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Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

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Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#221

Post by moron4hire »

apsurd wrote: post #118
scns wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they’ll take the subscription AND sell your data, serve you ads Streaming services claiming prior art here.

I just remembered there’s a black mirror episode about this. The paid subscription evolution by a “health tech” startup let’s say. I won’t give away the plot, but it’s so realistically absurd it’s sad, hilarious and terrifying all at once.

I was just watching that episode literally now and had to nope out of it halfway through because it was making me sick to my stomach.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#222

Post by windexh8er »

apsurd wrote: post #112
qqtt wrote: post #98

I'm going to go against the grain here and say this is probably a positive thing for Meta products, and honestly every other "free" service to provide these kinds of revenue avenues. 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 reve…

Heard it here on HN: problem is paying a subscription is purely additive. eventually, inevitably, they’ll take the subscription AND sell your data, serve you ads, etc. it being against what your payment contract states just means they’ll reinvent and rename the tiers.

This is just a copy of the YouTube model, to your point. It's not that you're going to get a premier experience. It's that you'll be spared from full enshittification. Only tech bros could possibly think making the default subscription level so bad that it would drive revenue. But here we are.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#223

Post by abdullahkhalids »

tgma wrote: post #173
sensanaty wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You paying just signals that you're someone to push more ads to and to harvest more data on, since it means you have disposable income to spend on something as useless as instagram or facebook. 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.

People who spew I'd rather pay, I'd rather pay often majorly underestimate how expensive Google and Facebook would have to be in the western world to offset the ad revenue per person. The irony is this is especially true for you if money is no object to you, as you'd be disproportionately valuable to the ad machine. It's not going to be ten bucks folks.

Why would you include the money required to pay shareholders, pay the humongous parts of the company doing ad tech, the lobbying money, the fine money, etc. What is the cost of running a social media site?

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.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117385

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#224

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

sensanaty wrote: post #134
qqtt wrote: post #98

I'm going to go against the grain here and say this is probably a positive thing for Meta products, and honestly every other "free" service to provide these kinds of revenue avenues. 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 reve…

You paying just signals that you're someone to push more ads to and to harvest more data on, since it means you have disposable income to spend on something as useless as instagram or facebook. 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.

"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." (Meta sells access not data)

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

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#225

Post by [deleted] »

qqtt wrote: post #98

I'm going to go against the grain here and say this is probably a positive thing for Meta products, and honestly every other "free" service to provide these kinds of revenue avenues. 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 reve…

[deleted]

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#226

Post by mrandish »

qqtt wrote: post #98

I'm going to go against the grain here and say this is probably a positive thing for Meta products, and honestly every other "free" service to provide these kinds of revenue avenues. 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 reve…

> this is probably a positive thing for Meta products

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.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#227

Post by lucaspiller »

pj_mukh wrote: post #11

I would pay $49.99/mo for an unlimited plan that brings me only my friends' status updates (not their hyper-political likes and comments), just their life updates. Daily stories are great too. But JUST that, no influencers, no ads. 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 mor…

> we like all the dopamine hijacking garbage

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.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#229

Post by the_af »

whyenot wrote: post #181
sethops1 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid for YouTube Premium until they started showing me ads for YouTube TV (and maybe YouTube Red at the time?). Cancelled and got into DNS adblocking.

Maybe this was something country or region specific. I don’t remember ever seeing ads for TV, Red, or other products with my US premium subscription. Now, some channels will promote specific products in their videos (like the mini ads some do for square space, nordvpn, etc), but YouTube, now has a button you can click to jump over that garbage.

It must be country/region specific.

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).

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