5 or 6 years ago when I was much more heavily using Facebook I would have loved for this to be a thing. I think it would have been a great addition and is something that should be encouraged. Hopefully transitioning more and more away from us being the product and what we are actually using being the product.
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.
The worries of the worried people (a minority) are not even about ads that much, but rather about the privacy violations - which are not even touched by this proposal.
I'm paying for Youtube Premium and still feel like being the product: I can't turn off youtube shorts, and I can't see downvotes (both product decisions making sense for ad-based model).
Lots of people here simply thinking it's a question of whether this is something you'd buy, as if the EU regulators are going to countenance this for so much as a femtosecond.
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.
I'll be honest. If Meta decides to start charging subscription for any type of ad-free experience, I'm simply not going to use it. Because they're still going to be mining my data. And doing all kinds of shit with it. I only consent because I need to interact with certain people (read: family members) and not really because I want to be on that platform at all.
For some inexplicable reason, talking to me via WhatsApp just seems to be too much effort (and _that_'s still a Meta platform).
Ok but if you pay for the subscription fee does that mean they can't sell your data to other brokers or anyone else or does it simply stop ads from being served to you?
Facebook doesn't sell your data to brokers. In the US or EU.
That's bottomfeeder crap.
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.
Meta doesn't sell your data to brokers. They sell access to your attention using ad slots. Advertisers upload their creatives to Meta and specify who they want to target.
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.
Meta is only offering this because the EU is forcing their hands to ask for consent without degrading service for those that refuse.
"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.
Exactly. They probably see their ads revenue is getting saturated by now, so a subscription model is a way to keep the revenue as the same level or higher.
The problem of serving ads that I block anyway isn't what bothers me the most when I use facebook (i.e. when I have to). The main problem is that meta tracks everything they can about me and keep it forever. And I can never trust that they won't do it, no matter the legislation.
Not 100 percent a no brainer. Paying customers are the customers that advertisers would like to address, and having pay and free where most people have a free account can easily gain an unfair pay to win feeling.
I also used to think this, but YouTube premium seems to satisfy Alphabet's accounting teams and shareholders despite having the same adverse selection problem.
I think the alternative is that creators/influencers do even more ad-content on their accounts... which ends up with non-paying users getting inundated with ads + ads baked into content. Only an issue if the subscription model gains traction I suppose.
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.
A lot of the comments here are missing the picture...
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.
> 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.
I actually don't have problems with ads. Never did. I think the ad-driven business model was better for the internet since most services/information sites were free. Now most things are locked behind paywalls.
I also don't have a problem with ads. I have a problem with big businesses tracking every piece of data they can about every individual, selling that data to anyone who asks, and manipulating what they show to their users to achieve the highest ad impressions.
Cambridge analytica involved actually bribery and apis that are now locked... can you buy realtime location data, or anything about me? How easily can you infer things about me via their platform since they locked down their APIs a decade ago almost?
"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.
Mine is a love hate relationship. Social media is not worth the value to pay for it, and I use every means necessary to block and ignore ads. However, even if I pay to stop the ads the website will still collect and sell my personal data. Further, it has been demonstrated by Prime, Hulu, and others, that even if you pay that still does not stop them from inserting advertisements in the future.
THIS is the problem. Software, from games to business applications has the general problem that people don't consider it worth what it costs to produce. Most "tech" companies can't exist, and certainly cannot be the size they are, based on paying customers.
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.
I have a problem with ads. They are a race to the bottom of psychological manipulation where the ultimate goal is to manufacture discontent in the general populace, thereby inducing artificial demand to drive consumption. In other words, invent a product that solves a problem that does not exist, then fool people into thinking they have that problem, then sell them the solution to their fake problem, thereby making them poorer for no actual benefit.
Viewing ads is atrocious mental hygiene, in the same way that eating a meal after dipping your hands in feces is poor physical hygiene.
Yep that’s right. I’ve been saying that for years. Ads are in a race to the bottom, it is a tragedy of the unmanaged commons and the commons is human attention.
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:
"Do you have adblock set up to filter ads only, or do you have it set to also filter all kinds of other trackers?" would be the more accurate question.
Facebook is also deploying anti-adblock tech, so even on the desktop, even when ad-blocking seems to work, it's only temporary. uBlock Origin or Brave, doesn't matter, Facebook beats all ad-blockers.
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.
That's DNS-level blocking and it won't work for long, being the kind of ad-blocking that's the easiest to circumvent. Companies simply didn't bother to do it.
But as a test, try blocking ads in any social app, like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, see how well it works.
The good thing about subscription fees is that you can choose and vote with your wallet.
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.
If someone can’t afford $10/mo, they will sub to the competitor for $1. Just like you won’t be able to afford the $100/mo sub that your rich neighbours would go for. Believe it or not, it’s not a tragedy. The important thing it that the market works—it’s only when there is a VC-funded double-sided market subversion that offers service completely for free that it stops, as no one can seriously compete with free. Once the market works, everything follows. If you don’t like the market and prefer government monopoly, sorry I cannot help you.
Doesn't that sound like stratifying society a bit? I don't have a lot of faith in interopability mixing well with profit incentives. I'll hear rumor about what the other social classes say, in that scenario. A lot of socializing has moved to giant private group chats, I don't particularly want to segregate by income more. 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.
> Doesn't that sound like stratifying society a bit
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.
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.
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.