331–340 of 533 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are they even doing with all of this data collection, especially considering that ads still are terrible at pertaining to my interests?
Make the feed curation algo more addictive.
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 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.
WhatsApp feels like one of the few products where people might actually pay. It's become critical infrastructure for communication in many countries, not just another social app.
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.
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.
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.
If only Google Plus lived long enough to see this day...
It's very difficult to do business in Western Europe without Whatsapp. I have probably asked more than 60 people to switch to Signal and the social burden it introduces (i.e. asking a new acquaintance to install a new app) can have negative signalling effects (e.g. you don't adapt, create more work, why do you care so much about privacy, etc.) I personally abhore Facebook (and IG,Whatsapp) and don't want to use any o…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plus now they even have your credit information for better ad targeting
credit card itself can’t be used to ad targeting. But plenty of proxies make this point largely irrelevant.
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…
WhatsApp feels like one of the few products where people might actually pay. It's become critical infrastructure for communication in many countries, not just another social app.
It is just a name. If it disappears, people can switch over for something else in a day that works similarly. Is it then critical?