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> ended up making social media accounts require annual payments So, an end to social media companies that are actively hostile to their users? No more psycholo

> ended up making social media accounts require annual payments So, an end to social media companies that are actively hostile to their users? No more psychologically deceptive tactics to force engagement at any cost? No more ad tracking? An end to foreign spam accounts? Looks like quarterly ARPU is about $12 per US user per month. So a $5 a month subscription would destroy their business model. However go back 6 years and $5 a month was what they were bringing in from ads, and Facebook wasn't exactly suffering as a business 6 years ago. In Europe, ARPU is just $6 per month right now, though I'd presume UK is higher, since EU is very diverse in terms of country economies. Of course most people would leave Facebook if it was $5 a month.

LatteLazy 4y ago
Those things won't change, the charge will just be on top. And if they judge you broke a rule that will be an extra $50. But you can appeal for $200?
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > And if they judge you broke a rule that will be an extra $50. But you can appeal for $200? The fact that money is involved would put them under legal scrutiny. It may not actually be a bad deal - the fee can be refunded if the appeal is legitimate (the fee is just to deter spammers) and if they still act maliciously you can take them to small claims court since there's now a defined monetary loss.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > the charge will just be on top. Disagreed - if ad- and engagement-based social media becomes a regulatory minefield then other monetization models suddenly become attractive. The final price will always only be limited by what the market is actually willing to bear.
  - Clubber 4y ago
    What are the alternatives from a advertiser's perspective though? Put an ad in the paper? TV? Radio? Those just don't have the viewership anymore.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      > Put an ad in the paper? TV? Radio? Those just don't have the viewership anymore. Ultimately people have a specific amount of disposable income regardless of how much advertising you throw at them, so the market will rebalance. There might be less advertising overall, which is a good thing for many reasons but one of them would be that the advertising that remains becomes more effective. The mediums you mention currently don't have the viewership because all attention is consumed by social media - this may very well change. In addition, the issue only applies to the common definition of internet advertising. Advertisers can still produce first-party content just like any other user on the platform and people will like/follow/share it if it's useful or entertaining to them. Product placement will still work, and so on.
kergonath 4y ago
> So, an end to social media companies that are actively hostile to their users? No more psychologically deceptive tactics to force engagement at any cost? No more ad tracking? An end to foreign spam accounts? We pay for TVs (the physical objects), and most of them are still riddled with ads. They will double dip if they can. The reasoning won’t be “if we charge them this much we can drop ads and not lose money”, it will be “if we charge them this much we can have it on top of however much we are doing with ads”.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > They will double dip if they can If they can, yes. But it will now open them to competition. Not to mention, if the law is structured in such a way that advertising-based business models remove their (UK equivalent) of Section 230 while purely fee-based models don't (as you'd assume fee-based models benefit equally from any content, where as ad-based models benefit from certain content more than other) then they can't double-dip since the extra liability will wipe out any advertising profits.
- com2kid 4y ago
  That is because the price of TVs has been dropping while the # of features (and sizes of the TVs) have been increasing. Modern smart TVs are subsidized to heck and back. You can actually get smart TVs w/o lots of ads, Sony's Android TVs give you a slew of opt-out options when you first turn them on. Roku is the worst about this, they show ads to customers and try to collect $ from the streaming platforms.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Those things won't change, the charge will just be on top. And if they judge you broke a rule that will be an extra $50. But you can appeal for $200?

Nextgrid 4y ago
> And if they judge you broke a rule that will be an extra $50. But you can appeal for $200? The fact that money is involved would put them under legal scrutiny. It may not actually be a bad deal - the fee can be refunded if the appeal is legitimate (the fee is just to deter spammers) and if they still act maliciously you can take them to small claims court since there's now a defined monetary loss.
Nextgrid 4y ago
> the charge will just be on top. Disagreed - if ad- and engagement-based social media becomes a regulatory minefield then other monetization models suddenly become attractive. The final price will always only be limited by what the market is actually willing to bear.
- Clubber 4y ago
  What are the alternatives from a advertiser's perspective though? Put an ad in the paper? TV? Radio? Those just don't have the viewership anymore.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    > Put an ad in the paper? TV? Radio? Those just don't have the viewership anymore. Ultimately people have a specific amount of disposable income regardless of how much advertising you throw at them, so the market will rebalance. There might be less advertising overall, which is a good thing for many reasons but one of them would be that the advertising that remains becomes more effective. The mediums you mention currently don't have the viewership because all attention is consumed by social media - this may very well change. In addition, the issue only applies to the common definition of internet advertising. Advertisers can still produce first-party content just like any other user on the platform and people will like/follow/share it if it's useful or entertaining to them. Product placement will still work, and so on.

kergonath 4y ago

> So, an end to social media companies that are actively hostile to their users? No more psychologically deceptive tactics to force engagement at any cost? No more ad tracking? An end to foreign spam accounts? We pay for TVs (the physical objects), and most of them are still riddled with ads. They will double dip if they can. The reasoning won’t be “if we charge them this much we can drop ads and not lose money”, it will be “if we charge them this much we can have it on top of however much we are doing with ads”.

Nextgrid 4y ago
> They will double dip if they can If they can, yes. But it will now open them to competition. Not to mention, if the law is structured in such a way that advertising-based business models remove their (UK equivalent) of Section 230 while purely fee-based models don't (as you'd assume fee-based models benefit equally from any content, where as ad-based models benefit from certain content more than other) then they can't double-dip since the extra liability will wipe out any advertising profits.
com2kid 4y ago
That is because the price of TVs has been dropping while the # of features (and sizes of the TVs) have been increasing. Modern smart TVs are subsidized to heck and back. You can actually get smart TVs w/o lots of ads, Sony's Android TVs give you a slew of opt-out options when you first turn them on. Roku is the worst about this, they show ads to customers and try to collect $ from the streaming platforms.