Facebook, Instagram threaten to charge for access unless you give them your data | Hacker News Reader

Facebook, Instagram threaten to charge for access unless you give them your data

imore.com

20 pointsnotRobot19 comments

This is getting close to one of my biggest fears that go along with data collection driven revenue streams: the wealthy being able to pay for privacy and the rest having pay with their data, opening up opportunities for them to be manipulated.

If a rendition of this comes to fruition, I think it’s a very real possibility it could only widen the class gap. I know it’s not a foregone conclusion, but I really think it’s a possibility.

That implies that a company like Facebook would somehow value your privacy when you are some kind of premium user or paying customer.

This is something I really doubt.

If a company is monetizing your data then they aren't stopping with the free users.

Then it will be socially acceptable not to have a "Facebook Pro Deluxe $100/mo + tip" account, or any facebook account. I can only hope popular services go pay-only.

> This is getting close to one of my biggest fears that go along with data collection driven revenue streams: the wealthy being able to pay for privacy and the rest having pay with their data, opening up opportunities for them to be manipulated.

Social media are nowhere near an essential service. We are not talking about power or water. If one finds himself unable to pay a (what I suppose) small fee for a vanity product, it's the case he or she should not use it at all.

If one finds themself unable to pay a fee for heroin, it's the case they should not use it at all. If you can't afford heroin after months or even years of usage, simply stop purchasing it. It's nowhere near an essential service.

It doesn’t need to be essential for people to keep using it. They just have to want it and not realize the true cost of “free”.

Basically Facebook admitting that they don't make money unless they track everything they can about who you are and what you do.

I see nothing wrong with giving people the choice to pay with $$ or data though. It's like Facebook is saying "don't force us to do this" but it's actually a great idea. Pay for it, turn it back into something social instead of news feeds and ads.

I find it hilarious that Apple would take 30% of that fee if they start charging.

This is excellent. This is exactly what I always wanted. It’s unavoidable that this happens, unless Facebook accepts that one group of users subsidizes another. There are real concerns about “privacy as a class issue” but I can’t see how the solution is to ensure lack of privacy for everyone.

Adding a premium tier and blocking access on iOS for the standard tier when tracking is disabled seems like an easy fix.

Obviously, if there is a discrepancy between what people want to pay (say $1/mo in developed countries and a lot less in poorer countries?) vs what FB makes per used from ads, this poses an existential threat to their business. Which is also delicious.

Why doesn't Facebook just introduce a paid subscription? It's not really even a novel concept at this point, we already have YouTube Premium, Reddit Premium, and rumors about a future Twitter Premium.

None of those paid options are more privacy respecting than their free variants. All you pay for is less time-wasting ads.

Uneducated guess; the revenue they get per person from tracking/profiling/ads is way above what people would consider be worth paying for the service (admin cost excluded).

And plenty of consumers would probably demand not to be profiled and have ads removed to even consider paying.

Last quarter, they made $9.27 per user[1, slide 4], however that's not evenly distributed. They made $48 per user in US and Canada. But even that isn't evenly distributed.

The users who are likely to pay for the subscription are also the most valuable to advertiser because they have disposable income. Some Facebook users see ads for luxury cars, real estate, and vacations, while other users see ads for dollar stores and dropshipped junk. FB earns much more in their auction from that first set of users, but those will be the first users willing to pay to opt out of ads.

Dynamic pricing would probably offend both audiences - "what do you mean the algorithm thinks I'm worthless?" "what do you mean that I'm worth thousands of dollars to you?"

[1] https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/FB...

Yes, that's true. But your argument also applies to those other social networks I mentioned which do offer ad-free premium subscriptions, so clearly there must be some reason it's worthwhile for those companies to offer paid plans.

Nowhere in the message is there even a single vague hint that the product will "charge" anything in the future, let alone a "threatening" (with a knife) statement. This interpretation is pure bad-faith speculation if not downright misleading libelous statement from article's author, iMore.com, yet another (paid for?) Apple bitch, desperate to make people look anywhere else than Apple's ongoing litigation for monopoly practices and abuses.

Yeah, also don't say that Apple requires all other Ads business to go through a "scare screen", to "protect users", while sneakily making _their own Ad network_ completely free of such shenanigan. Nothing to see, absolutely not another disgusting monopoly abuse.

https://twitter.com/eric_seufert/status/1387044025442594819 https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/09/french-startup-lobby-targe...

> Nowhere in the message is there even a single vague hint that the product will "charge" anything in the future

“Help keep Facebook free of charge”

Why would you ever agree to be part of a botnet? Apple should just ban fb and Insta altogether. Who even needs that crap...

> Who even needs that crap…

Apparently, about a billion people around the world.

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