Meta pitches EU to charge a $10 subscription for ad-free Facebook and Instagram
wsj.com
wsj.com
However there are 2 big issues with this.
I doubt that Facebook will stop mining us for data and continuing to view us as a product, just now with an additional revenue. For me that was always the bigger of the 2 issues, showing me ads was just the symptom.
The second is how else to they incentivize people to subscribe. Is enough ads enough? Probably not and that is the issue we are seeing with Twitter. Adding in extra features to incentivize subscribing that likely shouldn't be there.
Unhook [1] lets you hide the shorts tab from the sidebar, but unfortunately doesn't (yet) filter shorts.
They will not, and the implied quid-pro-quo of "extreme ongoing privacy violation is what we get for not charging people" will make them more angry, not less, and is an _extremely_ dumb idea for them to be pushing in this context because it actually cements regulators' belief that Meta has no interest whatsoever in behaving itself.
The EU is not empowered to let Meta break the law. This is NOT a thing.
For some inexplicable reason, talking to me via WhatsApp just seems to be too much effort (and _that_'s still a Meta platform).
"Selling" user data isn't legal without a basis under GDPR and they don't have it. Also, Meta aren't stupid to give away their asset to others. Like Google, they don't actually sell user data, rather they provide an ads platform on which people can place bids. Which under GDPR is also unlawful, and Meta just found out about it.
Granted, you may believe that they'll engage in unlawful behavior anyway, but I'd say that they are a huge target, breaking records in fines which are only growing.
Well, they didn't just find about it, they knew about it from the very beginning and employed every trick in the book to weasel out of it.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/02/meta_eu_gdpr_advertis...
It is only after they got slapped with multiple costly fines this year that they now pretend to change their tune.
FB advertising is a walled garden and they want advertisers to come to FB to buy ad space. They would never simply sell that data back out in to the broader ecosystem. It's not about charity, it's about control.
Also, the business model allows Facebook and Google to talk about protecting your data... while also reaping the advantage of retaining sole access to that data.
By selling targeting only, advertisers are forced to buy again and again.
If they sold the underlying data, they'd be cheapening their own treasure.
Like cable TV, streaming services, and various other outlets this will be a "premium service" until they reintroduce ads for that premium tier.
Aka 'Meta decides to charge a $199/month fee for ad-free Facebook and Instagram' (or free with ads)
I wonder how much of Meta's problems would go away if they just became an official Bureau since it gets exclusions from Data Broker, etc. use cases.
Some businesses (spotify, pandora) would kill to have the success with ads that meta/facebook has had.... and I'm sure during the downturn at the beginning of the year metabook would've killed for the consistent subscription revenue... so really interesting to see where this goes.
They may be trying such deals because they just found out that behavioral advertising is ilegal under GDPR without consent. And also, under GDPR, people should be able to decline without a degraded service. They first tried to place consent in the ToS, and failing that they tried declaring it a "legitimate interest". Except it isn't and a DPA ruled as such. "The cost of doing business" may become significant.
So they may be trying this deal because they are screwed in the EU, offering a subscription as an alternative. Except that this too will be deemed ilegal.
People saying that they'll sell that data anyway are missing the point: (1) they are not selling data because they aren't stupid, and (2) the EU is making their business model ilegal within the EU.
If the business model is built on and is unsustainable without pervasive and invasive tracking of people, no one should lose their sleep over it being illegal.
If you look at even very cheap providers like fastmail or protonmail, who provide a decent subset of office products online for a subscription fee ... they're <100 people companies, and not for lack of trying to grow.
"They are all the same" is not a logical pov when you compare a monstrosity like securus with a behemoth like meta.
Securus sells your data. Meta sells access to your eyeballs.
Edit: I don't like defending advertisings behemoths; Securus and their ilk don't deserve to have a patsy however.
Do you?
(And if you don't, I bet many who claim as you have, do)
[1] https://support.1blocker.com/en/articles/6436221-firewall-in...
But as a test, try blocking ads in any social app, like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, see how well it works.
I predict, however, that Google won't allow this for long, because there were already signs that they are deploying anti-ad-blocking detection.
