[HN Gopher] Meta to charge for ad-free versions of Facebook and ...
___________________________________________________________________
Meta to charge for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram in
Europe
Author : pretext
Score : 147 points
Date : 2023-10-30 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| truckerbill wrote:
| I'd pay it if they also didn't track my browsing data. Anyone
| know if that's the case?
| 23B1 wrote:
| I'd wager that the best fingerprinters/profilers work at Meta
| and/or the NSA.
| paganel wrote:
| I see a company like Palantir also being active in that
| space.
|
| Related to this, I seem to remember that there were talks
| about some start-ups doing this kind of stuff on millions of
| people's profiles, this was before Cambridge Analytica, I
| wonder what happened to them. A former colleague of mine
| (very smart guy) ended up working for one those start-ups
| back in the day (2013-2014), that's how I first learned about
| their existence and about their business model.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Many of them were acquired by larger commercial entities
| that service the defense/intelligence community. It's also
| possible to license and process much of this commercial
| data from brokers.
| nerdponx wrote:
| That's the beauty of it, it actually allows them to double dip.
| People have started to buy into the "advertising is bad"
| concept, but without understanding that it's bad because of all
| the data collection, so they think that if they are paying to
| stop seeing ads, they're somehow safer. Meanwhile Meta can
| continue to make money off of their profile and data, _and_
| their subscription fee, while also getting access to a valuable
| feature for targeting.
|
| The argument that "if you don't pay for the product, you are
| the product" does not work in the inverse. If you are paying,
| you might still be the product. See also: your ISP, Spotify,
| your bank, etc. It is impossible for the free market to
| regulate itself with so much money on the table.
| bigyikes wrote:
| Can you elaborate on how users are the product for Spotify?
| truckerbill wrote:
| There are a tiny number of major labels that control music
| rights. Presumably they are interested in listening data.
| Also Spotify free tier has ads so it's the same as any
| other social network in terms of fingerprinting.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Microsoft Windows has been doing g this for a while. You pay
| for a license and they also collect telemetry data.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| > Meanwhile Meta can continue to make money off of their
| profile and data, and their subscription fee, while also
| getting access to a valuable feature for targeting.
|
| How would facebook monetize non-ad-enabled customers?
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| A non-ad subscriber won't get shown ads, but that
| definitely doesn't mean Meta can't profile and collect data
| to sell to other ad companies so you would still get
| targeted ads on other websites. They just won't get shown
| ads on Facebook.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| "People are buying into" is a mis-statement, IMO.
|
| I _hate_ advertisements. I loathe them with every fibre of my
| being. I 'll do almost anything to get rid of them. Multiple
| browser addons, a pi-hole, using a browser instead of an app,
| modem and router tweaks, whatever it takes.
|
| But the data collection? I don't care at this point. It's
| absolutely everywhere and totally unavoidable, short of
| living off-grid in the middle of nowhere. It's in the
| software, the hardware, the services, the organizations. You
| cannot escape it.
|
| Yes, it sucks. But it's just part of living in a modern
| digital society now. It could be better but you can't avoid
| it.
|
| Hell, I use an app on my phone to track my driving so I get
| an insurance discount. It's one drop in an entire ocean of
| data collection that I can't see or hear or taste, but the
| money saved is very real in my pocket.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Glad I'm not the only one, I dropped Paramount Plus because
| they started showing ads on their ad-free plan. Getting ads
| blasted in your face just ruins the mood for whatever you
| were going to watch, I'll gladly pay more for a better
| experience.
| shmapf wrote:
| https://archive.md/ucz0t
| grenoire wrote:
| Would it also be possible to get the thirst traps and booty
| models off my feed too? Just like I get some control over my ad
| preferences and tags, it'd be very handy to get some feed
| controls in place.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| That would be $EXTRA. (sorry, EXTRA EUR)
| ddoolin wrote:
| The algorithm just gives you more of what you asked for. :)
| ufish235 wrote:
| It's always funny to make a tongue-in-cheek joke about this,
| but asking for fewer thirst traps is still a legitimate
| request from people who click them.
| bonton89 wrote:
| Imagine a gambling addict or an alcoholic asking to see
| fewer casino and booze ads and being told stop complaining
| because "the algorithm just shows you what you want"
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Is this true? I'm under the impression that social media
| platforms can't tell the difference between looking at some
| content because you enjoyed it versus looking at some content
| because you don't like it and you're confused why it's being
| served to you.
| emgeee wrote:
| I imagine after enough times clicking on content out of
| confusion, preference become clear
| runako wrote:
| It doesn't matter because
|
| > The algorithm just gives you more of what you asked for.
|
| It doesn't matter whether you asked for more because you
| hate it or love it. The algorithm prioritizes identifying
| the content with which you will engage.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| No. "What you asked for" is a bold faced lie. By your
| account it shows you what you _engaged with_ , even
| though you literally didn't ask for it.
|
| And even "engaged with" is bullshit. What the hell does
| "engage with" even mean? What you really should be saying
| is it gives you more of what you pause scrolling on. That
| is neither asking for something, nor "engaging".
