Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
How many times do we hear things like "if the product is free, you are the product" - well, the consequence of that is development resources tend to be pulled into directions that benefit advertisers.
By having material subscription revenue coming in for things outside the advertising space, the product managers can justify investing in features that otherwise would be passed up due to lack of revenue potential from advertising.
Yes, in many ways Meta gets to have their cake and eat it too, because the ads are still there even with the plans, but this does give a meaningful voice to their customers who pay that they can invest in other ways outside of strictly advertising.
it being against what your payment contract states just means they’ll reinvent and rename the tiers.
Streaming services claiming prior art here.
I won’t give away the plot, but it’s so realistically absurd it’s sad, hilarious and terrifying all at once.
Is there a solution to this?
it’s imperfect but contrasts this with the modern approach of grow at all costs, light money on fire and punt entirely on how to ever make money. it usually doesn’t end well for customers.
The fediverse is a step in the right direction, and Meta charging may create another wave of converts there. It has a lot of growth pains to endure yet, but the ability to painlessly spin up your own instance could be very attractive to young people looking for their own non-corporate spaces on the internet.
We may also see some renewal via large companies (Meta in particular) imploding, from mismanagement and disenchanted users. My experience marketing a new product is that online advertising is completely ineffective now the web is filled with slop, no matter how well targeted it is. We've recently pivoted to optimise for word-of-mouth with orders of magnitude better results. I think any adtech company without a solid alternative profit stream is in for a rough ride (and no, AI is not a solid profit stream for anyone but Nvidia).
This is not true. You are the product whether you are paying or not.
If the company thinks they can make money by selling your data/attention/access, they will do so. Paying them does not stop them from monetizing you.
These new paid tiers will be slowly enshitified just like most modern paid plans.
Pretty sure you agree that if the product is free, the company is definitely getting value by monetizing something else of yours. It very much is true as written.
But the context of the parent's and grandparent's comments was (paraphrased) "if you don't pay, you're the product, therefore it makes sense to pay in this case". But given what we know of Meta and their ilk, we have good reason to believe this is absolutely NOT the case: you'll pay but you'll still be the product, and their offerings will keep on the road to enshitification. So parent comment is correct given this context.
I don't believe they were making the case that free Facebook is in any way healthy or good for you.
Aside: I think it's funny how with an NYT subscription, you still get not only ads, but frequent article-covering ads for NYT subscriptions (asking to upgrade to a family account).
I refuse to install your app just because you intentionally trash the web experience with popups.
I’d assume they’re still building that profile while you use the product, but you won’t see any ads, and can still delete the data from the various points like you’ve mentioned.
Other people are mentioning that in the US there are two tiers of Premium, "Full" and "Lite", but I only see one tier in my country (fully ad-free, allows downloads).
But yeah, when Snapchat rolled out their subscription program, I was all set to buy it to get rid of the annoying ads and AI in my chat list, then I realized I could do none of that. So now I just use it a lot less, which is probably better for them anyway.
Of course, they could still sell your data anyway. That's why it's important to pay attention to their T&C.
I miss the days where 'the product' is only what we got, and not being the victim of an executives stalking campaign.
Well, now they will keep doing what they are doing while being paid because your data is their business model.
Meta isn't going to stop harvesting all your information just because you pay for a subscription, they'll harvest and sell your data AND take your money.
I'm not sure what win Meta sees here.
So <$5 per month for someone in the developed world to keep using Instagram and stop being the product. If they redesigned the app around what’s best for users vs advertisers, it actually seems like a great deal, considering many people spend multiple hours per day on apps like these.
Of course this would get pretty expensive for all the services we use. But I personally would happily throw $100-$250 per year at my most used apps to stop being advertised to.
Now I would rather just pay for a couple Patreons. I heard there's some new pay to use YouTube thing out there that creators are pushing, I can't remember the name but I hopped on it and didn't see any extra content beyond what's offered on YouTube so I don't see the point.
Oh and before I got grayjay so I could have ad free casting of videos, premium was nice for when watching on the tv.
There's an endless amount of the highest quality videos available on YouTube. But you need to let the algorithm understand what you like by using the conveniently named "Like" and "Dislike" buttons.
all content (even those who make legitimate content, if they intend on making a living on content) is just ads packaged in fancy UGC. we've reached a point of no return for ads and user targeting
As a result the actual amount that they would need to charge for an ad-free version is higher than the average revenue per user, possibly significantly so.
edit: you can look at YouTube premium for an example of this in practice. It's $16/mo for no ads. That's around 2-3x or more what their revenue per user is.
You will not stop being the product if you pay.
This is only true if everyone does it; Why would they stop advertising for a tiny market, especially if they can get both? Why decrease the value of the tracking on a smaller userbase? Sales conversion says you'd have to charge $50 or $500 a month and you'd have a much smaller base; does social media like this even work with a fraction of the people?
