Facebook just started requiring EU users to choose: privacy or €9.99/month

"The discount is bigger if you don't buy it." -- delete those Apps, so you don't pay them with your data or your $10/month.

Instead, call your parents, the people you care about, and get them to spend time with you. Send them postcards, and make them know you genuinely care.

Meta even lets you download Messenger without Facebook. The same is true for Whatsapp. Just use them for communication if you must. There's no reason why anybody needs social media on their phone or in their life.

Actually... Facebook did a full about-face (for me at least) recently. Having forced you to use a separate messenger app on mobile for a few years, they now disabled the messenger app and re-integrated messaging into the main app. Probably because people will see more ads this way.

The choice is not between privacy and a susbscription. The subscription does not include the right to be free from surveillance and data collection by Facebook. Further, there are more than two choices. A third choice is not to decide.

Yes, they will back down. It makes no sense to _block_ users simply because they will not consent to targeted ads.

Users who consent will get targeted ads. Users that do not consent will get non-targeted ads. Users who subscribe get fleeced.

Instead of the app try using FB without Javascript: https://mbasic.facebook.com

FB must have "growth" to keep Wall Street happy. _Blocking users_ is inconsistent with that objective. FB will back down but give it some time while they are forced to run this experiment.

>It makes no sense to block users simply because they will not consent to targeted ads.

It absolutely 100% does. Advertisers in todays age only spend on targeted advertising because it not only works, but the converse of that (spamming users with random ads) degrades user experience.

Random ads?

Why that? Why not contextual ads?

E.g., if I'm on a facebook page for programming, maybe show everyone there ads for that new keyboard etc. This is without tracking THE USER, it just has to track where you are.

Same for websites. Sure this has drawbacks, but it's not like advertisers didn't make conversions before tracking got the way to go.

> Sure this has drawbacks, but it's not like advertisers didn't make conversions before tracking got the way to go.

Why would anyone settle for less without getting something in return. You wouldn't go into your job and happily take a 30% pay decrease because your boss said "it's not like you weren't surviving before".

User tracking results in better ROI. This is why advertisers pay Facebook for the privilege. And you just expect Facebook to say "oh well, shucks"?

> but the converse of that (spamming users with random ads) degrades user experience

The whole point of the discussion is that directed ads degraded user experience. What is your point then?

>Directed ads degraded user experience.

This is literally propaganda for people pushing for control of the internet through the idea of "privacy"

There isn't a world where someone is using and app, and would prefer to see generic advertisements versus finding out about deals on products they care about or new products that they may be interested in.

Unless of course you are bought into the bullshit bogeyman of "oh no, company is building a profile on me, that MUST mean they are going to use it for nefarious means", despite no evidence of this being true, ever. If you believe this, then you either virtue signaling off the ideology that companies and capitalism is evil, or you personally don't feel like you have enough self control to make decisions on your own despite what is being shown to you, and if so you really shouldn't have a say or vote in this.

Is it so hard to believe that other people may have different opinions from yours?

I've never knowingly clicked on an ad in my life.

I am very aware of how law enforcement, political consultants, and other organizations purchase targeting data from ad companies.

I don't want to be part of it because I don't want to be part of it.

> There isn't a world where someone is using and app, and would prefer to see generic advertisements versus finding out about deals on products they care about or new products that they may be interested in

This is literal propaganda. Who said I have to choose between bad ads and even worse ads? Are you insane?

> Unless of course you are bought into the bullshit bogeyman of "oh no, company is building a profile on me, that MUST mean they are going to use it for nefarious means"

Yes, you are insane. This is exactly what they do: profit with the ads, profit with nefarious ways they sell and transform the data they gather.

> If you believe this, then you either virtue signaling off the ideology that companies and capitalism is evil, or you personally don't feel like you have enough self control to make decisions on your own despite what is being shown to you, and if so you really shouldn't have a say or vote in this.

I think you should avoid getting near a keyboard, you doesn't seem to have enough mental acuity for a healthy communication.

I don't get the anger over this. For years I read "I would gladly pay X to use a service and not be spied on", and now this is an option. If you're not the customer you're the product I heard. Now you're the customer

No, with Facebook, you're paying money but you're still the product, because their core business is still ad-driven.

They are not stopping showing ads, and they are not stopping collecting data. It seems that they're just stopping using the data to target the ads.

