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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

The solution is really simple - have an (optional) monthly fee of $10 and the need to monetize (your) user data is gone. But how many people would take that deal? I somewhat doubt it would be a significant portion.

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I suspect your data's worth more than that to them.

Revenue in Q4 2014 was $3.58 billion, monthly active users was 1.393 billion which then yields a revenue of $0.86 per active user and month. With $10 per user and month they would earn a lot more and at the same time with a lot less effort.

I doubt that - most users would probably not pay $10 per month to remain on facebook. The more people who left then the more incentive there would be for more people to leave, since part of the barrier to exit is that many of a user's friends and contacts are using facebook and don't have a presence on alternative social networks.

How about requiring it for some optional features?

$10 may be cheap in the developed countries, but in much of the world this is a very significant amount of money.

The fee would obviously have to take this into account but I see no principal problem with that. I would assume that showing ads to somebody from a rich country also brings in more money than showing them to someone from a poorer country.

People with disposable income who are able to pay $10 / month are exactly the people that advertisers want to reach. It's a catch 22 problem.

But Facebook should not care if they get their money via ads or directly. They should actually favor fees because of less overhead. Ad prices and therefore the fee could go up until it reaches the real value of those ads making it a free choice for everyone if they want to pay a fee and keep their privacy or if they see value in ads and want to pay indirectly via higher product prices and additionally lose their privacy.

Personally I see absolute no value for consumers in ads. I like good critical reviews, not marketing bullshit. If I had the power, I would probably even consider prohibiting advertising altogether.

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