| matsemann wrote:
| No, it gives you what's trending for the categories you're
| into. I like biking. What kind of biking content does get the
| most likes and is therefore suggested on Instagram? Woman in
| tight clothes with unzipped tops. I'm into skiing, what kind
| of content do I get? Girls skiing in bikinis. I'm following
| some coaches for a sport I participate in, what kind of
| content do I get? Girls in yoga pants doing exercises at the
| gym.
|
| For every category, there will be someone doing a sexualized
| version of it. Those get lots of eyeballs and likes, and
| hence get boosted into suggestions for that category. And
| it's not like I get every post like that. But often enough
| that I no longer scroll in public for fear of what NSFW
| things will show up.
| matsemann wrote:
| But this reminded me of another thing once popping up in my
| feed: my own private pictures.
|
| I first got a bit shocked. Did I accidentally post these to
| Facebook?? But no, it was just a suggestion from Facebook,
| "share these photos". But I was on the bus, I didn't expect
| these photos to suddenly be on my screen for those around
| me to see (pictures of a medical condition). And it creeped
| me out that Facebook was looking through my phone's gallery
| when I'm not explicitly doing it to upload an image.
|
| I ended up blocking file access for Facebook. Which now
| makes it impossible for me to post pictures. Which in turn
| of course means I barely post anymore. Great thinking, PMs.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I find it obnoxious that Facebook doesn't use the default
| system file picker (which doesn't require filesystem
| access permissions to use).
|
| With other apps I can easily select photos even if they
| aren't locally available on my device. With Facebook I
| need to manually download the files from Google Photos,
| paste them into a local device folder, and only _then_
| will they actually show up in Facebook 's weird, poorly-
| designed photo picker UI. Not exactly the best user
| experience.
| matsemann wrote:
| Yeah, the same with Messenger. Want to send someone a
| photo from last year? Good luck scrolling through their
| clunky interface a thousand pictures back, vs just using
| the jump-to-month in my native gallery app.
| pb7 wrote:
| Android problem that doesn't exist on iOS because Apple
| keeps a leash on them. Walled garden is nice like that.
| beezlewax wrote:
| This kind of content used to never show up on my Instagram
| feed but one day I tapped a few too many profiles deep and
| now I have the same issue. Pure trash
| yieldcrv wrote:
| not true, it gives you more of what you engaged with
|
| if you looked for a few seconds longer = engagement
|
| if you read the comments _in disgust_ = engagement
|
| if you commented in disagreement, even to reply to another
| comment = engagement
| cowboy_henk wrote:
| This feels a bit like saying that the opioid epidemic is due
| to drug users buying more. Sure, all of them made a decision
| at some point to start using. But that doesn't remove the
| responsibility of those pushing the product to at least allow
| users to say "please stop" and then actually stop.
| rchaud wrote:
| That's BS. You haven't seen their their algorithm and neither
| have I. Tech companies are far too quick to refer to their
| little opaque boxes as having supernatural powers to "show me
| what I want".
| HyprMusic wrote:
| My Facebook is completely useless due to all the suggested
| posts that appear in my feed. They're all memes that are of no
| interest to me and they cover up any posts from the few friends
| that still use Facebook.
|
| Not being active on social media has meant a lot of old friends
| have drifted out of my life so I'm trying to force myself to be
| more active on it but sadly there are no enjoyable (or usable)
| platforms left.
| mikenew wrote:
| Social media has effectively split in two directions, and the
| ends of the spectrum are Discord and TikTok.
|
| TikTok is almost purely algorithmic, stranger-generated
| content consumption with the novelty factor cranked to 11.
| Discord has no algorithmic curation, voting, etc, and is just
| people talking that you have to curate yourself.
|
| Facebook is trying to pivot in the TikTok direction. Problem
| is there are a lot of people who want to use it to connect
| with actual people (because that's kinda how it worked in the
| past), which is orthogonal to their mission of pumping the
| maximal possible amount of garbage into your brain.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I love discord. It is the only social media I regularly
| use. There seems to be a sentiment that pops up every now
| and again that it's a shame that content in discord
| communities is getting "walled off" and inaccessible by
| google and others from the rest of the internet. That is a
| strange sentiment to me. Discord communities are private by
| design. If the server owners want public discourse, there
| are many options for that. Are these same people upset that
| there aren't microphones at every table in restaurants so
| that those conversations aren't "walled off" from anyone
| not in the restaurant? In fact I think scraping website
| content by third parties for their own indexing should be
| opt-in, not opt-out, it's pretty obnoxious in my opinion
| that you can put up a website intended only for friends and
| family but then large entities all over the world crawl
| your content and broadcast it on their own platforms
| without your consent.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I think most people complaining about that are talking
| about support discords for software projects - where the
| default used to be that you contributions were permanent
| and searchable. Walling it off makes it less useful.
|
| I use discord mostly for keeping up with friends and am
| very glad those chats aren't on the open internet
| jowea wrote:
| > Discord communities are private by design.
|
| Are they? I'm sure there are people who use Discord like
| that, but I am on dozens of servers and all of them are
| public, i.e. anyone can join anytime. That's not private
| that's just hiding from Google.
|
| > If the server owners want public discourse, there are
| many options for that.
|
| Chat/video/audio as good and popular as Discord? Where?
| IRC? Matrix?
