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Meta to charge for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram in Europe
- truckerbill 3y agoI'd pay it if they also didn't track my browsing data. Anyone know if that's the case?
- 23B1 3y agoI'd wager that the best fingerprinters/profilers work at Meta and/or the NSA.
- paganel 3y agoI see a company like Palantir also being active in that space. Related to this, I seem to remember that there were talks about some start-ups doing this kind of stuff on millions of people’s profiles, this was before Cambridge Analytica, I wonder what happened to them. A former colleague of mine (very smart guy) ended up working for one those start-ups back in the day (2013-2014), that’s how I first learned about their existence and about their business model.
- 23B1 3y agoMany of them were acquired by larger commercial entities that service the defense/intelligence community. It's also possible to license and process much of this commercial data from brokers.
- nerdponx 3y agoThat's the beauty of it, it actually allows them to double dip. People have started to buy into the "advertising is bad" concept, but without understanding that it's bad because of all the data collection, so they think that if they are paying to stop seeing ads, they're somehow safer. Meanwhile Meta can continue to make money off of their profile and data, and their subscription fee, while also getting access to a valuable feature for targeting. The argument that "if you don't pay for the product, you are the product" does not work in the inverse. If you are paying, you might still be the product. See also: your ISP, Spotify, your bank, etc. It is impossible for the free market to regulate itself with so much money on the table.
- bigyikes 3y agoCan you elaborate on how users are the product for Spotify?
- truckerbill 3y agoThere are a tiny number of major labels that control music rights. Presumably they are interested in listening data. Also Spotify free tier has ads so it's the same as any other social network in terms of fingerprinting.
- SamuelAdams 3y agoMicrosoft Windows has been doing g this for a while. You pay for a license and they also collect telemetry data.
- celestialcheese 3y ago> Meanwhile Meta can continue to make money off of their profile and data, and their subscription fee, while also getting access to a valuable feature for targeting. How would facebook monetize non-ad-enabled customers?
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoA non-ad subscriber won't get shown ads, but that definitely doesn't mean Meta can't profile and collect data to sell to other ad companies so you would still get targeted ads on other websites. They just won't get shown ads on Facebook.
- celestialcheese 3y agoFacebook doesn't sell data. They sell access to data. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but it's important because it's meaningfully different. Facebook doesn't sell data to other ad companies because that'd be giving away the very thing that makes it the most valuable advertising company in the world. Hell, we spend a huge amount on facebook, and it's impossible for us to get reports on basic things like "Spend per placement per hour". The only area that I could see them _maybe_ still monetizing an opt'ed out user is with Meta Audience Network, but I bet they would still opt them out of seeing ads on 3rd party sites that have MAN ads in their stack because that business segment is likely small compared to potential PR and fines in the EU.
- shmapf 3y agohttps://archive.md/ucz0t https://archive.md/ucz0t
- grenoire 3y agoWould it also be possible to get the thirst traps and booty models off my feed too? Just like I get some control over my ad preferences and tags, it'd be very handy to get some feed controls in place.
- dmitrygr 3y agoThat would be $EXTRA. (sorry, EXTRA €)
- ddoolin 3y agoThe algorithm just gives you more of what you asked for. :)
- yakshaving_jgt 3y agoIs this true? I'm under the impression that social media platforms can't tell the difference between looking at some content because you enjoyed it versus looking at some content because you don't like it and you're confused why it's being served to you.
- emgeee 3y agoI imagine after enough times clicking on content out of confusion, preference become clear
- runako 3y agoIt doesn't matter because > The algorithm just gives you more of what you asked for. It doesn't matter whether you asked for more because you hate it or love it. The algorithm prioritizes identifying the content with which you will engage.
- mcpackieh 3y agoNo. "What you asked for" is a bold faced lie. By your account it shows you what you engaged with, even though you literally didn't ask for it. And even "engaged with" is bullshit. What the hell does "engage with" even mean? What you really should be saying is it gives you more of what you pause scrolling on. That is neither asking for something, nor "engaging".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jitl 3y agoHonestly the ads on Instagram are kind of nice. They’re definitely the best ads I see by a wide margin - mostly likely to actually be stuff I’m interested in.