I have previously calculated that Mastodon costs including development are on the order of 1 EUR/person/year [1]. Even if you 10x it, it's nothing. Facebook does nothing more technically complicated than the forums of the 90s. It's just smarter design.
Google has been doing this for a while with YouTube
The data collection and surveillance will of course be used to support online advertising services. The ads can be delivered outside YouTube by other Alphabet business units or partners
There seems to be a myth that paying so-called "tech" companies solves the problem of data collection, surveillance and online advertising. As if for every subscriber the company will voluntarily collect less data, perform less surveillance and sell less ad services, leaving that money on the table
The truth is that these subscribers, by paying the companies that perform data collection, surveillance and advertising services, are actually subsidising the practice
I get that they aren't performing less tracking on me, and they've labeled me as "will pay subscriptions for stuff".
But I get so much out of YouTube that's it's a no-brainer.
You could possibly pick one channel you like each month and give it a one-time $5 donation, which would be equivalent to years of ad revenue from a single viewer.
Your special kindness is not worth $20/month to even moderately successful creators.
You pay for YouTube and don't get ads there, but you also just put a big red target on your back for Google to show you ads in all of their other products because you've just outed yourself to them as someone with disposable income. You can't opt out of ads in search, your personal inbox, etc.
I avoid using Google's Javascript to play other peoples' uploaded videos
I get so much relief out of avoiding the Javascript, telemetry, data collection, behavioural surveillance, "recommendations" and ads, and whatever nonsense Google is doing behind the scenes
It's totally worth it for me
But no amount of payment will remove the nuisance. The intermediary has made it their "business model"
Remove the middleman to remove the nuisance
No, qqtt is correct that if you're paying, you get a vote. It may not be all that much of a vote, but it's more than you'd have if you weren't paying, and Meta will pay attention to it.
For a recent example of how this works, consider that with the post-October-7th wave of pro-Palestinian activism on US college campuses, a lot of rich Jews moved to squelch it as best they could -- not by offering new donations conditional on universities adopting their favored political positions, but by threatening to suspend their existing, habitual, "unconditional" donations.
If everybody stops using meta apps and starts using signal, bluesky, mastodon, etc., meta would instantly transform their business (if they still can make a profit).
The problem is, subtly harvesting data from and even shoveling ads into paid subscriptions actually doesn't make consumers immediately and massively cancel their subs. So you can make a profit from subscriptions alone, or make an even larger profit by also collecting and monetizing your customers data. Guess who will win?
Personally I like signaling that I have money. Why would you want people to think you're poor or cheap, except maybe when you're shopping for a car.
Personally, I don’t generally think about how other people perceive if I have money or not.
I wear my shoes until they break. I wear Vans Sk8 old skool high tops most of the time.
I am also on track to retire by 40 if all goes well. (Which is to say I don’t have THAT much money)
Thanks for proving my point.
But bags as shoes is impractical. You want a sole to protect your feet.
What a sad way to live life. Not only because it's untrue (assuming you don't live in North Korea), but it's incredibly dark and destructive.
Are you pretending not to understand?
But there is clearly a demographic who do use social media to signal lifestyle status, often using that lifestyle status to sell products of various kinds.
The erosion of enthusiast fandom into paid influencer "fandom" is whole subculture.
Useless in the big picture, but I know people who are cobbling together various income streams to maintain basic quality of life- including sponsored posts on social media. Which gives the platforms a very real value. I'm not saying they aren't exploitative, and overall they don't contribute to the advancement of society- but there a a LOT of big employment holes in the west and like these platforms or not, these platforms are plugging a lot of holes, if only mostly timidly except for the usual stars.
Circa 2016: https://www.techspot.com/news/63504-whatsapp-waves-goodbye-a...
You’re a Meta decision maker presented with 3 options. Which one do you pick? (remember, you’re not you…you’re a Meta decision maker trying to justify a trillion dollar valuation).
- Possible additional ad revenues
- Possible additional subscription revenues
- Possible additional ad and subscription revenues
Still plenty of ads in the articles!
Incorrect.
Credit card networks / issuers explicitly describe using payment, spending, and your personal data,
for marketing, personalization, audience segmentation, and advertising.
Mastercard’s privacy notice states that it may use personal and transaction-related information to: “Provide you with personalized services and recommendations” “Offer and support loyalty programs” “Provide content and advertising tailored to your individual interests” “Analyze spending behavior to improve the effectiveness of marketing programs and advertising.”
Visa has also historically offered an opt-out specifically for using card transaction data…
Where can I buy my own data from the brokers?
is the primary key the advertisers are identifying your purchases by,
through the help of the card issuing authority.
If it was a subscription that eliminated all ads AND enshittification anti-patterns, like not putting every single notification, 'share my...' and 'show me...' option on separate toggles helpfully sub-divided into a dozen or more separate pages - I would be all in.