According to this, if you pay you are not shown any ads: https://www.facebook.com/help/631125599118423

Not to mention, you're still the product by producing content for their system and being reachable on/promoting their system.

Which goes to show that the soundbite was stupid, and wrong. You're the product on Apple too, even if you pay.

>>> Users who consent will get targeted ads. Users that do not consent will get non-targeted ads. Users who subscribe get fleeced.

If as you say, when they charge members to not get targeted ads, the paying customers are getting fleeced. So what can these companies do to actually make money??

New EU regulation is forcing Meta to offer users an ad-free alternative. That’s why they are doing this.

Meta’s revenue per user is around 40 USD iirc.

Tbf, as much as people like whining they definitely get 12 bucks a month worth of entertainment off of Facebook and Instagram. People will easily spend 4-6h on social media daily.

The reality is that this move will just prove that people like to talk but they are not willing to pay for their “freedom”.

> People will easily spend 4-6h on social media daily.

people will easily spend no time there too if their algorithms weren't tuned to be addicted. Which can easily be decided to be illegal in many countries based on the current laws already existing - but those companies will spend billions of dollars and use their brainwashing algorithms to prevent that.

The brainwashing is so strong that it goes out of the social media border and overflow to every corner of the web, including HN. But fear no, _tracno5, we don't NEED Meta.

Sure you don’t NEED meta. But it still offers value to their users. Regardless of their “addictive” design, you can’t deny that people want what they (and other social media) offer.

It would be absurd to say they don’t add any value to people’s lives.

We’re not talking about heroin here. You can always just delete all your accounts and live an unplugged life.

And now you have an option to get all the upsides of social media minus the downsides of being tracked/advertised for less than the price of a pizza

> Which can easily be decided to be illegal in many countries based on the current laws already existing

Sorry which laws are those?

And for the billions of people with free will who use these services, you know what's better for them than they do?

> Sorry which laws are those?

In Brazil, false advertising is a crime (and I guess in many other countries). At least for me when I used instagram, 95% of the ads served were scam. The people buying the ads are criminals, the people selling too.

> Tbf, as much as people like whining they definitely get 12 bucks a month worth of entertainment off of Facebook and Instagram. People will easily spend 4-6h on social media daily.

I read this kind of argument regularly to justify any subscription service, and simply, it's bogus. Maybe you, as the commenter might feel you get $12 per month worth of entertainment or spend 4-6h on the site daily, but that's simply not true for everyone.

I deleted my facebook account over a decade ago, so it's value to me is exactly $0 per month, but I've seen this argument made for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube, etc, none of which I have a subscription for. Now, all of those I perhaps would get some value from, but less than the minimum subscription value.

Currently, I can still enjoy Youtube for free, but their recent push to make advertising far more obnoxious will probably push me away entirely. When that day happens, even though I enjoy watching Youtube occasionally, it's simply not worth the price of the minimum subscription, so I will just stop using it. It's actually already pretty close to that point for me - recently, adverts seem to be far more frequent than before and I've noticed a few occasions when I've had two back-to-back 30-second un-skippable adverts every 5-10 minutes. When these tactics eventually force me off the platform, their revenue from me will go from a little per month from ad revenue to $0 per month.

> I deleted my facebook account over a decade ago

Obviously implicit in GP comment is that _people who use these services_ derive great value from them.

Nobody expects someone who deleted their account to think $12 is a reasonable price.

That's why I continued talking about another service that I do use that is trying a similar move at a similar price point.

The point is that the poster I was replying to believes that because they think it's good value at $12 per month, it's necessarily the same for everybody. It isn't.

I’m not saying I believe $12 is good value. It’s not a matter of opinion. It’s just a fact.

Similar forms of entertainment cost the same.

You’re the one with the subjective opinion here because you personally don’t see value in it and make the assumption that is the absolute truth

How is it a fact? I would argue that most people derive negative value out of Facebook. Is $150 per gram of cocaine "good value" just because some people enjoy it and come back to it?

I had a Facebook account today, it definitely wasn't worth $12 in entertainment per month so I deleted it.

> You’re the one with the subjective opinion here because you personally don’t see value in it and make the assumption that is the absolute truth

I think you need to stop spending so much time on Facebook, and spend a bit more time reading a dictionary.

You firstly made an assertion that "they [in this context, everyone who is whining that it's too expensive] definitely get 12 bucks a month worth of entertainment off of Facebook and Instagram".