|
| > Are these same people upset that there aren't
| microphones at every table in restaurants so that those
| conversations aren't "walled off" from anyone not in the
| restaurant?
|
| Fair enough but nobody is asking direct messages or the
| servers for people who actually know each other and want
| privacy to be on the open web. Just the ones that are
| closer to being public squares for discussing specific
| topics.
|
| > In fact I think scraping website content by third
| parties for their own indexing should be opt-in, not opt-
| out, it's pretty obnoxious in my opinion that you can put
| up a website intended only for friends and family but
| then large entities all over the world crawl your content
| and broadcast it on their own platforms without your
| consent.
|
| Eh, I get what you're saying but don't you think the
| Internet as a whole loses a lot of its value if this
| happens? Wasn't Google and good indexing one of the
| crucial things that led to the Internet revolution?
| jliptzin wrote:
| I'm sure the vast majority of sites would still opt-in to
| the indexing, considering the lengths people go to with
| SEO crap to get to the front page of google.
| strken wrote:
| It's not strange to me at all. People use Discord for
| things that should be publicly searchable, like FAQs or
| issue tracking. This is usually what drives complaints.
|
| If an open source project chose to track issues using a
| series of private conversations in restaurants, most of
| us would recognise how ephemeral and fleeting that is.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| I don't think anyone wants to read you and your buddies'
| discussion of Cities: Skylines II and Super Mario Wonder.
|
| They're irritated by all the open-source projects
| replacing their mailing list, forum, or wiki with "Just
| ask on the Slack or Discord". It's the most god-awful
| mode of community support imaginable.
| asynchronous wrote:
| I don't understand how we got here either. Like who
| pushed for this result? It's objectively worse in every
| way.
| 0xfae wrote:
| Not every way.
|
| I love the old bulletin boards and IRC channels where you
| get to know people, talk about projects, asking for help,
| etc.
|
| Discord fills that role in a much more accessible way
| than posting on a forum or googling a stack overflow
| answer.
|
| Both hae value. Apparently you much prefer a less real-
| time interactive approach to solving those problems.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Discord optimizes for _you_ getting help with _your_
| problem at the expense of you being able to help yourself
| with your problem by searching for other people having
| the same problem.
| Arrath wrote:
| Just look to the Discord channels for popular games or
| 3rd party modpacks to see this constantly in action.
| Lacking a forum with a pinned thread for FAQs or basic
| support, the mods/admins/regulars must rely on chatbot
| auto-answers keyed off of keywords to pull out rote
| responses to common tech support questions.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I don't see how that's discord's fault though, blame the
| project leaders. They must have their reasons. Maybe for
| projects in active development, content from years ago
| just isn't relevant anymore anyway.
| asynchronous wrote:
| Discord sucks because it's taking communities that SHOULD
| be public and walling them off. It has replaced forums
| for several open source communities.
| grishka wrote:
| Discord isn't social media, it's an instant messaging app
| and a terrible one at that. A messaging app can't fully
| replace early-Facebook-like _social network_ , because it
| just works so much differently and is optimized for
| different use cases. There's strangely nothing at all to
| fill this particular niche, although I'm working on one
| fediverse project that tries.
| herbst wrote:
| That's Instagram for me. There is one or two posts of people
| I know. Then the bold and always wrong claim that I now have
| seen all new posts followed by stupid meme & travel content I
| have zero interest or engagement with.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Try https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends
|
| Annoying that that's not the default, sure. But at least it
| exists.
| Sylamore wrote:
| Make that https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr
| and you'll get your friends feed in chronological order
| too.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| You can get to the same thing by choosing "Feeds" in the
| menu and then selecting "Friends". That one works in the
| app as well.
| midasuni wrote:
| Pages I have no idea about with "follow" or "groups you'll
| like" still outnumber friends posts 2:1
| HyprMusic wrote:
| Thank you so much, this is perfect!
| bmm6o wrote:
| Mine was like that too. I started using the "I don't want to
| see this" flag pretty aggressively, and outright blocked a
| lot of accounts I had no interest in. It has worked pretty
| well - aside from some ads, my feed is from people I follow.
| I thought they weren't posting, but it turns out the
| algorithm was prioritizing NBA memes and other crap.
| jltsiren wrote:
| I did that for a year or two, but it didn't work. Facebook
| always found new kinds of garbage to recommend. If
| anything, FB started showing more algorithmic content and
| fewer posts from my friends. I eventually stopped posting
| on Facebook, because it had become a wasteland almost
| devoid of people.
| JLCarveth wrote:
| Then stop engaging with the content, and when it does show up
| use the "Not Interested" feature. You have control over the
| content you're shown.
| ryangs wrote:
| This was effective for me around a decade ago. These days it
| feels like most algorithmic content generation sites don't
| care when you express negative interest in something.
| herbst wrote:
| That's not true. My only Instagram engagement is blocking
| obvious scam content should I accidently open the app and it
| still shoes me nothing else but that.
| lazycouchpotato wrote:
| I'd be surprised if you found anyone agreeing with your
| statement.
|
| You absolutely do not have control over the content you're
| shown. Why would they give you that power?
|
| > YouTube's 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons barely
| work, study finds.
|
| > A Mozilla report found feedback buttons didn't stop the
| majority of similar recommendations
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/20/23356434/youtube-
| dislike-...
| makapuf wrote:
| > YouTube's 'dislike' and 'not interested' buttons barely
| work, study finds.
|
| Well, they work great for skipping ads..
