1y ago

Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

arstechnica.com Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

Free version will remain but require consent for targeted advertising.

Technology @lemmy.ml

arstechnica.com /tech-policy/2023/10/ad-free-facebook-instagram-access-planned-for-14-per-month-in-europe/

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TechNews @radiation.party

Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

arstechnica.com /tech-policy/2023/10/ad-free-facebook-instagram-access-planned-for-14-per-month-in-europe/

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42 comments

The system seems to be;
Add adverts
Make them more intrusive
Add more adverts
Make them even more intrusive
Everybody is fed up with adverts because there are now more adverts than content, so introduce paid version which costs more than the company would earn on ad impressions even for a heavy user, to remove ads
Next step might be to add some ads to paid version?
- Isn't this exactly what Netflix is trying to do with their paid subscribers?
  
  Netflix didn't start with ads, and the ads don't affect pre-existing subscription tiers.
- Uh, no. The system is:
  The law requires us to disable tracking by default for all users
  We can't make hundreds of billions of dollars per year with tracking disabled
  So - make the service $14/month by default, unless you opt-in.
  It's win/win. If users pay $14, they make huge profits. If users opt in to tracking, they make huge profits.
  
  they don't 'win' if europeans tell zuk to take a hike in sufficient numbers. decline the tracking for 'free' use and declining the paid option.
- Next step might be to add some ads to paid version?
  Yep:
  Amazon is sticking ads in Prime Video shows and movies unless you pay more
  Netflix with ads arrives
  
  we've been using prime video quite a bit here with our latest 'trial'. the ux has degraded a lot since the last one we had. they're pushing the paid shit (third-party subs, rentals, 'purchases') way too much on the 'related' and other lists and links. it's gotten so bad, you need to use a third-party site just to find the 'free with prime' content, because amazon sure af ain't gonna list it so you can find it easily.
- Next step might be to add some ads to paid version?
  Yup. Add "a few" "unobtrusive" ads "relevant to your interests" to the $14 dollar tier while offering a new $18 ad-free tier.
- I stopped using Facebook years and years ago when adblockers failed to stop FB ads. I have yet to find one that actually works.
  When I took a look to see if it had improved, the feed wasn't even chronological. I get posts from days ago on top and posts from hours ago buried pages in. The posts at the top of the feed are even ones I've seen before. FB has become entirely useless and only bother for the few groups that insist on using it.
  
  traditional rules-based blockers like ublock origin fail because facebook randomizes tags and code on their pages specifically to prevent them from working well, or even at all.
  fbpurity.com is designed for facebook.
  
  Ads don't particularly bother me but they do get tiresome when every other post is an ad. I don't use FB though. YouTube ads are getting increasingly irritating - it seems that every two minutes during a video there will be an ad break, but I refuse to pay for a subscription for the small amount I use YouTube. I think there are some alternative interfaces which stop the ads but I keep forgetting to use/try them.

Remember when their account signup page said "It's free, and always will be"? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
- it will still be, but with more ads and 'suggested' content, less vetting (do they even do that now?) of those paid placements (that costs money ya know), more data harvesting and selling, and continued randomization of tags and code that make traditional adblocking difficult.

Even YouTube Premium is cheaper than that.
- And includes YouTube Music.
  
  For now.
- YT Premium is imo one of the most scammy subscriptions, as you can easily and legally get what it offers with free tools.

Facebook still sell your data even if you pay to give it to them.

For that price you could have your own ad-free Mastodon instance for whole family from masto.host for 9$/month, 1TB of Nextcloud cloud storage with up to 100 accounts from Hetzner for 4$/month and one premium Bitwarden account for 1$/month.

If I had any confidence in this company, it might have been interesting. 🤔
- I loath them with a passion. That said, I find the groups feature extremely valuable. THAT said, I will only access it through a browser, with numerous privacy protections.

So now you can voluntarily give your financial info in addition to the data they already leech. That too with a nominal monthly fee. Great!!

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Meta is preparing to charge EU users a $14 monthly subscription fee to access Instagram on their phones unless they allow the company to use their personal information for targeted ads.
Several social media platforms, which for years made all their features available for free, have recently begun to charge for extras, as their traditional ad businesses come under pressure from privacy regulations and marketers become more selective with their budgets.
Snapchat and X, formerly Twitter, also sell optional subscriptions offering paying users exclusive features, such as verified profiles, custom app themes and fewer ads.
The Silicon Valley-based company has until the end of November to comply with a Luxembourg court ruling from this year which found that Facebook “cannot justify” the use of personal data to target consumers with ads unless it gains their consent.
The Digital Markets Act, which comes into force in March, imposes new legal obligations on companies to share data with rivals to promote fair competition.
In May, Facebook, which is owned by Meta, was fined a record €1.2 billion for violating privacy laws that required appropriate safeguards of transfers of data from the EU to the US.
The original article contains 710 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

So now people should pay to get their data sold to advertisers?
Brilliant.

I'd pay a few bucks a month to get rid of ads—easily more than they make by showing me ads—but $14 is just absurd. It's like they want this new program to fail.