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Comment by datpiff | Hacker News Reader

> will cost between 9.99 euros and 12.99 euros per month

This is surprisingly expensive

Facebook's ARPU in Europe over the trailing 12 months was $69.72 or $5.81 per month.

Considering only the most dedicated users are going to pay for this, Meta is most likely losing money with Ad-Free version

Source: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_earnings/2023/q3/p...

Nit: they don't actually lose money by offering a subscription, they just make less money than if they didn't offer one.

Same thing.

It would be same thing if their business was losing money, which it isn’t.

The legal concept of "lost wages" is the money you would have earned if you had not missed work. This is no different. There is an opportunity cost to everything.

“Starting on March 1, 2024, an additional fee of 6 euros a month for the web version and 8 euros a month for mobile access will apply for additional accounts.”

It’s quite clear they want it to be as expensive as possible. But it’s a double edged sword: a point can be argued that this is how much our data is worth to them, which opens them to a whole new kind of issues stemming from rising awareness.

I think the intent is less to have people actually pay for it, and more to use it as justification for their tracking on the users who won't pay for it.

Yet, the GDPR states that private information should only be requested to provide a service that requires it and with “No strings attached”. My understanding (IANAL) was that the GDPR explicitly forbids asking for private information to pay for a service.

Sure, and Facebook's last two attempts were equally not particularly GDPR compliant. It's clear that "Questionably GDPR compliant" is not enough to stop Facebook attempting a scheme.

Not if the intention is to keep as many people as possible on the ad-ridden free side.

It should be literally $1 a month, max $2

Why?

Why would they offer it at a rate that certainly loses money compared to existing ad options?

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