You secondly state that "I’m not saying I believe $12 is good value. It’s not a matter of opinion. It’s just a fact."

Both of these are subjective opinion, because it's what you believe and while some will agree with you, there are others who disagree with you.

You accuse me of making the assumption that what I'm saying is absolute truth, which is weird, because that's exactly what you were doing in your argument.

Read again what I wrote: "Maybe you, as the commenter might feel you get $12 per month worth of entertainment or spend 4-6h on the site daily, but that's simply not true for everyone."

That's not making any claim of absolute truth, rather it's saying that your claim that it's good value for everybody is false. And it's obviously false, because there's at least one person for who it isn't true.

> ad-free alternative.

ha-ha, if only! Your advert slots will just be filled with generic adverts. (Think big brands/dumb ads/tv ads)

While the EU regulation allows for that, that's not what Meta is offering. Meta is offering paid, ad-free access to facebook. https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-...

>New EU regulation is forcing Meta to offer users an ad-free alternative

Which regulation is that?

Here you go: https://edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/edpb-urgent-binding-de...

That is not what that says. You're conflating ad-free with no ads based on tracking.

I am not. The EU’s move is to force Meta to stop personalised ads and Meta is pushing for an ad-free option. That’s an attempt to appease the regulators and keep their business model.

They’ll make the argument that the customer has a reasonable choice: see targeted ads or pay for the service.

I’m betting They’ll follow up saying the business model in the EU will not be viable without personalised ads (which it really probably won’t) and that they’ll consider leaving the EU altogether. Then the EU can have fun figuring out what will be the economic impact for its economy after they get cut off the largest social network

Meta has ditched Canadian news already. If the finances don’t make sense in the EU, I won’t be surprised they just ditch it

You did, and now you're incorrectly claiming that the EU is forcing Meta to stop personalised ads. They're not. They're only forcing Meta to obtain user consent.

The means by which Meta is doing that are scummy and hopefully will still prove to be illegal, but none of that is the EU's doing.

I'd be surprised if there was much, if any, fallout from the disappearence of Meta from the EU space. Not that I hold out any hope of it.

> I'd be surprised if there was much, if any, fallout from the disappearence of Meta from the EU space.

One sure exception would be Whatsapp. It's really baked into society in many countries, including here in the Netherlands where it's the normal mode for most person-to-person communication, including customer-business contacts.

> The means by which Meta is doing that are scummy and hopefully will still prove to be illegal, but none of that is the EU's doing.

This is what many established media in Germany are doing. Either pay to read without data collection, or read for free and be tracked. No lawsuits so far - which doesn't necessarily mean they won't follow of course.

How much can Meta ditch before its all-important network effect starts to implode?

Threads hasn't really gotten off the ground, and I'd say a good part of the reason why is that it excludes the EU, which is full of very online-engaged people.

I quit facebook, and voila' my privacy concerns are gone at once. I also quit whatsapp. I self host my email since years, so i don't have to use other people computers and let them read my emails. I also self host an xmpp server for chatting with my friends.

You know it seems to me that people spend a lot of time trying to solve a non existing problem, in this endless entropy.

Just let go, already.

Quitting whatsapp is social and professional suicide. It's almost equivalent to suggesting someone just cancel their power bill. Like just get some candles and novels, you'll be fine.

Which profession requires WhatsApp?

Literally any profession where you publish contact information for customers to reach you. They'll be _angry_ if there's a barrier to communicate with you, and lack of Whatsapp, for some countries (I think particularly EU, south America) would be seen as such a barrier.

You may as well post only a UUCP bang path or a Telex identifier as your sole contacts, that's how baffled half of the people would be.

I installed WhatsApp for the first time in my life just a few days ago because I needed it to communicate with some event organizers at my current holiday destination. Once I'm home again I will uninstall it again and will probably not have a need for it before I travel somewhere else where it's used.

For the record, I am from Denmark which is in the EU. If people here use WhatsApp they are either expats or they need it to communicate with foreigners.

Maybe not hard required but it's such a common way to communicate with colleagues and customers in the EU. Not having whatsapp would be similar to not having a phone number. You might not get fired for it but you'll be known as "that weird guy that doesn't use whatsapp" and it won't do your carreer any good.

You cannot believe how fast people learn how to configure VPN. Or switch to another social network/messenger. Once one network is not available for everyone. Tested after FB/IG has left Russia.

The force of meta is not just addictive algos (algos are pretty shitty), but that is is available for everyone and everyone is on the network.

