personalised’ ads I get are for stuff I would never buy.

agilob 5y ago
Naaaah too easy, better to use your microphone to listen to what you're doing at random times, then deduct what you would be interested in.
- jonplackett 5y ago
  You’re right of course. Too easy, better to put a neural implant straight into your brain and watch your nightmares.
  - drawkbox 5y ago
    "Engagement" algorithm is like, "they are very active when nightmares are happening so they must like it". So the algorithm adds in more nightmares, engage.

young_unixer 5y ago

Why does this website ask me to enable DRM?

donkarma 5y ago
Sounds like fingerprinting?
gspr 5y ago
I suspect that it's because they embed some Spotify thing for their shitcast at the bottom of the page (I refuse to let them use the established term for such a DRM-walled ripoff of the real deal). I know for sure that Spotify's regular web interface requires Firefox's DRM plugin, because that's the reason I run it in its own VM.

schemescape 5y ago

I don't think it could achieve critical mass, but if there was some alternate Facebook with just as widespread of use that you had to pay for but it didn't track you or show you creepily personal ads I would strongly consider using it.

lizhang 5y ago

If ads companies like FB, GOOG pull all of their apps from the iOS app store, would customers move to android? Is the vendor lock-in strong enough that people would find iOS alternatives than buy an android phone?

sircastor 5y ago

I mean, sure this sounds great - if Facebook would let us pay for access instead of selling data on us - but I don't see that happening ever. Aside from this being an obvious bluff, I see the best case scenario is that Facebook charges for a premium access, but still tracks you as best it can get away with. If Facebook can figure out how to do it, they'd sell you a service and sell your info to the highest bidder. Also, Facebook doesn't track purely for better ads. That's the benign version. Facebook tracks because it wants to own the aggregate profile of "you" online.

TchoBeer 5y ago
And do what with it?
fossuser 5y ago
Also the users willing to pay are the most valuable to advertise to. I think I also read the per user dollar value of ad revenue was $150/month? Way more than any individual would pay - and losing a subset would reduce this for the others. Also the preference for targeted ads is rationalized nonsense (imo) when the cost is user data: “To test if users truly find 'relevant ads' as value-add: make two products, one with ads and one without and charge for the one with ads - see how many people buy it. Why doesn't Hulu charge more many for their streaming service with ads instead of their service without? The behavior of these companies suggests they know on some level this value-add nonsense is a rationalization. Even if you say it's only value-add when compared to un-targeted ads - let users choose to have un-targeted ads without giving up their data privacy. I'd bet money on what choice they'd make.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27069492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27069492
- anders_p 5y ago
  Your $150/month per user is way too high. According to their valuation it is closer to $50/user per year.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    Ah - thanks, I vaguely recalled $150 but not sure where I read that.

Animats 5y ago

"It's free and always will be" quietly disappeared in August 2019. "The first one is always free"?

DeathRay2K 5y ago

Let's be honest, even if Facebook started charging for access, they wouldn't shut down their other streams of revenue. That ship has sailed, Facebook is not and never can be a company that treats its users like the customers. Facebook users are the resources they exploit for profit, and they've been locked into that business model since inception.

Maarten88 5y ago

> How much more honest a relationship it might be if Facebook charged for its wares. The author seems to think that Facebook would suddenly stop doing all the other things it does to make money, once a user would pay. Of course they would not. On the contrary: Facebook would see those paying users as extra valuable for tracking, keep harassing and confusing them until they click the wrong button once, and then sell that "premium" user data for more.

bonestamp2 5y ago
I would actually consider using Facebook if I could pay for it and not be tracked or datamined. There is a let a legit use case for sharing photos, personal stories, and discussing news and information with a curated list of your friends and family.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Sure, but “and not be tracked” is the part @Maarten88 (and I) don’t believe will happen even if you do pay.
- Sleepytime 5y ago
  I see this often, but the trust problem still exists. There's no universe where I can trust Facebook (or Google or...) To not track me. Others have their own standards, but I don't feel like it's unreasonable to consider them APTs no different than the spyware of old. They have datacenters dedicated to exactly that. How can my data be reliably segregated so that it's not 'accidentally' included later? Even if the data stays all first-party, they make so many copies and it gets put in so many datasets across the world that co-mingling and abuse of it just feels inevitable at that scale.
  - BTCOG 5y ago
    Uploading your daily business, personal photos, and down to what you eat to a profile on someone else's servers was never a good idea from the very start. I find it pretty amusing how it becomes outrage and parroting after the fact that bad news comes out about Facebook. We knew what Facebook was doing in 2008-2012 era as well but nobody parroted these old and tired narratives then.

