Watch all the people who have been clamoring for a paid ad-free version of their favorite services turn around and... not pay for this.
The problem I have is trust. Ads or nit, I no longer trust Facebook to not continue violating my privacy WHILE I'm a paying customer.
The trust has been broken and without data transparency and regulations with teeth, I simply won't give them another chance.
You're right to be skeptical of companies that "believe in an ad supported Internet".
Not so long ago we learned Google's toggle to turn off your web activity history turned off your ability to see your history, not Google's collection of it:
That document goes on to state: "Contrary to Mr Pichai's Congressional testimony, the founder of Google's Privacy and Data Protection Office testified in this case that he is 'not aware of any setting' that users can employ to prevent Google from collecting data related to their app activity."
Much of the issue, allegedly, is that WAA, rather than saving data when on and not saving it when off, simply saves data in a different place – not in the Google Account data set. Addressing the confusion about the bounds of Google Accounts, Hochman said, "So I'm aware that Google may save data in different locations, depending on where that WAA/sWAA switch is set. It is still collecting the same data and still saving it, but it may save it in different places."
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/24/google_privacy_button...
It seems designed to be priced as high as possible, so that users don't choose it and they can claim no one wants it, and that they have consent.
If it was €2.99/mo, which seems much more reasonable, how many people would choose it?
yes
then they'll go back to the regulator and say "we tried, no-one was interested"
There are two values here: what percentage of people opt for the “ad-free” experience and how much FB makes per user. In fact, as long as their ad revenue per user is LESS than 12.99, this will work out net positive for them.
The only way it would be less is if the alternative is “not having Facebook”, rather than “Facebook with ads”.
The economics are even worse in US/Canada, where an MAU is worth $56.11 per quarter, or $18.70 per month.
(EURUSD is 1.06, near parity.)
They don't need to collect VAT on the revenue from the vast majority of ads (basically only ads bought by individuals, which can't be common). They would need to do it for the subscriptions, and the end-user pricing is with VAT included. That's going to be another 20-25% off.
It seems very plausible that they are making less profit from the subscribers than from the non-subscribers at these prices. The pricing might still be more than people are willing to pay, but it's not any kind of scam.
It's true that a lot of people essentially never click the ads, but it's also true that seemingly smart and educated people can be extremely dumb about these things.
https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_earnings/2023/q3/p...
And no, Facebook is not lying about those numbers.
I wouldn't expect them to be lying but there to be some data hiding in the "average" part of the ARPU. We often want the median or some other percentile, not the mean.
"We define ARPU as our total revenue in a given geography during a given quarter, divided by the average of the number of MAUs in the geography at the beginning and end of the quarter."
So that is about what I expected. I'm not going to dig into this but it could be very meaningful or extremely misleading. Interesting though.
I won't pay for this, as I use Facebook approximately once a year. I wonder what that will do to Facebook's user numbers if they choose to get rid of users like me though. I suspect the actively active userbase to be much smaller than their usual billion+ user count.
(Pre-Musk even) Twitter gave me an ultimatum about consenting to tracking across the internet or deleting my account. This is why I no longer have a twitter account.
Meaning there is incentive to show even more ads to the ones who pay.
Elon is genuising twitter very hard :D
AFAIK there is no verification involved in the blue check purchase. It just indicates that the account holder pays some money every month.
I mean arguably you're not even paying them to not do something, you're paying them to make it easier for you to not do something, and to not complain when you refrain from doing so.
The web is weird when you try to insist on the original meaning of 'user-agent'.
There's no universe where I trust Zucc and Meta. They're just gonna take my money, still collect every molecule of information they can about me and anyone even slightly related to me (while building shadow profiles of the ones without an account), and probably STILL show ads, just more cleverly hidden. (not that I use FB mind you, just in a theoretical world where I did and indeed got offered to pay for FB with no ads)
Plus now they get some good PR in Europe, and potentially more users that buy into this marketing tactic. Absolutely evil company.
Do you have a source for this claim? It's possibly true, but I suspect in reality it's actually the opposite.
A couple lines of thinking lead me to believe this:
- Why would they collect data from people who are not their users, i.e. shadow profiles? Is it really so that when people sign-up they have a better UX, or is it so they can still sell this lower quality data to whoever might find it useful?
- Showing ads to users is only profitable if the user is part of an ad campaign. Meanwhile, user data can be sold perpetually many times, even if they're not directly advertised to on FB. Why _wouldn't_ FB want to be part of this highly unregulated and lucrative market?
Believing anything these companies say publicly is too naive, given their track record of deception. So I don't mind all this being dismissed as FUD. :)
This is the easiest thing in the world to check: their quarterly earnings are public. If you don’t believe those earnings, I would suggest filing a complaint with the SEC because you would have uncovered one of the larger securities fraud cases of all time.
If I could pay for it to be sane, to actually show what my friends were up to in chronological order, to show what is around me of interest etc we might be talking.