I wish I quit WhatsApp but it is virtually impossible in my country.

I quit WhatsApp and I'm now excluded from group chats with my family and friends.

Any tips on self-hosting email?

unless the account isn't important - don't. By the time you have a setup that isn't at the mercy of ISP outages, blackouts, misconfigurations etc. you have invested a load of time and money for not much gain.

Which makes me wonder: how hard would It be to offer an email service as a self-hosted app?

So you install this on a home always-on RaspberryPI or something and, after filling out some details, it just works. Would that be possible at all?

Some scripts that in the background get the right certificates and set the right records and so on should be possible, no?

There's so much babysitting required.

I've managed to wean all but one of my clients off self-hosted email. They are paranoid and insist on keeping it in-house. It's such a big time suck to deal with spam filter tuning and blacklist removal requests and the like, but they keep paying the hourly rates for it.

From what I gather, yes, that would work, but no, it wouldn't. Apparently all non FAANG mailservers are one misstep away from being put on all blocklists in perpetuity with minimal chances of appeal.

Seems like a true consent based "Reject all" button is a critical danger to Facebook's business model since they are currently in violation of privacy rights in the EU after their last attempt at a legal basis was struck down.

They are basing this subscribe or ad based model on a non-binding comment in a judgement last spring. Should hopefully only be a matter of time until it is ruled illegal.

https://noyb.eu/en/meta-facebook-instagram-move-pay-your-rig...

Which country are you from? A family member in Lithuania has gotten this popup as well, but surprisingly it was asking for a whole €12.99/month instead of €9.99/month. Initially I had assumed it would be €9.99/mo everywhere, or at least cheaper in countries where people don't earn as much.

I think it asked for €12.99 on mobile, then I deleted the app, then it asked for €9.99 on desktop. Maybe they're experimenting with prices too.

I'm from the Netherlands.

Probably because iOS is taking a 30% cut, so they just put the price higher on mobile.

Yes, Apple and Google’s extra charges: https://www.techradar.com/computing/software/instagram-and-f...

My question is will they still collate all that data. There is no point in charging us to just have our data harvested like Twitter is doing rn. I think they should make that clear, if so then it’s not the worst idea in the world because they make like 97% of their income from ads, so unless we’re willing to pay to use FB etc to stop it from happening.

Obv like I said will they still harvest and I think they will.

These tech companies are literally the product of their own demise. Most started with tons of VC money pouring in and operating at huge loses to attract large customer base. There customers got used to having things for free and now to change that mindset is going to ruin a lot of these companies product and force them to another platform.

The problem this time for tech industry is there's not a lot of VC money floating around to create new overvalued service's.

This kind of choice have been implemented by webedia since a while. Though at a lower price, 2€/month.

You can see it on https://jeuxvideo.com for example.

Some people were saying it’s not legal and it would go away quickly, but it’s still there and it might be legal.

> Some people were saying it’s not legal and it would go away quickly, but it’s still there and it might be legal.

It took 5 years for Facebook's blatant GDPR infringement to be addressed, so give it another 5 years and we might finally see a binding decision on this.

I like this a lot if they really disable tracking and so on. To be fair, it’s what a lot if us asked for.

I wonder if a subscription will also mean they stop showing you "suggested posts" in your feed. Since they are too basically ads based on your data (and similarly irritating as ads)

I would register and subscribe to this if I could just have Facebook with no suggested/algorithmic content nor any other tricks designed to encourage "engagement".

For people that pay, do they still use their data - behaviour, pictures, interactions - to train so called ais? If so this needs addressing, facebook should pay them instead.

I know, I know, 'free rein' not 'free reign'.

Lots of discussion over here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38068635

Does this cover the other meta properties as well?

I believe it's coming to Instagram soon. Haven't heard about plans for Whatsapp or Messenger. Threads isn't in Europe anyway.

With a paid product service shall be different.

Deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts, I barely used them anyway and this was a good push to finally do it.

Honestly, at this point, I wish all established social media would just go to subscription models so the hands aren't tied by advertisers in terms of moderation. Itl greatly cut down on spam (the longer people stay on, the greater the cost of a ban is).

Tell HN:

I guess one can accept and at the end make a gdpr request to have their data removed

Facebook does not comply with the GDPR in total impunity, thanks to the corrupt/incompetent Irish DPA: https://web.archive.org/web/20230527122955/https://ruben.ver...