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| I got rate-limited doing this. "Try again later" every time I
| clicked on "Not interested".
|
| Reporting obvious scam ads also ends up not being against
| policy everywhere.
| ryangs wrote:
| Highly recommend the chrome extension Facebook Purity. It
| strips your feed of the nonsense you don't care about in a very
| configurable way.
| divbzero wrote:
| Also recommend not visiting Facebook altogether. It strips
| your life of nonsense you don't care about in a very pleasant
| way. Your true friends will still be there through messaging,
| phone, or in person.
| strken wrote:
| People say this shit all the time without considering that
| others might not use Facebook in the same way they do.
|
| Yeah, I could force my friends to call me every time they
| want to grab dinner, but that would be annoying for
| everyone involved and not respectful of how they want to
| communicate.
| wepple wrote:
| Nobody is forcing them to call you; if it's too much
| effort they don't have to include you.
|
| Sounds like they're "forcing" you on to a platform and
| aren't prepared to be friends with you if you're not on
| it.
| strken wrote:
| That's absolutely not true. There are many inconveniences
| that I don't inflict on the people around me in order to
| make an obscure point which only tech nerds care about.
| That's not being "forced" to use Facebook, it's being
| considerate.
|
| I agree that it would be possible if I cared enough. I
| don't agree that refusing to use a glorified messaging
| app with an integrated calendar, just because it comes
| with a feed that some people get addicted to but none of
| us ever look at, is a good recommendation that will make
| life better for me and the people around me.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> glorified messaging app with an integrated calendar_
|
| The disconnect here is that this is an innacurate
| conception of Facebook, which is a privacy-destroying,
| propaganda-spewing advertising platform with some
| addictive social features to bait the lure.
|
| Think of it this way: I don't like the smell of cigarette
| smoke. No matter how much I like someone, I won't be
| around them if they're smoking. If they insist on smoking
| while I'm around, I'll find somebody else to socialize
| with. And to me, Facebook is just as unpalatable as
| smoking.
| jitl wrote:
| Honestly the ads on Instagram are kind of nice. They're
| definitely the best ads I see by a wide margin - mostly likely to
| actually be stuff I'm interested in.
| ddoolin wrote:
| I used to agree with this but it seems in the last few years
| especially that they have increased greatly in number and
| decreased in quality substantially. Somehow it remains the most
| relevant regardless, which really says something about most ads
| on most other platforms.
| dado3212 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, did you opt out of ad tracking?
| ddoolin wrote:
| Apparently I did; I'd forgotten all about that. That may
| well have had a big hand in it.
| smallerfish wrote:
| That was the best punch in the face I've had in a long time.
| Deeply relevant to our conversation, and I kind of deserved it.
| linguae wrote:
| I admit too that Facebook's ads are the most relevant and most
| tasteful from any site I've used. For example, from a Facebook
| ad I found out about battery-backed generators that are capable
| of charging an electric vehicle. Facebook's ads, in my opinion,
| also tend to be non-annoying. I haven't had to deal with video
| ads, ads that interfere with the user experience, and grotesque
| ads featuring toenail fungus and creepy-looking images.
|
| My complaint with Facebook, though, has more to do with the
| live feed algorithm recommendations, where I have to sift
| through memes and other viral posts I'm not interested in as
| well as viral political posts that often post misinformation. I
| miss the old days of Facebook where my feed was strictly
| limited to posts from my friends, plus the occasional ad.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Really? Facebook, while not the worst or most tasteless ads,
| are overwhelmingly scammy in my feed.*
|
| "Going out of business" sales for fast fashion websites only
| a month old. Crowdfunding projects which obviously are just
| clones other products. Items with a slick video which if you
| buy them from any other place, they cost half to a third the
| price.
|
| *last I used Facebook for any significant amount of time,
| which has been a while.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Do you run a pi-hole or other ad blocking on your network?
| Or do you have personalized ads turned off in your facebook
| settings?
|
| This could be why you see less targeted ads. Scams, high-
| ctr and broad appeal ads thrive in places where targeting
| doesn't exist because their margins can support it. Watch a
| show on cable or broadcast these days for an example of
| this.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Chrome with adblock is all.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| I tried to sign up for Instagram and got banned within minutes
| of signing up and couldn't get signed up. Eventually since I
| came to 'need' it as my social circle have moved on from
| Twitter I bought an account on the grey market. The main ads I
| got were for forged EU identification documents.
|
| It really shows where Meta spend their money. This is probably
| an excellent ad for someone in a position where they want to
| make money by creating and selling Instagram accounts. This is
| also a very easy genre of ad to spot for a company on the
| bleeding edge of NLP. The advertisers don't even use
| euphemisms, their feed is just pictures of dozens of passports
| and visas. It's still up weeks later.
|
| I'm obviously used to online platforms being careless about who
| they run ads for, but official ads brazenly selling identity
| documents was certainly a new one!
| dantyti wrote:
| related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37248748 "Most
| of My Instagram Ads Are for Drugs, Stolen Credit Cards,
| Hacked Accounts, Counterfeit Money, and Weapons"
| loeg wrote:
| From the horse's mouth:
| https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-...