Seriously, what if Meta just said, in effect, "give us $XX a year" and you will be a "VIP Account" that's invisible to all our analytics systems, data collection, aggregation and profiling. The only metric where you will even be visible to our reporting systems is "VIP Account Revenue" as your payments hit our account. We will not care (or even know) if your usage is literally zero minutes a year.
I'm sure all the reasons you're thinking of for why Meta would never do this are probably correct. Those same reasons are why the reasonable-sounding thought "this does give a meaningful voice to their customers who pay" is moot. I believe there is no subscription amount Meta would accept to genuinely shift their entire way of thinking about even a small subset of users. Therefore, this much smaller subscription won't actually change anything that matters. This is just the diary farm trying to collect extra money by renting plastic stall decorations to the cows their business owns and milks. By definition these features will be trivial and purely cosmetic because anything that actually changes user behavior, would impact the real business and will be decided based on that.
I wonder if fully forbidding personalised ads will actually make gdp of developed nations to shrink.
The problem is now people are conditioned to having their privacy violated so they are still the product and they will pay to be the product.
The network effects with a product like WhatsApp are strong so that this opens the door to dark patterns for the non paying customers. After enough time the same level of effort will go into the now subscription app that went into it when it was free.
YouTube is a good example of this phenomenon.
Maybe. Or maybe this is the final stop on the route to enshittification: bill both the advertisers and the users.
> The thing that determines whether you’re the product isn’t whether you’re paying for the product: it’s whether market power and regulatory forbearance allow the company to get away with selling you.
Or more simply:
> Companies don’t make you the product because you don’t pay — they make you the product because you can’t stop them.
As far as feature development goes, Meta isn't looking under the couch cushions for change. If they want to invest in a feature, they will.
> How many times do we hear things like "if the product is free, you are the product"
To me it sounds like they no longer are making enough money, so now they are asking people to pay to be the product
Have they ever made enough money according to their own desire?
As of late, not many times. Because it’s become clear that for the big players you’re the product even if you pay. See for example Netflix or Hulu, where you pay a subscription and are advertised to.
This is old school. Now we know for a fact from the "enshittification" concept that you are always the product. If they can keep abusing you AND make you pay on top of that, it's better than abusing you without making you pay.
There are no good monopolies, the solution really is to fight them.
I feel like this is no longer true. You are now the product regardless of you paying for it or not.
1. Get cable TV there's no ads!
2. Everyone switches to cable
3. Cable now has ads too
Than what you describe but I feel like it's maybe more positive of a change than that. But just slightly.
Several of the first cable-only TV channels were ad supported from the start, and several others started including ads within a few years in.
It’s Facebook. Why would anyone trust them?
Like no ads? that's usually the #1 you pay for and no mention of that.
I used to think like that, but then I realized that
> if you are paying for the product, nothing guarantees that you are not the product anyway
Companies like money and they will have no qualms against double dipping. Even if you refuse to be their customer (and thus they lose the revenue coming from you) as long as the majority of their customers are ok with being a product, they will keep doing it.
It is certainly worthwhile IMO to consider the positive things for Meta -- I believe it's truly only to capture more of the market, and improving Meta's products means something which only META defines, like a snake eating its own tail.
This move is di-worsification -- Meta is fundamentally not in the subscription business. They don't provide ongoing accruing value..the subscription doesn't gain a user access to functionality.
My straw-man phrase, to illustrate the preposterousness .. for lols only .. "If only they had more money to invest in features which delight users." They have enough money.
I realize Meta's data shows that our user revealed preferences tells them that we like all the dopamine hijacking garbage but that's like saying "Well users like drugs, so we gave them more". Let me pay you to give me just the vitamins, and none of the sugar.
It an outlay of $50 a moth. Probably better to pay 50/number of friends though.
They are not for profit, developed by the matrix.org foundation.
No custom emojis, no self-chat, embeds are inconsistent (e.g. encrypted rooms), multi-image uploads aren't a thing in many clients, adding text when sending an attachment isn't a thing, just to name things we've run into over the years. Most of these have been brought up to the devs many years ago, only to spend forever in spec hell and never actually make it into a release.
We're just tolerating these, because we explicitly moved off discord to have control over our data, but being tech savvy we can handle this. It's nowhere near good enough that I could use it with less savvy people.
It's a hard blocker. I was running an engineering co-op off it and the onboarding difficulties was what finally led us to switch to discord.
All members are good engineers, but the client apps just had too many rough edges.
I really want the project to succeed so I'll keep checking in on it every year.
The Big Tech single server will experience a lot more attacks, some of which it can't withstand. Related example: Apple App Store was forced to delete a hundred VPNs after the pressure of Russian government.
Facebook is designed more as a shared scrapbook, with the assumption that data is precious and you want to share it with your community, and you should err on the side of oversharing so you don't lose any precious moments. Signal is in no way a replacement for Facebook.
That's... Just not true
> Facebook is designed more as a shared scrapbook
Have you used Facebook in the last 5 years? Its nothing like this at all.
I use it all the time. Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and we were reminiscing about visiting another friend's house, and we looked up some old birthday party invitations to help us remember when we had been there.
