Ask HN: Should Facebook move away from ads and introduce paid accounts? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should Facebook move away from ads and introduce paid accounts?

9 pointscheerioty19 comments

In all seriousness, I'm asking myself this question for a decade or so. I'd happily pay for my account. The same goes for Twitter. How can ads be more profitable than charing people for their accounts?

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The only reason people go to Facebook is that all of their friends are there. Even the slightest barrier to entry has a large negative effect on their bottom line. The value of a social network goes up with the square of the number of users. Any downward trend costs much more than just the people lost because it also makes their friends more likely to leave.

Even worse: if people pay to opt out of the ads, it means that ads will only be shown to people who can't/won't spend money. So you'd have to charge more than the average ad value per user, since it's your most valuable users opting out of ads.

Facebook has a tiger by the tail with its ad-supported service. It needs to commit to that; any change will likely lower profitability.

Facebook already has a subscription system. They sell hundreds of millions of ad slots per day to willing buyers so they can put messages in front of your eyes. Advertisers subscribe to the FB publishing space based on all your data points gathered on FB and nearly every other place on the Internet...data they gather for free. You willingly go on the site with zero impediments; other site owners willingly put the FB pixel on their sites which track your movements there.

It is as if FB owns a large piece of land which stray cattle randomly enter, FB gladly allows them to graze, then slaughters them and sells the meat piecemeal to the highest bidder. Why would FB want to put up a fence to keep out unwilling livestock?

Excuse the dystopian metaphor, but I think it illustrates how FB actually operates. They put an enormous amount of money and manpower into developing the infrastructure that keeps users on its platform and in its web of tracking pixels, but they don't make any money from keeping the experience a high-quality one. Their main interest is gathering an enormous, aggregated dataset they can sell subscription access to.

They would have to charge an exorbitant account subscription fee to surpass the amount they make from selling access to users' data.

Where are you getting these numbers from?

The average return per user per year for FB is easily searchable. Its about $10 a year. Why post this without just quickly checking the real number?

The misinfo on Meta and it's business practices is insane.

For fun, try creating a new Facebook account.

You'd be surprised at how much info it asks for and how hard it tries to get you to give up your government ID -- if it even lets you.

Now think how valuable that info is to their advertisers - the dark web doesn't even have that data.

Facebook is the perfect ad engine - it just so happens your friends use it too.

It's the quickest way to destroy their company so I'm sure that many people here would support it.

FB does not provide enough value to actually pay for it.

> In all seriousness, I'm asking myself this question for a decade or so

Are you in a decision-making position at FB? If not, then in all seriousness it's pointless.

This might partially work in USA maybe, but it won't in other places.

For example India alone has 340 million FB users, which is greater than the population of USA. As an Indian, I bet not a single one of them would be willing to pay. FB probably wouldn't want to risk loosing them.

(I got the numbers from googling).

(I'm not on FB).

WhatsApp might be a good model to compare against. Americans paid for it and it never really took off in the US. Rest of world had it free and it still dominates.

A lot of people want to avoid WhatsApp because you're really just paying with personal information. But until there's a real barrier, it'll be around.

Ads are profitable because there is a large competition for attention. Once you have attention you can sell access to it. That's why influencers exist too. The alternative is selling yourself, but ads and paid promotion let's you garner attention unencumbered and make more.

Social media companies also rely on the network effect heavily, it's an all or nothing proposition for them, if no one you know or care to know is on their service they are useless to you.

Facebook ads have brought some of the most positive products and positive changes to my life. Sometime I literally go on Facebook just for the ads to see what else is out there for me in terms of personal development and life improvement.

I started my current business originally from a program I bought through Facebook ads. I spent a half a year following Tony Robbins around, which had a huge positive impact on my life thanks to a Facebook ad.

I recently got out of a funk due to a Facebook ad for a support group of people going through what I was going through.

I would be really sad to see Facebook ads go and I don’t think there are other places I would have found these services that I did find.

I can honestly say, I don’t know where my life would be if there were not Facebook ads, but I do not think it would be in such a positive place for sure..

I'm quite stunned by your answer. I think this shows how we all (including myself) just live in our own bubble and just assume it's the same for everybody else.

Thanks for sharing!

Yeah no worries. It is the truth.

Yes, this would kill it quicker and more nobly than its current sad decline.

a) As an individual, your data is only worth pennies, but as a billion users, you data is worth much more. That's because you can start inferring a lot about demographics and behavior.

b) Try starting a business and asking customers to pull out their credits cards and you will see how hard it is to make people pay. Just because you find value in paying, doesn't mean many/most people will.

If you mean make a paid account an option to avoid ads, and maybe have more filters, then I could see the benefit.

Wouldn't persuade me to rejoin though!

Facebook as a product is on a slow MySpace style decline. In some quarters it's even being referred to as 'BoomerBook', as that's the perception of who the users are that still use it.

There's a reason why Meta are betting big on the Metaverse, and focusing more on the WhatsApp and Instagram platforms.

Corporations are sociopaths by design. If they can do something to make a profit then they must do that.

Let's be real. Facebook at best is a nice to have for most of us who have nothing else to do at times than sharing pictures and bragging about our kids or vacations. When it started, I was still in college (circa 2004) and it was a cool thing since it was only for our college network (which differentiated it from the other social networks at the time like myspace, hi5, friendster etc). The wall was cool. THen it became a real business and went downhill fast.

Occasionally, I still go on facebook to check on whats happening with family/friends but it feels superficial. Some of my best friends from childhood are all there and all I do is to like a post or 2. No real contact, no real communication. It is pathetic and frankly depressing at times. But this is the world we live in.

Local facebook groups can sometimes be useful but not worth paying for in my opinion.

So no, I personally wouldn't pay for facebook. But hey, I am just one of the billion users they claim to have so who knows.

I'd love to see the engagement metrics over time. How many minutes are people really spending per-session on Facebook now compared to years ago? It has to be trending downward...

Users spend on average 20 hrs/m on FB. Both that and DAU have gone up on average across the past 4 years.

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