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Comment by truckerbill | Hacker News Reader

I'd pay it if they also didn't track my browsing data. Anyone know if that's the case?

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.

"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.

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.

> 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?

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.

Facebook doesn't sell data. They sell access to data. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but it's important because it's meaningfully different.

Facebook doesn't sell data to other ad companies because that'd be giving away the very thing that makes it the most valuable advertising company in the world. Hell, we spend a huge amount on facebook, and it's impossible for us to get reports on basic things like "Spend per placement per hour".

The only area that I could see them _maybe_ still monetizing an opt'ed out user is with Meta Audience Network, but I bet they would still opt them out of seeing ads on 3rd party sites that have MAN ads in their stack because that business segment is likely small compared to potential PR and fines in the EU.

That is an important distinction to make, though what it might look like (even if MAN is also opted out) could be that the users don't see ads, but they are still possibly contributing data to the overall ad profile business. The data would be used for less targeted stuff like demographics or similar wide brushes, since the individual user it came from isn't part of the feedback loop by seeing targeted ads anymore.

I guess I'm saying even if they aren't targeting an individual with that individuals data, they can use it to target other individuals who do see the ads.

Microsoft Windows has been doing g this for a while. You pay for a license and they also collect telemetry data.

Can you elaborate on how users are the product for Spotify?

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.

I'd wager that the best fingerprinters/profilers work at Meta and/or the NSA.

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.

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.

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