|
| Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38068635
| paul7986 wrote:
| I have a few senior citizen friends posting(re-sharing) this
| untrue rumor for years ..making me roll my eyes each time. I'm
| sure they'll be happy the misinformation they've spread for
| years/years is coming true....no longer misinformation.
| buzziebee wrote:
| Will liking and sharing their posts mean Facebook have to give
| us the premium plan for free?
| paul7986 wrote:
| Will these seniors who for whatever reason when older become
| more gullible and scared by the fake fear pumping media
| (don't go to nyc it's unsafe which my parents now think..
| uggh) get free access to the no ads Facebook?
|
| Also Darn for me There was no eye roll button so I just moved
| /scrolled along.
|
| Personally the ads for me lately have became useful.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Seems like a true consent based "Reject all" button is a critical
| danger to Facebook's business model. Other articles [1] report
| they are currently in violation of GDPR rights in Europe.
|
| > The move follows years of privacy litigation, enforcements and
| court rulings in the EU -- which have culminated in a situation
| where Meta can no longer claim a contractual right (nor
| legitimate interest) to track and profile users for ad targeting.
| (Although, at the time of writing, it is still doing the latter
| -- meaning it is technically operating without a proper legal
| basis. But this summer Meta announced an intention to switch to
| consent.)
|
| > [...]
|
| > As we reported earlier this month, Meta is relying on a line in
| a ruling handed down by the bloc's top court, the CJEU, earlier
| this year -- where the judges allowed the possibility -- caveated
| with "if necessary" -- of an (another caveat) "appropriate fee"
| being charged for an equivalent alternative service (i.e. that
| lacks tracking and profiling). So the legal fight against Meta's
| continued tracking and profiling of users will hinge on what's
| necessary and appropriate in this context.
|
| Typical shady Facebook behavior trying to force everyone to press
| "Accept all" since otherwise their business model is broken.
| Hopefully the EU will move quickly to close the legal loophole
| they are trying to exploit.
|
| [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/30/meta-ad-free-sub-eu/
| TekMol wrote:
| I doubt this is a business decision.
|
| Ads on Instagram and FB are not very annoying. Almost nobody will
| pay to get rid of them.
|
| I think it is a way to cope with the GDPR. The GDPR says you
| can't offer a service in return for user data. Aka it is not
| allowed to say "You can't use our service unless you let us also
| store data unrelated to the service about you.".
|
| But so far, there seems to be no court decision about the
| approach Meta is taking here. "You can't use our service unless
| you let us also store data unrelated to the service about your OR
| you pay us money".
| Macha wrote:
| A lot of media companies have tried the same move in the last
| year, so it will be interesting to see if Meta adopting it
| helps or hurts that strategy for them too.
| x0x0 wrote:
| There are a handful of court decisions. One in Austria for a
| newspaper that said accept ads/data collection or buy a
| subscription which was, at least initially, ruled acceptable
| per gdpr. And I think there's been some challenges; I haven't
| paid attention over the last 6 months.
| herbst wrote:
| > Ads on Instagram and FB are not very annoying. Almost nobody
| will pay to get rid of them.
|
| I am not sure what people think is annoying but 90% of my
| Instagram is ads and weird suggestions. There is barely any
| legitimate use case other than promoting my own bullshit to
| other bots.
| madars wrote:
| I wonder how it works from the business perspective. There is an
| adverse-selection argument against introducing ad-free versions
| of an ad-supported service: the people who are most likely to pay
| for an ad-free experience are also the same people who are most
| valuable to advertisers. So if that group is gone, the remaining
| users could either command less ad revenue, or be shown higher
| CPM ads (e.g. ads for prescription drugs, not available in EU; or
| ads for adult content, incompatible with a family-friendly
| platform). How would this work? Or maybe the adverse selection
| assumption is faulty? Or maybe this choice could help avoid an EU
| fine of some sort?
| mpsprd wrote:
| To me your selection is reversed.
|
| If you hate ads so much you're prepared to pay fb to get rid of
| it, I don't believe you're one to click on them.
| msoad wrote:
| most ads I see on Instagram don't want my clicks. They want
| me think of a Rolex watch or a new BMW car by injecting
| themselves between the content
| forgetithump wrote:
| I keep a low effort fuzzy mental list of things that
| advertise themselves in ways I find unpleasant. They are
| the first thing I think of when I go to buy something, but
| the last thing I'll ever buy.
|
| An example: The North Face edited wikipedia to change the
| photos of famous hikes/outdoorsy locations with people
| wearing North Face jackets with the logos visible.
| notyourwork wrote:
| > An example: The North Face edited wikipedia to change
| the photos of famous hikes/outdoorsy locations with
| people wearing North Face jackets with the logos visible.
|
| I hadn't heard of this but it is beyond sleazy in my
| book. Though, to the company's credit, I cannot fault for
| the actions of likely one or a small group of marketing
| people. Though I don't know, maybe, that type of idea had
| visibility all the way to the top.
| crimsontech wrote:
| Wow, I hadn't heard of this before but it's actually
| disgusting and despite this happening some time ago they
| just got added to my shit list of companies I won't buy
| from.
|
| "North Face Brazil's CEO said in a statement. "With the
| 'Top of Images' project, we achieved our positioning and
| placed our products in a fully contextualised manner as
| items that go hand in hand with these destinations.""