That they went past that to just kill their own golden goose is what is now reversible via a payment plan. That might be their only saving grace on this now managed decline.
I’ve been considering it but I am not sure if it drops just ads or suggested posts as well.
Yeah you'd do it to prove a point. 6 months later, no way in hell.
Youtube legitimately has some quality content. But I ended my subscription because fundamentally, streamlining the path to more Youtube usage is self-enabling devil’s work.
Point being: Im not convinced paying money to these companies is ultimately going to result in a healthier, more safe more private experience, no matter what they claim.
Why would you trust Meta to keep its promises?
Even Apple is not to be trusted with that, see, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
Meanwhile, FB has all my network that I can't recreate or self-host so yes, I would pay that.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680125...
I think that is the Feed's tab, though I have not used the blue app in a long time
You can change the feeds with extensions or modded apps for free and ads are blocked by default in any good browser.
I basically don't use Facebook any more because of this. Opening the app shows me the most sensationalist, fearmongering and outrage bait content they can find. It's worse than news channels (I haven't watched TV for 20 years). I have auto play turned off, and every few months the setting gets turned back on.
The first few posts I see scrolling through:
- US adds mandatory tips ahead of world cup.
- Woman dies after being hit by Audi in city center.
- There was a huge queue for women's toilets at a tech conference.
- 50% off mattresses.
- Some influencer I don't follow bought 20 rolls of 3M tape from Lidl.
Do I still have friends, do they still post stuff? I only see them in the reels/stories section at the top.
The only reason why I still have Facebook is because of groups. It's the main 'groups' tool people use in my country, so there are various local groups I am part of.
If someone is prepared to not be my friend because they only want to communicate via a Meta app, then I don’t see why I’d want them as a friend.
The good thing is that it isn't everywhere: Taiwan, Japan, and China usually have apps like Line or WeChat as options. In Europe there's more usage of WhatsApp (which is still Meta owned but also not social media). But in the US (and countries in the Americas), I still see a heavy reliance on Instagram and Facebook.
You can use a throwaway account for that or other things such as FB Marketplace. It's not ideal because it generates traffic on FB, but it's better than handing over all your private communications to Zuckerberg.
During local elections over here (Netherlands), it was impossible to find any info from local parties outside of Facebook. Those parties are also the biggest, usually. I ended up voting for the one party that had a website with their plans for that exact reason.
1/ meta products trigger organic conversations. People post on Instagram and Facebook that they’re traveling and I will reach out to them if I’m close by. People don’t use Signal that way.
2/ the Facebook groups are very useful for local communities. As a traveler, I reach out to Expat groups for feedback.
You delete a FB acct? It reactivates. Fun! Almost like the company is built off fraud
And I hate it. I had deactivated all my Meta accounts but reactivated WhatsApp because of school stuff.
Unless you're talking about parent groups. Because then you're fucked. Every parent group everywhere uses Facebook or Whatsapp and don't care that not everybody uses it. You will be excluded.
My daughter's school uses a clunky proprietary platform that is way, way worse than WhatsApp. I wish they used WhatsApp! Actually, they also do this, because being non techies their use of tech is all over the place and they adopted the worst of both worlds: school digital platform (very clunky) and, because it sucks, also WhatsApp. So important communications reach me both ways.
Sigh
For the down voters: Such as finding local business information or events in your community, and tons of other stuff which isn't anywhere else.
Facebook + Instagram already has more current information than the rest of the web combined.
Ditto for phones, if you mean the PSTN – as time goes on, fewer and fewer people have ever really used that. When people around the world are communicating via their smartphones with a phone-number-based protocol, it’s overwhelmingly WhatsApp, and guess who owns that?
That definitely sounds harsher than intended. It's a meditation really. Nobody needs FB and Instagram. (please read as a meditation)
You mention “FB and Instagram”, and I haven’t used either in a decade myself. But the OP did mention “Meta products” and you are ignoring the elephant in the room: WhatsApp. In many countries it has completely replaced the PSTN: you cannot contact a business (they won’t answer normal calls and may not post email addresses), cannot get the necessary info on how to check into the reception-less accommodation one booked, and one will find it hard to maintain contact with people one may well wish to maintain contact with.
Someone might be perfectly happy being your friend, and not understanding why you never come to their parties that they advertise via the group chat on whatever platform, or insta posts or whatever.
"If they cared enough they would message me directly on my obscure to normies messaging platform!" Yeah your best friend might. The greater social circle?
I get it, I'm trying to get everyone on signal or onto federated platforms, but I'm realizing that if I wanna talk to The People, I need to go to where The People are.
It had a placard in it saying something like "You don't have 100 friends. You have like 4. And that's OK."
The more I'm getting older, the truer this has become. There is something extremely zen-like about letting the past trail away like the wake of a ship, as Watts said.
