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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

> "Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates," he added.

Another tool in the arsenal of the rich and powerful to give them more of a voice than the average person, is another way to look at it.

Facebook are profiting from both sides. They’re a news site that’s simultaneously FOX News and MSNBC all at once. But I still have to agree with Zuckerberg on this: enforcing misinformation shouldn’t be left to a private company.

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But a private company should enforce all the other things that Facebook has no problem moderating?

Facebook has already said they have no problem enforcing this for non-politicians, after all.

They shouldn’t be enforcing most other content either, including nipples. Nipples are like Muslim face veils of the Western world.

Not all of the western world; IME the USA is much more prudish about nudity than Europe, for example.

Wouldn't all of this FB BS be solved if he just asks users to pay $3 a year (or .50 for developing nations), and then removing ads/sponsorship entirely? That'd be billions per year and they'd not face all these charges of political shenanigans, poisoning the democracy, etc.

I doubt few of the FB users I know wouldn't part with $3 in exchange for their network/contacts that FB provides.

That is against the business model of building a ubiquitous profile on every one and selling that for ad targeting. This way he can sell each person over and over instead of making a measly $3.

Yeah but there's still a point to be made here. Maybe the amount is closer to $10/month instead of $3/year, which is still pretty cheap considering the social utility and "entertainment" hours people are getting out of the service.

Also, maybe the costs of running facebook's infrastructure and code drop (and employee headcount, etc) off dramatically if they take an axe to all the parts of it that are devoted to advertising and user data tracking/sales and just focus on the useful core tech bits, which also helps increase the profit margin on the new income model. It's possible there's a rational price that the masses would pay that would still turn them a profit under this kind of setup.

How many people would be willing to pay $10/month for something that they currently get for free?

$3 isn't enough. It would need to be well above $30/yr.

Average revenue per user in the US/Canada is $26.76 [0] per user per year. Globally, the average is over $6.

I'd wager a bet that the ARPU for users willing to pay $30/yr for no ads is even greater than $27 - likely above $100 - because the only people who would pay extra to remove ads are people with disposable income (which are usually the exact people advertisers want to target when trying to sell stuff).

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-earnings-q4-2017-ar...

A more accurate cost would be around $200/yr for a daily user [1]. US & Canada had 189 million daily users and a quarterly Ad revenue of 8.487 Billion dollars. That is $45 per user per quarter. [1] https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/q3....

Charging upfront and knowing exactly what something will cost you for what you get is Apple’s business model, not Google/Facebook where they wave free things in your face to distract you while the other arm reaches around to your back pocket.

You may balk at Apple’s high prices but at least you’ve chosen not to pay.

You're underestimating Facebook's revenue by an order of magnitude.

If they charged $3 per month they would be making less money than they are now, even if nobody quit because it's no longer free.

They'd just be replaced by another company that offers the same stuff as FB for free.

Network effects are the reason. If they charged for it, a chunk of users will leave, causing network to be less useful for the remaining users who were willing to pay, which then causes more users to leave, etc etc.

> Another tool in the arsenal of the rich and powerful to give them more of a voice than the average person, is another way to look at it.

The rich and powerful already have exponentially more of a voice than the average person -- media corporations are privately owned, after all, and no one is suggesting that we prevent them from making political statements. Banning political advertising is basically saying that people or groups with thousands or millions of dollars to spend shouldn't be able to get their message out -- only billionaires should be able to do that.

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