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/30/north-
| fac...
| smcin wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644158/north-face-
| wikip...
|
| 5/2019: _The North Face, in a campaign with advertising
| agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made, hatched a scheme to get
| its products to the top of Google Images by replacing
| Wikipedia photos with its own product placement shots.
|
| In the promotional video, the company notes how all trips
| begin with an initial Google search, and often the first
| image that shows up is from a Wikipedia article about the
| destination. ...
|
| The video brags about how North Face cleverly hacked the
| results to get its products to the top of Google search,
| "paying absolutely nothing just by collaborating with
| Wikipedia." Only, it wasn't a collaboration at all; it
| was a violation of Wikipedia's terms of service for paid
| advocacy. ..._
| gopher2000 wrote:
| That speaks in favor of the value of personalized ads. Yet
| people will generally see it as a bad thing if asked.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Value to whom? Certainly not to me.
| belval wrote:
| It's not because I want something that I actually need
| something. I've wanted to build a UPS with lithium
| batteries for a while, my ads are all BMS, lithium cells,
| etc... This is definitely good for advertiser, but as one
| of the "people", all I see are hard-to-resist ads.
|
| AliExpress is especially good at this for maker gear,
| I'll look at a reflow station and they will spend the
| next 6 months showing me reflow station ads until I cave
| and buy it, even though it is a purely frivolous
| purchase.
|
| Personalized ads are extremely effective when your
| profile is good, but that does not mean that I don't see
| it as a bad thing.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I think personalized ads are way worse, because they
| entice you to buy products you actually want. Buying
| things is usually a bad idea, so personalized ads make
| this problem worse.
| jaybaxter wrote:
| There is a type of advertising called "brand advertising"
| where the goal is more about brand awareness (e.g. think of a
| Coca-Cola superbowl ad) than "direct response advertising".
| Such advertisers don't really care if you click on ads, but
| they still want to reach high-value users.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I'm pretty sure most meta-originated ads are direct
| response. At least most of the ones I've seen. Most brand
| advertising shows up in places where engagement is hard (eg
| TV, billboards) while direct response is perfect for
| absentmindedly scrolling (you don't feel bad clicking
| away).
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Do you think Coca Cola advertises to get you to go buy a coke
| right now? United Airlines expects a click-through to get you
| to book a flight right there and then with no planning or
| talking to your spouse? Think Audi expects you to click their
| facebook ad and order a car online?
|
| No, they want to become ingrained in your mind. So to them,
| just exposing you to their ad is enough. Whether you click on
| it or not is irrelevant.
|
| https://www.adroll.com/blog/brand-awareness-vs-direct-
| respon...
| cma wrote:
| They presumably set the price at a threshold where on average
| it still works out even though they lose on the highest end
| customers.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| This is surely part of why they started with the EU - it's (1)
| relatively wealthy but not US wealthy, and (2) their ad
| businesses are already at risk and becoming a liability.
|
| A quick Google search says that Metas Average Revenue Per User
| is $11 worldwide, $60 in US/canada, and $18 in Europe. They
| have a 40% profit margin. So a $10/mo subscription in Europe is
| likely more profitable than ads. And would still be so in US
| market.
|
| There is a risky balance still - they're obviously the best
| customers so the statistics may dramatically shift and they
| likely lose a chunk of signals to train their ad models
| against, meaning worse performance. That's an opportunity
| though, I suspect that a huge cost of theirs is the ad
| engineering and they can potentially cut down on all that infra
| - from training to serving.
|
| And yea, if the billion dollar fines keep coming, it may also
| be a meaningful accounting decision.
| datpiff wrote:
| > will cost between 9.99 euros and 12.99 euros per month
|
| This is surprisingly expensive
| Macha wrote:
| 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.
| elondaits wrote:
| 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.
| Macha wrote:
| 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.
| kiicia wrote:
| It should be literally $1 a month, max $2
| barbazoo wrote:
| Why?
| gopher2000 wrote:
| Why would they offer it at a rate that certainly loses money
| compared to existing ad options?
| MisterPea wrote:
| 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...
| tristanj wrote:
| Nit: they don't actually lose money by offering a
| subscription, they just make less money than if they didn't
| offer one.
| pb7 wrote:
| Same thing.
| rchaud wrote:
| Not if the intention is to keep as many people as possible on
| the ad-ridden free side.
| jedberg wrote:
| So this is basically in response to EU regulations. Will they
| accept this solution from Meta as being within the sprit of the
| law?
|
| They are basically charging an exorbitant amount to get a legally
| compatible experience, but now Meta will say "we offer people the
| chance to use the site untracked, but they've all _chosen_ to let
| us collect their data to use the site for free ".
|
| Will be interesting to see how the EU responds to this.
| makomk wrote:
| There are already major EU-based news sites that make people
| choose between paying a monthly subscription and allowing their
| data to be used for ad targetting. It's hard to see how the EU
| could get Meta for this without either hurting those companies
| or abandoning the pretense that this is actually based on the
| rule of law and not just arbitrarily punishing non-EU
| companies.
| smarx007 wrote:
| https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-tech-news-site-heisede-
| illega...