In an ideal world, those people were dear to me, and me to them, and we would all stay in touch and be one big happy family, n'importe the distance. But it takes plenty out of me just to be there for those that matter most. And for them, putting up with my quirks is burdensome but not an unscalable wall. As it is for me with their quirks in reverse.
In many countries, either WhatsApp or a PSTN number for receiving an SMS is used today for the things that you think are done with email. I have lived in two countries that have highly digitized government services, and they were provided over an official app where email wasn’t part of the signup flow.
Sure, maybe some people use email at work (but WhatsApp has eaten into even that in some regions), but then that address is so associated with work that they don’t use it for social contacts.
The best compromise for such people, I guess, would be a work phone number that's solely for business WhatsApp communication.
Only on HN could someone post a take like this without getting laughed at. Outside our very geeky HN bubble, hardly anyone (let's say in Europe, but all my friends in the US use it as well) uses anything other than WhatsApp. There's literally zero reason for the average user to switch.
In europe we never had free unlimited texts. Internet was cheaper than calling/texting, especially with everyone having wifi at home and work. So a cross-platform messaging app appeared and has replaced text and calling.
I always found this peculiar, you would think it would be the other way around. I wonder why that is?
Some hard core committed communists prefer telegram, but even they usually have to have whatsapp too. No one uses signal or even knows what it is.
Most people in Spain still rely and prefer voice calls than messages anyway. I believe half the country must still be illiterate as they manage to send voice message but struggle to send written messages on whatsapp.
On a personal level you lose a bit of information when you don't have whatsapp. For example I didn't join the whatsapp group of my dance class and I am often unaware of stuff they mention on it but that doesn't prevent me to attend said classes.
I am (mostly against my will) in multiple professional and personal Whatsapp groups. Use is constant and daily and unavoidable. It is the principal means of communication in both work and personal settings. Calls are always a second option.
I suspect your experience reflects only partial integration in local culture.
I am in andalusia, hardly the most modern area if you discount the migrants that call themselves expats.
As a sibling comment to yours stated, the hardest decision was deciding to stop using Meta.
I have a militant "let the leaves fall where they may" attitude towards stopping relationships with companies I detest (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta...) It all always works out fine.
I'm not making any serious money off the old stuff I sell, but the alternative to selling it (or even giving away low-value stuff that's still functional) on facebook is basically just throwing it out / destructively recycling it.
I'm willing to give Meta the information that I enjoy old cars, bar trivia, and breakfast sandwich pop-ups.
Users.
In Portland, Oregon area Craigslist was popular, but is now a ghost town. Everybody has moved to Facebook marketplace.
I'm in WhatsApp groups with friends who live abroad, SMS is not an option. We could use another chat app, but then I'd have to convince every friend from every group to use something else. WhatsApp is what every friend I have agrees on.
I belong to several hobby groups that exist only on Facebook or Reddit (or Discord, but I dislike it for several reasons). I'd like to ditch both Facebook and Reddit, but that would mean leaving those hobby groups, and given the joy they bring me, I'm not willing to pull the plug yet.
So you see, it's really not that easy.
I don't think you realize how much Telegram is associated with hated Russia and the local far-right in several European countries.
Or attend an event in person. They advertise their in person events on the meshtastic Facebook group.
I personally abhore Facebook (and IG,Whatsapp) and don't want to use any of them; I have uninstalled/reinstalled Whatsapp many times. Out of practical concern, I now only use Whatsapp in business settings where it would create tension and create social awkwardness not to. But I dislike the fact that I do.
I'm in Scandinavia, and at least here, Messenger is by far the most dominant messaging app.
Meta in general has a really tight grip here.
We like having two apps: WA for friends, Signal for family. There are only few reasons to mix the two.
On the other hand, I've convinced a lot of my friends to get Signal. I'm the only person that they speak to on Signal, but that's fine ;)
The main advice we got is that although you need to migrate individuals, the main focus should be on migrating channels. If you have a family group chat, that's the target. Tell people about how Meta spies on them, etc, and then support everyone in the channel to individually set up Signal if necessary.
Nobody, and I do mean nobody, realizes that using Whatsapp by default (which everyone accepts) synchronizes their entire contacts list to Meta. It's a golden trove of valuable data for an ad targeting company.
People don't realize that there is so much that can be inferred about you from your contacts. Whether you have kids, which schools they go to, and similar personal information.
All of this is not even on the radar and people reduce privacy to "whether someone listens in on my calls or conversations" and tend to brush it off, because they honestly don't care about that part.
Signal doesn't make it easier by refusing to allow encrypted iCloud backups for so many years (which means people lose data when they lose their phones!) and recently introducing a subscription backup service instead of allowing me to do an encrypted iCloud backup. It's hard to explain to people that they should use an inferior product just because of "privacy".