People don't realize, but the detection of ad-blockers is possible and hard to prevent. Even uBlock Origin, although granted, it's still the most difficult to beat. That companies abstained from doing it, that's only because ad-blocking eyeballs are still good for business, but given that the market share of ad-blockers has grown tremendously, that will change.
Viewing ads is atrocious mental hygiene, in the same way that eating a meal after dipping your hands in feces is poor physical hygiene.
In most “socialist” countries, ads did not intrude in your life.
But actually, it is worse than just ads. Capitalism can harm freedom of speech, and for-profit online platforms shape it in such a way that society gets more and more polarized and depressed.
Record levels of depression and sadness in teenage girls
One fifth of middle aged women on antidepressants
There are solutions, but they involve different economics:
If anyone wants to get involved — feel free to email me.
I did a couple interviews with Noam Chomsky on this subject:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPZ8rSESZo
https://community.qbix.com/t/freedom-of-speech-and-capitalis...
And also David Harvey and Thomas Greco:
Insta still has a bit more life in it.
Going from the title: How took it Meta this long to invent a reasonable offering for their EU market?
I'm not a Meta user, but I'd gladly pay a subscription for whatever online service offers me most.
Would you have read the article if it was free with ads and trackers? There's your answer. Few people will pay for this.
Actually actually: I'd be happy to pay for a subscription service to news in the same fashion I pay for Spotify. The only reason I don't go the extra mile to subscribe to their paid offerings is because every major news outlet is trying to get me to subscribe individually. Which means I need to track subscriptions individually.
I could manage subscriptions through Apple News, but I get a reduced offering when going through Apple.
Seriously, someone just invent Netflix for news subscriptions already.
Like no. Someone invent Spotify or Netflix for news/print already ffs.
If it means that platforms like Facebook start thinking about not losing paying users—as opposed to their current users, advertisers—then they just might start implementing features users want (like proper API or custom third-party clients that interoperate with other platforms—which would become completely fine once ads are off the table).
It’d be a gigantic paradigm shift—suddenly their product is their paying customer!—so it’s understandable that they would rather sit comfortably in the middle of the double-sided platform that demotes users to the role of cattle eyeballs and makes it impossible to leave, because no competitor can compete with a free offer.
However, if they do pull it off well, I have to admit I might actually sort of (never thought I’d write anything like that) applaud Facebook. I would also applaud EU for steering FB into that model—they could do much worse (such as require FB to stay free but regulate it to the T, like a cushy state-adjacent monopoly).
Sure, some people will not be willing to shell out 10 EUR monthly and leave—which is utterly fine because this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get healthy market with finally some competition.
Do you see being able to afford a different mobile/Internet plan or own a different car as unnecessarily stratifying society? Would you rather everyone had the same government-mandated thing?
It doesn’t mean everyone will choose something for their income bracket, either. Maybe you can afford Meta’s $10/mo, but still go for the $1 sub because you don’t think the extra fluff is worth $9.
> I don't have a lot of faith in interopability mixing well with profit incentives
Network effects only work when you have a free product, and free product means being sponsored by another side of the double-sided market (e.g., advertisers) or by the government. When you don’t have a free product, network effects are out of the equation and there’s no “all my friends are there so I will be too”. You have services competing for users. To retain users, you would have to implement features they want. Users will obviously demand interoperability, on their terms, or leave to the next competitor who will offer it.
> A lot of socializing has moved to giant private group chats, I don't particularly want to segregate by income more.
Exactly. Facebook, Discord group chats. Now if we follow the money, they have an incentive to lock users & data in precisely because of the above. Free products, sponsored by something external (advertisers, investor money), that created a habit and entitlement in people that they don’t need to pay for a service. Someone always pays, and if it’s not you then you should probably be concerned who pays for you and why.
(There is a separate problem, in that interesting conversations might happen in more exclusive groups due to commercial LLMs crawling the web and ignoring copyright robbing people of the usual incentives for open information exchange—street cred, fame—but that’s a different conversation.)
> Vc funding eating the entire market before being left to wonder how to sustain itself is a seperate problem from the ad-driven model itself imo.
It’s an adjacent problem. The reason free products were possible in the first place is investors letting them burn money to attract users with a free offer, and then bait-and-switch them into becoming a product. This is subverting how the market is supposed to work. A paid service is, ideally, the opposite of that.