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Honestly how does the EU expect companies to make money?
| Are websites supposed to be a charity?
|
| I guess it's no surprise they have 0 competitive tech
| companies if these are the smooth brain laws they have to
| operate under.
| jampekka wrote:
| Companies can advertise all they want, just not collect
| personal information without their consent.
|
| An over 700 billion dollar company with 30% or so profit
| margin is about as far from charity you can get.
| np_tedious wrote:
| This is not at all exorbitant. Less than $1 per hour for many
| regular social media users
| karmasimida wrote:
| So now YouTube/Twitter/Facebook all enters this subscription or
| ads era.
|
| Maybe by raising the entrance fee, could boost the quality.
| hx8 wrote:
| I don't think that raising the entrance fee will boost quality.
| I would say, if you find someone that is making content you
| think is quality find a way to directly support them. A monthly
| payment goes a long way to supporting a creator.
|
| * Having an ads option means being a content producer can be
| free. There is no minimum fee for posts to act as a basic spam
| filter.
|
| * The economies of who gets paid to generate content is mostly
| based on who generates the most views. This is only loosely
| associated with quality. If you look deeply, this is more
| complicated than what I stated is essentially true.
|
| * There is currently enough money being sent to content
| creators to sustain quality content. I don't see why increasing
| the money will increase quality, as sufficient funds for
| quality are already present.
| devsda wrote:
| It is not ads that people are against when it comes to Facebook.
|
| The common concerns are about its algorithmic feed,
| recommendations, research experiments etc that allow subtle
| manipulation for commercial and political gains. You can still be
| subjected to the rampant invasion of privacy.
|
| If someone is planning on paying to remove ads and avoid all of
| the above, I'm certain that they will be disappointed.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Those two things are incredibly related.
|
| The reason algorithmic feeds are they way they are etc. is so
| that they can optimise ad load and make more money. They want
| you be sucked into anything they possibly can to get you to
| scroll more, and see more ads.
|
| If they move to a subscription model the incentives change
| significantly.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Pivoting to a subscription model is going to be incredibly
| difficult, but long term is critical if Meta wants to offer a
| platform that makes massive profit, and doesn't make a bunch kids
| want to kill themselves etc.
|
| The core issues are kind of related.
|
| 1. The value of a channel/platform to advertisers has an
| exponential relationship to that platforms reach. This is why
| Meta is bathing in money, and Snap struggles to make a dollar.
|
| 2. The people advertisers most want to reach (rich people) are
| the first to pay to remove ads.
|
| I suspect Meta will want to focus on getting minors into the
| subscription platform initially since they low(er) value to
| advertisers, and highest risk for regulation etc. and then over
| team letting these young people stick with the sub model as they
| grow up. By the end of the decade they would more aggressively be
| able to move away from an ad-supported model then...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| At that price point it is not a serious attempt at gathering
| subscribers.
|
| It's to show law makers that there is an alternative to ads and
| probably that "users aren't interested".
| crowcroft wrote:
| Possibly, but it wouldn't really make sense to offer it at a
| lower price considering their current monthly ARPU in Europe
| is ~$6-$7.
|
| If they offered a lower price subscription and a lot of
| people jumped onto it it would be disastrous for the
| business.
| entropyneur wrote:
| I don't care about the ads. I'd maybe consider paying for a
| Facebook without "suggested for you".
| aaronrobinson wrote:
| Do people still use Facebook?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Can't speak for many other countries, but here in Norway FB
| still reigns supreme as far as one-stop-shop social media
| platforms go.
|
| I think that is due to how many aspects of society here
| completely ditched their own channels some 10-12 years ago, and
| started using FB for everything. I mainly use FB for the
| following:
|
| - Hobby groups and pages. These have pretty much replaced the
| traditional forums.
|
| - Practical info and stuff related to where I live: Buy/sell
| groups, apartment and housing groups, news and updates,
| cultural events, and what have you.
|
| - Historical groups, and similar niche stuff
|
| A ton of practical stuff is just too ingrained into the FB
| platform.
|
| Not to mention messenger. I know lots of people that are never
| active on FB, and only use it for messenger - simply because
| WhatsApp, Signal, etc. never got the same hold here.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| If you have a family that talks to you it's the defacto website
| to share photos and plan gatherings.
| s3p wrote:
| Why the $9.99 start price? To me the value of a Meta service
| would be $4/month max. That's just me though.
| HappyDaoDude wrote:
| The most surprising thing, to me, was for once I got the timing
| spot on! Usually when I predict things like this I am way off on
| the timing but this is right on pace. In that sense it is like an
| economist predicting a crash, one of the twenty will be right.
|
| The question is now, how many years until they start moving
| features behind the paywall like limits on how many people in a
| message chat? Or view limits (aka twitter/x) I suspect 3-5 years.
| fluxem wrote:
| People here moaned that they despise ads and gladly will pay not
| to see them. Well, this is the opportunity to do so
| asynchronous wrote:
| It is annoying that they will still collect and sell all your
| advertising data.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Along with the fact that you have at least EURX in disposable
| income every month.