zibzab 5y ago

I have always wondered how much my browser habits is worth to them and who is paying for such information. Maybe this move can indirectly give us some answers.

quercusa 5y ago
That would be very enlightening.

curuinor 5y ago

metafilter and something awful are great communities, in part because they're effectively immune to spam. far, far to the left of the majority of facebook, tho.

annadane 5y ago

Can I just note that it's noteworthy how Zuck has conflicts with everybody? The Winklevii, Systrom and Krieger, Acton and Koum...

yumraj 5y ago

I'm pretty sure that someone deep within Google is running the numbers that if they were to do this on Android what would be the hit to Google and the hit to FB and if it is worth to take that hit if it hurts their competitor, FB, more. I would be very surprised if Google is not looking into to. Google has other avenues to collect data and deep tentacles so the hit to them may not be much, but FB might be hurt more. And, on the flip side, it may also buy Google some privacy goodwill.

oneshoe 5y ago

"You must pay us to put this spyware on your phone so we can sell your data to other companies and use it to influence your purchasing behaviors and who you are friends with." gfys fb

rvz 5y ago

Best original idea from Facebook. Ever.

king_magic 5y ago

I’d happily pay if it meant no more FB/IG ads with no tracking whatsoever.

moskie 5y ago

Not a Facebook user, but I definitely appreciate services providing paid ad-free versions of their services. YouTube premium comes to mind. Sure, Google is still tracking me as best they can, but at least I don't have to deal with the normal ads I'd see otherwise. Would love to have this for other sites, like Twitter. I mean, I'm not _excited_ to pay these companies money, but there is a price I'd pay to not see ads on them.

unixhero 5y ago

Hahahaha the walled garden sucks so hard.

local_dev 5y ago
How is this relevant to the tracking popup that shows up when you open a newly installed app? The source of that app isn't relevant here.

MrGando 5y ago

I do use FB on a daily basis, mostly to stay in touch with friends in different countries. I haven't had facebook's app installed in my phone in over 4 years. I only use the website. It's full of dark patterns to make you install the app... but it's functional enough for me.

o_m 5y ago

I might return to Facebook if I can pay for it, and there are no incentive to sell my or my friends data.

malarial 5y ago

Even if FB did do this, people would just see more ads from Apple: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56995192 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56995192. I don't see any company as benevolent or altruistic; it's more like a turf war.

blendergeek 5y ago

This would be a dream come true for Apple. Previously, FB had a way to monetize iOS users without paying Apple. Presumably, FB's new iOS subscription would be through the App Store, and thus Apple would get a 30% cut.

anders_p 5y ago
Facebook could just as easily go the Netflix route and keep the subscription payments away from the app.

cblconfederate 5y ago

I don't think they need to do this at all. Their advertisers are locked in - where else are they going to go? It will be hard to prove loss of ROI anyway

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

...I do have to point out, I'm sure Apple would be delighted if Facebook began charging for its service. Apple would get 30%. The tracking prompts are great, but I don't feel great about Apple's motives.

anders_p 5y ago
It's in no way given, that Apple would get anything money, from facebook charging for their service. They could easily go the Netflix route and keep the subscription payment off the app. If Netflix can avoid the in-app surcharge, then facebook is surely large enough to do the same.

m1117 5y ago

Great idea, ios users are rich and should give more money to the poor, for the sake of equality.

pmarreck 5y ago

I'll pay if it means that I don't lose random friends and family over stupid political disagreements that were exacerbated by dopamine-stimulating media

ineedasername 5y ago

Yes, by all means start charging, so long as they stop doing the other stuff.

jcfrei 5y ago

Facebook should just pay users who enable / allow all the trackers. Something like a fraction of a cent each day on which it's enabled. Making users pay is certainly not gonna work and because there's no argument to be made why a user should allow tracking this might be the only thing that works.

ed-209 5y ago

desperation is a good look for FB

akomtu 5y ago

It's Facebook who will end up paying to Apple for the privilege to spy on iOS users.

backtoyoujim 5y ago

So facebook is going to keep a file on you. And instead of letting you edit it for free they are going to charge some users a fee to update the file for facebook. All I can think is that J Edgar Hoover must would feel so ripped off right now.

tofuahdude 5y ago

Anyone else off-put by the final comment making a physical dig at Zuck for wearing a lot of sunscreen?