- ddoolin 3y agoI used to agree with this but it seems in the last few years especially that they have increased greatly in number and decreased in quality substantially. Somehow it remains the most relevant regardless, which really says something about most ads on most other platforms.
- dzader 3y ago[dead]
- smallerfish 3y agoThat was the best punch in the face I've had in a long time. Deeply relevant to our conversation, and I kind of deserved it.
- linguae 3y agoI admit too that Facebook's ads are the most relevant and most tasteful from any site I've used. For example, from a Facebook ad I found out about battery-backed generators that are capable of charging an electric vehicle. Facebook's ads, in my opinion, also tend to be non-annoying. I haven't had to deal with video ads, ads that interfere with the user experience, and grotesque ads featuring toenail fungus and creepy-looking images. My complaint with Facebook, though, has more to do with the live feed algorithm recommendations, where I have to sift through memes and other viral posts I'm not interested in as well as viral political posts that often post misinformation. I miss the old days of Facebook where my feed was strictly limited to posts from my friends, plus the occasional ad.
- loeg 3y agoFrom the horse's mouth: https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-... Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38068635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38068635
- paul7986 3y agoI have a few senior citizen friends posting(re-sharing) this untrue rumor for years ..making me roll my eyes each time. I'm sure they'll be happy the misinformation they've spread for years/years is coming true....no longer misinformation.
- buzziebee 3y agoWill liking and sharing their posts mean Facebook have to give us the premium plan for free?
- paul7986 3y agoWill these seniors who for whatever reason when older become more gullible and scared by the fake fear pumping media (don't go to nyc it's unsafe which my parents now think.. uggh) get free access to the no ads Facebook? Also Darn for me There was no eye roll button so I just moved /scrolled along. Personally the ads for me lately have became useful.
- ViewTrick1002 3y agoSeems like a true consent based "Reject all" button is a critical danger to Facebook's business model. Other articles [1] report they are currently in violation of GDPR rights in Europe. > The move follows years of privacy litigation, enforcements and court rulings in the EU — which have culminated in a situation where Meta can no longer claim a contractual right (nor legitimate interest) to track and profile users for ad targeting. (Although, at the time of writing, it is still doing the latter — meaning it is technically operating without a proper legal basis. But this summer Meta announced an intention to switch to consent.) > [...] > As we reported earlier this month, Meta is relying on a line in a ruling handed down by the bloc’s top court, the CJEU, earlier this year — where the judges allowed the possibility — caveated with “if necessary” — of an (another caveat) “appropriate fee” being charged for an equivalent alternative service (i.e. that lacks tracking and profiling). So the legal fight against Meta’s continued tracking and profiling of users will hinge on what’s necessary and appropriate in this context. Typical shady Facebook behavior trying to force everyone to press "Accept all" since otherwise their business model is broken. Hopefully the EU will move quickly to close the legal loophole they are trying to exploit. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/30/meta-ad-free-sub-eu/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/30/meta-ad-free-sub-eu/
- TekMol 3y agoI doubt this is a business decision. Ads on Instagram and FB are not very annoying. Almost nobody will pay to get rid of them. I think it is a way to cope with the GDPR. The GDPR says you can't offer a service in return for user data. Aka it is not allowed to say "You can't use our service unless you let us also store data unrelated to the service about you.". But so far, there seems to be no court decision about the approach Meta is taking here. "You can't use our service unless you let us also store data unrelated to the service about your OR you pay us money".
- Macha 3y agoA lot of media companies have tried the same move in the last year, so it will be interesting to see if Meta adopting it helps or hurts that strategy for them too.
- x0x0 3y agoThere are a handful of court decisions. One in Austria for a newspaper that said accept ads/data collection or buy a subscription which was, at least initially, ruled acceptable per gdpr. And I think there's been some challenges; I haven't paid attention over the last 6 months.