The recent yet another revival of Gadu Gadu pass by without much fanfare. For those unfamiliar: GG was created by single guy upon ICQ idea of UIN's and quickly become the default messenger in Poland some 20 years ago - even gov't used it at some point. But it lost its position to Skype, Whatsapp and Viber. I admire somewhat the dedication this new company has in restoring our "homemade" network. But it's way too late: new generation of people who's mainly familiar with big corporations services have grown up and GG has nothing that'd made it replace these.
Of course, the trick is you don't actually get "everyone". You get the users with more money, who are more valuable ad targets. Still, $39.99/m seems like it'd be pretty high.
I have a server (for my game) with about 1000 people. Out of the 300 people logged in, 50 of them have custom profiles.
So, it seems like a good idea for Meta.
I’ll be surprised if Meta’s subscriptions are as popular as Discord’s without being advertising free. Cosmetics are liked amongst Discord’s audience of nerds, but not Meta’s audience of normal people.
Very interested to see how this works out for Meta. Since they’re not excluding ads, it’s basically free money, so they may as well offer these subscriptions.
But also, definitionally, the users who are willing to pay the most are the ones who the see ads as the biggest anti-value (i.e. cost) to themselves - so they'll be the ones most likely to not use the service if they're not given an ad-free option - cutting down the average user value anyway.
See for yourself: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
That's why I'd count Discord subs as a specific case targeting specific kind of a terminally online user who doesn't mind paying for such customization to show own digital identity, that for the rest means nothing. Discord had a brilliant idea here while at the same time allows to use their service without all these bells and whistles. Tho, I expect they'll start limiting it for those who refuse to subscribe in the nearest future.
if this prevents them from adding privacy-harming things to whatsapp, the more power to them. but it certainly does not guarantee this behaviour.
Problem is, facebook WILL raise the prices on these subscriptions every few months until they could not anymore. So I will have to pay probably like $12.99/m in a couple of years.
Time to suggest them to join Mastodon and Pixelfed? Relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is a bad way to keep contact with friends.
Sure. Guess how many of them will actually do it?
> Relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is a bad way to keep contact with friends.
I'd say it's exactly the opposite: relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is currently the best way to keep contact with friends.
Unfortunately.
That's how much they value your friendship then :)
I've ditched those forms of social media, and haven't really had trouble keeping in touch with most people I'd like to keep in touch with, whether it's emails, calls, texts or regular meets/activities in meatspace. The people in your life who truly care about you will make a genuine effort to remain in touch with you.
If people don't want to make that effort, why do I need to be connected to what they're doing every day?
Between SMS, messenger, instagram, whatsapp, discord, slack, ms teams, signal, there's a point where juggling too much messaging apps become a burden instead of convenience.
I think insisting on using weird products nobody in the real world knows about is a “bad way to keep contact with friends”
It went a bit like this:
- EU mandates that users should be given the option to opt out from non-essential cookies.
- Meta responds by implementing an ad-free subscription-based model in EU, which allows them to dodge regulation.
- EU of course sees through their scheme and prepares to sanction them.
- Meta rolls-out subscriptions worldwide, so that it becomes harder for EU to claim that subscriptions were specifically created for dodging EU regulation.
HARRIS: We had an arrangement!
KRELL: You did what I wanted. I don't need you anymore.
HARRIS: You agreed that both our governments would benefit if the two of us worked together.
KRELL: And you believed me.
Ohhhh but he was young! Be easy on him
(/s)
Social media is here to stay, unfortunately. Meta, LinkedIn, X, I wouldn't invest in the long term.
If you are paying for the usage (mostly server and development costs), your data need not be used for anything other than actually improving the product and security.
Currently the data is purely to extract profits and keep you hooked. This is what they have made you believe social media is about. Its not. You aren't hooked on iMessage and FaceTime scrolling reels and wasting hours. It's actually used to connect with people.
And a lot of this is probably spent maintaining the ad machine
And just to say it is actually sad there is no alternative because most of those artists dont really gain a valuable network effect from posting there. But it is how younger unestablished peoples establish themselves as existing. There are entire comedy/music scenes that essentially require you to have an Instagram account.
In the current state those subscriptions will just show your friends that you're a huge loser who's willing to pay for custom backgrounds.
Are there new numbers that one can access? I can imagine the value has gone up, but hundreds of dollars seem like a lot.
Would you pay $27/mo for instagram?
This sort of looks like a subscription for influencers, organisation and "power users". Even if you turned off the ads, most of people feed, from what I've seen are basically ads they signed up for, e.g. posts from companies, so I doubt that most even care.
If only Google Plus lived long enough to see this day...
90% was these weird pages having very sexual teasing shorts, or bikini girls / latex pants etc. None of the pages were something is had ever seen before, or even followed.
The rest 9% was AI gen low qulity shorts, and the remaining 1% was actually from someone i did was friends with, but even thise seemes like some tool had generated them, as in "follow my new business page" etc.
The facebook that once was seem to be totally gone by now, and im not even sure what it is anymore.
I never got an instgram account, but i guess its the same low quality shit over there.
Was it spammers that caused this mass migration to ever more closed platforms?
