Meta Wants You to Pay for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp Now | Hacker News Reader

Meta Wants You to Pay for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp Now

macrumors.com

18 pointstosh18 comments

The only way I'd pay for FB or Insta would be if one of the perks was "no ads". If that's not a feature, then it's a non-starter for me. Are there other things that would be "nice to have"? Sure. But I'm not paying for any of them AND still looking at their ads.

I agree with this opinion

No ads, and they need to stop doing the deranged thing they do on Android where clicking a link from their apps will only ever open it in their (presumably) spyware-ridden in-app browser.

I don't use any app I can avoid. Install firefox (or something else) and fake desktop site, plus adblocker. Edit: Firefox and chrome support the fb pwa, too, if you insist.

Original source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48298083

Are there people here who don't use WhatsApp at all? Meta products are really pissing me off, but everyone I know is on WhatsApp.

It's uncommon in the US, iMessage and SMS/MMS/RCS are the primary text chat systems here that everyone uses from their phones.

I meant out the US

TLDR: Yes

Just because everyone you know uses it, doesn't mean they can't use something else with you, maybe even understand for themselves why they shouldn't use Meta.

And it's very easy to do: you make a message for everyone you have as contact and tell them that whoever wants to continue to talk with you can continue doing so on signal, simplex, matrix, or whatever, explaining why you made this decision(meta bad, blah, blah) and tell them that in one month you'll delete your meta account(s).

At the end of that month, you do it. Remove any trace and very important: DON'T GO BACK on your decision(1 week, 1 month, 1 year) after. Whoever wants to talk, will do so wherever you told them to find you. Those that don't, well... they won't. And you'll also find out who actually cares enough to talk with you.

Talking from experience.

I don't use it at all. The only Meta app I do use is Instagram and I'm rarely on there to be honest. Don't use Tik-Tok either, FWIW.

Does nobody have standard text messaging outside the US? Delete the app, and tell your friends to just send and SMS? What's so special about WhatsApp that everybody can't get off of it?

Just send sms? Like video calls, custom emojis, reactions, groups, business accounts with online catalog and checkout process, channels, custom status, etc all that with sms? Come on now, get real.

Maybe telegram or signal if you're going to propose an alternative but sms is ridiculous.

Absolutely. No accounts on Meta properties ever. My primary form of communication is actually the phone, followed by email. Have you tried actually calling people?

I don't use any WhatsApp. I also don't use any Meta products. I don't give a fuck who else is on them.

Businesses or maybe public figures that use these platforms for PR i kind of get it. Everything else they described just seemed depressing to me, taking advantage of the incredibly vain.

Can't you still buy phone verified META accounts from hackers, ready to login ?

If it's ad and tracking free, and they guarantee its a human-only network, sure. No double-dipping if I'm no longer the product.

As I've seen somewhere:

Companies pay Google/Meta to show ads, and users pay them not to see ads.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com