- herbst 3y ago> Ads on Instagram and FB are not very annoying. Almost nobody will pay to get rid of them. I am not sure what people think is annoying but 90% of my Instagram is ads and weird suggestions. There is barely any legitimate use case other than promoting my own bullshit to other bots.
- madars 3y agoI wonder how it works from the business perspective. There is an adverse-selection argument against introducing ad-free versions of an ad-supported service: the people who are most likely to pay for an ad-free experience are also the same people who are most valuable to advertisers. So if that group is gone, the remaining users could either command less ad revenue, or be shown higher CPM ads (e.g. ads for prescription drugs, not available in EU; or ads for adult content, incompatible with a family-friendly platform). How would this work? Or maybe the adverse selection assumption is faulty? Or maybe this choice could help avoid an EU fine of some sort?
- mpsprd 3y agoTo me your selection is reversed. If you hate ads so much you're prepared to pay fb to get rid of it, I don't believe you're one to click on them.
- msoad 3y agomost ads I see on Instagram don't want my clicks. They want me think of a Rolex watch or a new BMW car by injecting themselves between the content
- forgetithump 3y agoI keep a low effort fuzzy mental list of things that advertise themselves in ways I find unpleasant. They are the first thing I think of when I go to buy something, but the last thing I'll ever buy. An example: The North Face edited wikipedia to change the photos of famous hikes/outdoorsy locations with people wearing North Face jackets with the logos visible.
- notyourwork 3y ago> An example: The North Face edited wikipedia to change the photos of famous hikes/outdoorsy locations with people wearing North Face jackets with the logos visible. I hadn't heard of this but it is beyond sleazy in my book. Though, to the company's credit, I cannot fault for the actions of likely one or a small group of marketing people. Though I don't know, maybe, that type of idea had visibility all the way to the top.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- datpiff 3y ago> will cost between 9.99 euros and 12.99 euros per month This is surprisingly expensive
- Macha 3y agoI think the intent is less to have people actually pay for it, and more to use it as justification for their tracking on the users who won't pay for it.
- elondaits 3y agoYet, the GDPR states that private information should only be requested to provide a service that requires it and with “No strings attached”. My understanding (IANAL) was that the GDPR explicitly forbids asking for private information to pay for a service.
- Macha 3y agoSure, and Facebook's last two attempts were equally not particularly GDPR compliant. It's clear that "Questionably GDPR compliant" is not enough to stop Facebook attempting a scheme.
- kiicia 3y agoIt should be literally $1 a month, max $2
- barbazoo 3y agoWhy?
- gopher2000 3y agoWhy would they offer it at a rate that certainly loses money compared to existing ad options?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jedberg 3y agoSo this is basically in response to EU regulations. Will they accept this solution from Meta as being within the sprit of the law? They are basically charging an exorbitant amount to get a legally compatible experience, but now Meta will say "we offer people the chance to use the site untracked, but they've all chosen to let us collect their data to use the site for free". Will be interesting to see how the EU responds to this.
- makomk 3y agoThere are already major EU-based news sites that make people choose between paying a monthly subscription and allowing their data to be used for ad targetting. It's hard to see how the EU could get Meta for this without either hurting those companies or abandoning the pretense that this is actually based on the rule of law and not just arbitrarily punishing non-EU companies.
- smarx007 3y agohttps://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-tech-news-site-heisede-illegal-decides-german-dpa https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-tech-news-site-heisede-illega...
- overstay8930 3y agoHonestly how does the EU expect companies to make money? Are websites supposed to be a charity? I guess it's no surprise they have 0 competitive tech companies if these are the smooth brain laws they have to operate under.
- jampekka 3y agoCompanies can advertise all they want, just not collect personal information without their consent. An over 700 billion dollar company with 30% or so profit margin is about as far from charity you can get.