Open protocols are still there and still used, but we're sad because the smaller userbase is frustrating. Just like how people still publish human written content to personal blogs, but they're proportionally non-existent.
Open-source always has a certain level of "jank" that tends to decimate interest from common folks.
But if you take away even read-only API access to services[0], I'm a) not going to pay and b) going to stop using your services.
[0] I really don't feel like converting my Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp accounts to the "business" variants just to get access to the APIs.
Now we need something new to show to the shareholders and that is this.
Fire Mark Zuckerberg into the stratosphere and I'll will you my worldly possessions.
Anything Zuckerberg needs antitrust immediately
If this new sub becomes a status signaling, it might work.
I was hoping the article was about ad-free, "promoted/suggested" free, followers-only feed, paid subscription. That's the only thing I'm willing to pay for.
(I closed by FB account nearly 10 years ago, but still have IG. WhatsApp is the most useful - private groups for friends/family.)
But actually this is a good move. I tried to convince my family and friends to use alternatives, without success. But now I see hope.
Have stopped using FB and IG years ago, was stuck with WhatsApp because of half the world using it.
The fact that Meta still exists as a company is a valid proof of a failed civilization.
Did I mention that their products are mediocre at best?
We decided to do the same again.
They occasionally have a donation popup but it's one of the easiest and least intrusive programs I've ever used, and it just works.
I value my (various groups of) friends more than I value moving out of WhatsApp, and for what anyway? WhatsApp is perfect for our needs. If it becomes paid-only, we'll move out of it, but not before. I don't need dealing with this kind of nerdy crusade. And I need to have WhatsApp installed anyway for different family members [1] and the parent school groups and official comms from school.
Sorry, but that suggestion is a no-go in the real world. It only works in the micro-bubble of HN.
---
[1] Let me preempt your likely "but convince all of your family of using <thing> instead...". No. Just no.
Why do they have to be "willing to move out"? They're free to continue to use whatever they want, but how they get in touch with you might be different. Also, what's up with using "nerd" as a pejorative? Why the hostility?
But at the end of the day, yeah, it's not all that off-base. The measure of how much someone values staying in touch with you is generally going to be reflected in how much effort they put into doing so.
>Sorry, but that suggestion is a no-go in the real world.
What is "the real world"? Is there a standard definition that is applicable to everyone everywhere? I live in "the real world", too, and have no issue conversing with all of my family, parents from my kid's school, and official notifications from school without WhatsApp or social media. Texts, phone calls, emails, regular in-person meets/activities all work wonders, as does the school's communication system that can be accessed via a browser, or the notices/bulletins my kids bring home on paper that typically cover most of what's communicated via the browser (but I digress).
>It only works in the micro-bubble of HN.
No, it works where it works, and it doesn't where it doesn't. The thing that a lot of people in the comments in these types of threads seem to miss is that this is very obviously a "YMMV" situation, wholly dependent upon what's around you. Sure, fine, use WhatsApp because you need important information from your kid's school(s) if that's literally the only way they communicate - I'm a reasonable individual who won't criticize such a move, because your hands are tied. C'est la vie.
>[1] Let me preempt your likely "but convince all of your family of using <thing> instead...". No. Just no.
There's no pre-empting necessary on your part because I had no intention of it, but, uhh... thanks for the assumption, I guess? You don't have to bother convincing anyone. "Here's how to reach me," one time is all that needs to be done. If they want to reach you, they'll reach you. No extolling of virtues required, and trying to convince someone not to use something is not necessary.
No, I'm not going to force them to communicate differently with me just out of some sort of principle. WhatsApp works. And I do want to talk to them, it's not an "either way, who cares" deal for me.
And there's no hostility, I was merely pointing out how much HN can be out of touch with reality sometimes. "Nerdy" is only a hostile adjective if you want it to be. Do you?
> What is "the real world"? Is there a standard definition that is applicable to everyone everywhere? I live in "the real world", too, and have no issue conversing with all of my family, parents from my kid's school, and official notifications from school without WhatsApp or social media.
I already explained this in my first comment to which you replied: the only people who see no trouble in replacing all these apps are those who don't use them for anything interesting. Like you. Meanwhile, other people exist in the rest of the world, and it's not so easy...
> The thing that a lot of people in the comments in these types of threads seem to miss [...]
Exactly. We just disagree on what is missed.
> "Here's how to reach me," one time is all that needs to be done. If they want to reach you, they'll reach you.
No, this is not how it works. This is, like I said, a very HN micro-bubble thing to say.
Nobody's asking you to force them. :)
>I already explained this in my first comment to which you replied: the only people who see no trouble in replacing all these apps are those who don't use them for anything interesting. Like you. Meanwhile, other people exist in the rest of the world, and it's not so easy...
Yes, your comment said that it "will only work for people who are not really users of WhatsApp or Instagram". My point is that I have plenty of friends and family who regularly use both of those platforms, and they also regularly communicate with me outside of those platforms. It took no haranguing on my part, I just let them know how to say hey if they wanted to.
