301–310 of 533 posts
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.
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…
> 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
Anyone here remember the early days of WhatsApp, pre-Facebook, when it required an annual subscription fee of $1?
Remember clearly the first time that message popped up, asking for $1/year, and I think you could basically "skip for now" and then it'd pop back up again later again. I remember thinking how brilliant it was, just hitting 100K active users in a year would be $100K, more than enough for a person, and at their scale they'd make it work long-term. Then of course eventually the $20B purchase happened and it became a pro…
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The annoying thing is how many businesses and communities rely on Meta platforms instead of their own websites and sometimes it's the only way to contact them. If I want to check if the small neighborhood grocery has something in stock? No phone, only Instagram DMs. When I was on vacation abroad and wanted to see if an out of the way farmers market was still happening despite rain? Only Facebook. The good thing is th…
> want to check if the small neighborhood grocery has something in stock? No phone, only Instagram DMs. 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.
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Soon? They have ads already.
Interesting. There are no ads for messaging. I only use WhatsApp for messages (individual and groups). I've never used status updates or any other nonsense (I don't even understand why one would want to do status updates, but some people seem to use them). 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.
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>It's really not as hard as it seems 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.
WhatsApp as the only contact point is a pretty strong signal that the user is from a developing world country. I'm not from that part of the world, so I don't use WhatsApp.
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.
Now we need something new to show to the shareholders and that is this.
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I maintain Meta accounts for two purposes. Facebook Marketplace, and following local businesses on Instagram because it's become the de facto platform for many artists/bars/restaurants/popups to distribute information. I don't add friends, I don't "like" posts, and I don't doomscroll the garbage they put in my feed. I'm willing to give Meta the information that I enjoy old cars, bar trivia, and breakfast sandwich pop…
What does facebook marketplace have over craigslist?
Users.
In Portland, Oregon area Craigslist was popular, but is now a ghost town. Everybody has moved to Facebook marketplace.
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…
Id pay money to not see ads. Like YouTube premium. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. Can’t believe they rolled out all these different plans and left out the one thing a lot of people would buy.
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…
Aren't people here old enough to recall paying for WhatsApp's original subscription fee? Circa 2016: https://www.techspot.com/news/63504-whatsapp-waves-goodbye-a...