- 3y ago
- karmasimida 3y agoSo now YouTube/Twitter/Facebook all enters this subscription or ads era. Maybe by raising the entrance fee, could boost the quality.
- hx8 3y agoI don't think that raising the entrance fee will boost quality. I would say, if you find someone that is making content you think is quality find a way to directly support them. A monthly payment goes a long way to supporting a creator. * Having an ads option means being a content producer can be free. There is no minimum fee for posts to act as a basic spam filter. * The economies of who gets paid to generate content is mostly based on who generates the most views. This is only loosely associated with quality. If you look deeply, this is more complicated than what I stated is essentially true. * There is currently enough money being sent to content creators to sustain quality content. I don't see why increasing the money will increase quality, as sufficient funds for quality are already present.
- devsda 3y agoIt is not ads that people are against when it comes to Facebook. The common concerns are about its algorithmic feed, recommendations, research experiments etc that allow subtle manipulation for commercial and political gains. You can still be subjected to the rampant invasion of privacy. If someone is planning on paying to remove ads and avoid all of the above, I'm certain that they will be disappointed.
- crowcroft 3y agoThose two things are incredibly related. The reason algorithmic feeds are they way they are etc. is so that they can optimise ad load and make more money. They want you be sucked into anything they possibly can to get you to scroll more, and see more ads. If they move to a subscription model the incentives change significantly.
- crowcroft 3y agoPivoting to a subscription model is going to be incredibly difficult, but long term is critical if Meta wants to offer a platform that makes massive profit, and doesn't make a bunch kids want to kill themselves etc. The core issues are kind of related. 1. The value of a channel/platform to advertisers has an exponential relationship to that platforms reach. This is why Meta is bathing in money, and Snap struggles to make a dollar. 2. The people advertisers most want to reach (rich people) are the first to pay to remove ads. I suspect Meta will want to focus on getting minors into the subscription platform initially since they low(er) value to advertisers, and highest risk for regulation etc. and then over team letting these young people stick with the sub model as they grow up. By the end of the decade they would more aggressively be able to move away from an ad-supported model then...
- wodenokoto 3y agoAt that price point it is not a serious attempt at gathering subscribers. It’s to show law makers that there is an alternative to ads and probably that “users aren’t interested”.
- crowcroft 3y agoPossibly, but it wouldn't really make sense to offer it at a lower price considering their current monthly ARPU in Europe is ~$6-$7. If they offered a lower price subscription and a lot of people jumped onto it it would be disastrous for the business.
- entropyneur 3y agoI don't care about the ads. I'd maybe consider paying for a Facebook without "suggested for you".
- aaronrobinson 3y agoDo people still use Facebook?
- TrackerFF 3y agoCan't speak for many other countries, but here in Norway FB still reigns supreme as far as one-stop-shop social media platforms go. I think that is due to how many aspects of society here completely ditched their own channels some 10-12 years ago, and started using FB for everything. I mainly use FB for the following: - Hobby groups and pages. These have pretty much replaced the traditional forums. - Practical info and stuff related to where I live: Buy/sell groups, apartment and housing groups, news and updates, cultural events, and what have you. - Historical groups, and similar niche stuff A ton of practical stuff is just too ingrained into the FB platform. Not to mention messenger. I know lots of people that are never active on FB, and only use it for messenger - simply because WhatsApp, Signal, etc. never got the same hold here.
- overstay8930 3y agoIf you have a family that talks to you it's the defacto website to share photos and plan gatherings.
- MikusR 3y agoDo people still use Apple products?
- s3p 3y agoWhy the $9.99 start price? To me the value of a Meta service would be $4/month max. That's just me though.
- HappyDaoDude 3y agoThe most surprising thing, to me, was for once I got the timing spot on! Usually when I predict things like this I am way off on the timing but this is right on pace. In that sense it is like an economist predicting a crash, one of the twenty will be right. The question is now, how many years until they start moving features behind the paywall like limits on how many people in a message chat? Or view limits (aka twitter/x) I suspect 3-5 years.