>No, this is not how it works.
It is! I genuinely think you'd be surprised at how many people would go along with it.
>This is, like I said, a very HN micro-bubble thing to say.
Except that it's not. What is "HN" about walking away from tech? That's a growing trend in our contemporary society. You argue that it's a "very HN" thing to do, yet I'm the only person in my friends and family group that would be considered a "techie", and everyone who I communicate with seems to have had no problem getting in touch with me outside of those tech apps.
If you're not forcing them, and you want to keep in touch with them, aren't we back where we started? "It's not so easy".
> It took no haranguing on my part, I just let them know how to say hey if they wanted to.
Perfect, it worked for you. It doesn't work for others. Let's say it with me: "it's not so easy".
> It is! I genuinely think you'd be surprised at how many people would go along with it.
It's not! There are many groups out there for which your experience doesn't apply. It's a bubble. And it's a bit presumptuous to assume your interlocutor has no experience trying to change things. At one point, some things are not worth the effort and one has to pick their battles.
> Except that it's not. What is "HN" about walking away from tech?
The HN bubble I refer to is the one where they (we actually, of course I'm not immune) think their microcosm of experiences, very principled and nerd- or tech-focused, and often for specific cultures or nations, applies to the rest of the world. It's typical of some HN'ers to announce to the world that they have LEFT FACEBOOK FOR GOOD and that they aren't missing anything important. Great for them!
It's helpful to always remember: not everyone is like you/me/us, and... wait for it... "it's not that easy".
Subscribe on Facebook.com or Instagram.com: €5.99 per month for one account, plus €4 per month (or price in applicable local currency) for each additional account in the same Accounts Center
Ahh, remember the days of livejournal/myspace, where we got all of those “features” for free because your profile is literally a fucking webpage
I blame Bethesda and their horse armor for this.
Thank you - I don't want any of that.
What exactly are "fun" features, anyway? Do they take away from my time?
...but it's unclear what this subscription would give me. The announcement has no real details, the article is light on detail, and the WhatsApp website has no mention of this subscription.
I get that it's hard. What I want is a good text and call app, and that's hard to charge for at scale. But every feature that Meta has added to justify charging (AI, stories, profiles, etc), makes the product worse for me and makes me less likely to pay for it.
They're in a hard place.
But speaking as someone who deleted a high following FB page that I probably shouldn't have because the back end of it was so infuriating, I don't understand this offering. It seems like a lot of bling and clutter. Most people who need to use Meta for biz reasons want the same thing - live support that is not a bot or a human that may as well be a bot.
And not to get too granular but if you've used IG lately, for example, you notice that trying to do anything on the back end (eg: set up up some boosted posts or schedule things) takes the user through a maze and sometimes you end up in the old legacy Facebook pages, which has links that don't relate to any of the contemporary features. It sounds minor but it essentially barely functions and each click to confirm something sends you to another section to confirm something else. You also need a FB page to do anything on an IG page and a tonne of other petty thwartings. The fact that their brand new subscriptions/Meta platform seems just as confusing is alarming. I don't know how a company with this much money can not design an un-hellish back end or offer reasonable customer support.
Their A.I. monitoring is also completely off the chain, closing accounts and locking profiles for opaque reasons that cannot be questioned.
Meta? Fuck off. We all know they're already doing awful stuff with our data, they've had more bugs last year than all of whatsapps previous history combined, and whatever price they request now is step one for enshittification.
True, a lot of other people i know, including family and corpo, use Whatsapp. I will not pay to stay in contact with them. They can go back to sms or email if they want to. Or pay for me.
All of this to say: ads are only in status updates and channels (no idea what this is, never used one) and apparently not in every region.
The only good thing about WhatsApp is, it is used by everyone that I know, so I can connect with them pretty easily and make calls, etc. I hope they don't enshittify it too much to the point where I'll go and use Signal full time.
Also youtube, unfortunately. Google does not understand that AI is slowly killing youtube.
I am an expert cat video person, so noticing AI slop is not so hard, but it takes a few seconds (e. g. a mother cat punishing the young cat for "overreach" - the way how the AI video insinuated reality was of course completely false, AI spam slop that lies to real humans). I'd rather wish Google would not waste my time (then again, why am I still using youtube ... one day I'll be degoogled for good. The sooner Google is gone from this planet, the better.)
Not just that. Even comments, some of those are basically AI crap, cleverly disguised as real users. It is such a waste, honestly. AI has brought upon us a low-quality world to live in, out of nowhere. This is such a pity.
"Hi there, I am no longer using WhatsApp. To contact me, please..."
It's almost like the people still using Meta services are metaphorical bots or low agency human beings.
People don't care about the platform, they just want shit to work and for better or worse, Facebook works for them.
...
"social media is over"
...
"Facebook Plus $4/month"
What a joke.
They have a stranglehold on everything. It's inescapable.