| smarkov wrote:
| I'd gladly pay not to see ads on a site that has content worth
| seeing. Facebook and Instagram are not one of those.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Does it mean you won't go on them at all?
| skydhash wrote:
| No facebook, no instagram accounts after years not posting
| on both.
| Teever wrote:
| Can I pay to opt out of their internet (real world?) wide
| tracking too?
|
| Or better, can I just not pay for that and have them not do
| that?
| grishka wrote:
| You can disable third-party cookies and install a good ad
| blocker in your browsers to make tracking not 100%
| impossible, but much harder.
| Teever wrote:
| Facebook recommended my sister to a friend soon after
| visiting my friend that I hadn't visited in years.
|
| Is there any way to get them to not do that kind of shit
| too?
| qubex wrote:
| About a decade ago I wouldn've jumped at the opportunity of
| paying for an ad-less Facebook. Now that it's deserted by
| actual posts by people I know and care about and has become a
| desolate expanse of 'pages' and manufactured content, the only
| reason I check it out at all is to lead through my memories of
| happier times. This is too little too late. Facebook isn't
| resurrecting itself from its inexplicable enshittified suicide.
| midasuni wrote:
| About 5 years too late I'm afraid - none of my friends post on
| Facebook any more.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Interesting seeing so many people here not seeming to understand
| this was a response to EU regulation rather than a "good business
| move" by Meta. i.e. EU making it harder and harder to show ads,
| not being able to personalize, etc.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| This makes it all the more interesting whether the "submit or
| pay" model of GDPR compliance (already used by Le Monde, etc.)
| is accepted as "freely given consent" by the courts--there's
| been some hubbub about that IIRC, but no definitive opinions.
| It doesn't seem to have been the intent of the text as I read
| it, but we'll see how it plays out. (E.g. a theorerical "submit
| or EUR1K" model probably shouldn't pass on proportionality
| grounds, but then EUR10/mo is, I expect, already orders of
| magnitude more than Le Monde or even Facebook is getting from
| ads per visitor, so one could argue it's also
| disproportionate.)
| conradfr wrote:
| As a comparison Webedia low quality websites ask for 2EUR.
| bertil wrote:
| I do think that's a regulatory play, but as you say --
| expecting few people will take it, but giving the option will
| shut down criticism.
|
| Some here are worried that their data will still be used to
| train (ads) models: you can easily remove a large sample from
| your training set and still have a great predictive model.
| This would most likely not be hard to implement (modulo edge
| cases like whether you keep parameters trained on someone who
| has since decided to enroll in the training program).
|
| > orders of magnitude more than Le Monde or even Facebook is
| getting from ads per visitor
|
| No, Ads per visitor were roughly $18/m/u lately (quoting an
| anon on Twitter: check the financial reports), so modulo FX,
| EUR10 would be about 50% less. It would be a mistake to make
| it prohibitive. There's a big debate on whether people
| picking the option would be valuable users or not. I suspect
| not (for reasons that rely on my experience working on the
| platform, so I won't go into too much detail: explore the Ad
| tools to get what I mean).
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > No, Ads per visitor were roughly $18/m/u lately
|
| What the hell, really? I thought run-of-the-mill web ads
| averaged out to like cents per visitor usually. Is Facebook
| really charging advertisers such a huge premium? Are people
| really spending so much time on it? (The last one may sound
| rhetorical, but still, I'd think most people couldn't
| _afford_ to spend a lot of time there, even among those who
| are well off enough to be on it in the first place.)
| jsnell wrote:
| > No, Ads per visitor were roughly $18/m/u lately (quoting
| an anon on Twitter: check the financial reports)
|
| You're off by a factor of 3 there. That's the European ARPU
| per _quarter_ , not per _month_.
| signal11 wrote:
| I believe it's already being challenged in Austria[1].
|
| [1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/media/news/austria-
| challeng...
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Thank you! The wording in that article was confusing--
|
| > Austria's data protection authority DSB ruled that
| readers can specifically say 'yes' or 'no' to cookie
| paywalls[--]
|
| but according to the activists maintaining GDPRhub[1], the
| regulator's decision was that the model is not compliant
| because "allow everything" can't be the only (other)
| choice, as consent has to be specific.
|
| [1] https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=DSB_(Austria)_-_2023
| -0.17...
| jacooper wrote:
| German Websites often use a similar model, and it has been
| ruled as illegal.
|
| https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-tech-news-site-heisede-
| illega...
| nikivi wrote:
| Would love to pay for no ads on IG, the amount of ads there is
| insane, only reason I don't use it as much.
| michaelteter wrote:
| This should go over like a lead balloon. Removing ads isn't going
| to also magically spawn content worth consuming. Optimize the
| user experience enough, and the user will finally realize they
| are looking at nothing.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Does this affect the messenger? For me it's the only non-zero
| worth thing out of whole facebook portfolio.
| jacooper wrote:
| Will it completely stop tracking (really stalking) me if I pay?
| Or is it a joke like YouTube premium, no ads but with all the
| tracking still on?
| ddmma wrote:
| You get and feed on my data and then you ask to pay for it. Good
| luck on my aunt paying for this service that she don't understand
| and use it as memory lane
| andrethegiant wrote:
| If you tap the Instagram logo in the top left and select
| Following, your feed won't have any ads.
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