- fluxem 3y agoPeople here moaned that they despise ads and gladly will pay not to see them. Well, this is the opportunity to do so
- asynchronous 3y agoIt is annoying that they will still collect and sell all your advertising data.
- polygamous_bat 3y agoAlong with the fact that you have at least €X in disposable income every month.
- smarkov 3y agoI'd gladly pay not to see ads on a site that has content worth seeing. Facebook and Instagram are not one of those.
- Teever 3y agoCan I pay to opt out of their internet (real world?) wide tracking too? Or better, can I just not pay for that and have them not do that?
- grishka 3y agoYou can disable third-party cookies and install a good ad blocker in your browsers to make tracking not 100% impossible, but much harder.
- motoxpro 3y agoInteresting seeing so many people here not seeming to understand this was a response to EU regulation rather than a "good business move" by Meta. i.e. EU making it harder and harder to show ads, not being able to personalize, etc.
- mananaysiempre 3y agoThis makes it all the more interesting whether the “submit or pay” model of GDPR compliance (already used by Le Monde, etc.) is accepted as “freely given consent” by the courts—there’s been some hubbub about that IIRC, but no definitive opinions. It doesn’t seem to have been the intent of the text as I read it, but we’ll see how it plays out. (E.g. a theorerical “submit or €1K” model probably shouldn’t pass on proportionality grounds, but then €10/mo is, I expect, already orders of magnitude more than Le Monde or even Facebook is getting from ads per visitor, so one could argue it’s also disproportionate.)
- conradfr 3y agoAs a comparison Webedia low quality websites ask for 2€.
- bertil 3y agoI do think that’s a regulatory play, but as you say — expecting few people will take it, but giving the option will shut down criticism. Some here are worried that their data will still be used to train (ads) models: you can easily remove a large sample from your training set and still have a great predictive model. This would most likely not be hard to implement (modulo edge cases like whether you keep parameters trained on someone who has since decided to enroll in the training program). > orders of magnitude more than Le Monde or even Facebook is getting from ads per visitor No, Ads per visitor were roughly $18/m/u lately (quoting an anon on Twitter: check the financial reports), so modulo FX, €10 would be about 50% less. It would be a mistake to make it prohibitive. There’s a big debate on whether people picking the option would be valuable users or not. I suspect not (for reasons that rely on my experience working on the platform, so I won’t go into too much detail: explore the Ad tools to get what I mean).
- nikivi 3y agoWould love to pay for no ads on IG, the amount of ads there is insane, only reason I don't use it as much.
- michaelteter 3y agoThis should go over like a lead balloon. Removing ads isn't going to also magically spawn content worth consuming. Optimize the user experience enough, and the user will finally realize they are looking at nothing.
- scotty79 3y agoDoes this affect the messenger? For me it's the only non-zero worth thing out of whole facebook portfolio.
- jacooper 3y agoWill it completely stop tracking (really stalking) me if I pay? Or is it a joke like YouTube premium, no ads but with all the tracking still on?
- xigoi 3y agoIt's Facebook. What do you expect?
- ddmma 3y agoYou get and feed on my data and then you ask to pay for it. Good luck on my aunt paying for this service that she don’t understand and use it as memory lane
- andrethegiant 3y agoIf you tap the Instagram logo in the top left and select Following, your feed won't have any ads.
- wrboyce 3y agoIt’s like old school instagram! No ads, no suggested crap, no stories… thank you for mentioning this, I had no idea it was there.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Shorn 3y agoI choose to imagine a world where this leads to a revitalisation of the internet where “free” services are de-normalised and people start to favour paid services (preferably usage-based rather than subscription-based). Fuck you - I’ll dream whatever I want to.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoI dream of a world where our download and upload bandwidth are the same. Problem solved.
- mym1990 3y agoAdvertising has eaten the world, spit out a nearly incomprehensible version of it, and now those same companies want to charge for the left overs. Nothx.