Havoc 5y ago

Now you get to pay to be the product!

knoebber 5y ago

I use safari when I want to check FaceBook on my iPhone. You have to request the desktop version to access messages, but it works well enough. It's much better than trying to using web version of Reddit at least.

yalogin 5y ago

I still don't understand why Zuckerberg is scared like this. Did they do some user studies to gauge the repercussions from this? May be they did and so are scared for a reason. IMO, a vast majority of the users don't care about privacy and that they are tracked. Users wants free much more than privacy. Once they are addicted to FB and Instagram they cannot quit. I am sure there will be an initial lull in activity but am sure it will go back to the regular volume almost immediately.

eric_h 5y ago
> a vast majority of the users don't care about privacy and that they are tracked. But a vast majority of those same users are still replying "no" to tracking on the dialog when explicitly asked. [edit: tweaked for clarity]
- throwaway744678 5y ago
  I am pretty sure most people don't understand the implications of clicking yes or no, but the wording of the popup is scary enough to push the majority towards refusing. EDIT: misread your comment; I actually agree with you that, when asked, most people don't want to be tracked. Even if they don't consider it really harmful to them, it brings them no tangible benefits.
balozi 5y ago
I bet iOS users are Facebook's most-prized "asset".

crazygringo 5y ago

I'm curious, does Apple's App Store policy allow apps like Facebook to "unlock" "premium" features if the user enables tracking? I'm assuming/hoping not, or that the app can't even detect it. Because while FB would never charge for the base experience, I could absolutely see them trying to charge in some way, and ultimately that's going to depend on what Apple even allows them to do.

KorematsuFred 5y ago

Facebook surely needs to figure out a way to break the duopoly of application walled gardens otherwise it will remain at the mercy of Google and Apple who are only going to tighten the screws going forward.

croes 5y ago

I doubt that FB will do that. If the users pay, they are customers, a whole new level of problems for FB if they ban paying customers.

tomashubelbauer 5y ago

For a long time, the Facebook home page when signed out said "Free forever". I know that blurb on the home page is not a legal contract, but it would be hilarious if someone sued Facebook over not honoring that if they decided to charge for the service. But I can't see that ever happening.

tippytippytango 5y ago

I’d love that. I’d rather pay for a product than be the product.

balozi 5y ago
C'mon, man! With Facebook you will end up both paying for the product AND being the product.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

The only way I use Facebook is via browser, in an isolated container, through a VPN and with zero permissions. If they will ever disable mobile browser version and will push me to use the app... Well, i think I'll stop using Facebook on mobile at all.

justinzollars 5y ago
If you are going to go through with all of that, you might as well delete it.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  It's not that bad. I see the feed and can even comment. Mentioning people is a pain, but I can live with that.
travisporter 5y ago
My sister does this on ios safari after I convinced her to delete the app but she can't quit it. No VPN tho. does FB still track you with IP?
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  It does and always shows me ads targeted at London inhabitants, even though I'm 5 timezones away from it.

pb77 5y ago

i would be ok if facebook charges and not track, i am sure we might end up in a state where we are paying and getting tracked. It would be like the roomba who said they will sell the floor plans.

permo-w 5y ago

Guess who takes a 30% cut if and when they do start charging?

Serenntop 5y ago

It's so funny to me that they're trying this. I don't know a single person that would pay even a dollar a month to use Facebook. Even those who actually like using it will just move on to different social media if they have to pay. Facebook isn't an essential service and it's not providing unique content, like Netflix or Spotify.

sas41 5y ago

I mean, Apple is still evil to the core, but for once it feels like the user can take advantage of their evil for their own benefit and take control of their privacy to some degree. I feel like Apple's long con is selling iPhone user data themselves instead.

npv789 5y ago

yesh, fcuk zuck