Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 533 posts

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#371

Post by barbazoo »

Starman_Jones wrote: post #56
drnick1 wrote: post #46

Just stop using Meta products. It's really not as hard as it seems. Nobody needs FB to communicate with friends and family. Send texts or emails or use your phone.

The hardest part about not using Meta products is deciding not to use meta products. When I stopped using Facebook, I had resigned myself to spending a lot of time and effort to stay in touch with my friends and family. As it turns out, all I had to do was mention that I was using Signal, and the people closest to me, then pretty close to me, then kinda close to me all started using that too. The network effect cuts…

Right. If being on meta is what keeps the "friendship" going and leaving the platform would have negative effect on the relationship, then on my opinion it wasn't a friendship to begin with. But that might just be my outdated view of how humans work.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#372

Post by barbazoo »

doom2 wrote: post #178
ryandrake wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing how strong the Meta FOMO is. I stopped using Facebook over 10 years ago and never even opened Instagram or WhatsApp, and I really am not missing out on anything in life. My actual friends know how to contact me and they do! And it’s really not that hard to say “Sorry I don’t have Whats App, just call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx.” If someone is prepared to not be my friend because they only want to communicate via…

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…

I feel blessed to just be able to say no and move in. Not worth it. And nothing will change until some people make the first step. In every community.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#373

Post by egorfine »

I am a happy Instagram user. As a Ukrainian, this is the only connection left with lots of my friends now as we are scattered around the world. And I would happily pay $2.99/m for Instagram to have those better features.

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.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#375

Post by vasco »

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…

To me this is more like the arc of

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.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#376

Post by MarleTangible »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #224
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.

"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 part…

And YouTube recently (and silently) started approving multiple in-add ads for videos longer than 20 minutes. They destroyed the long-form content creators with their shorts push, and now it looks like they're trying to recover a little.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#377

Post by lolive »

chistev wrote: post #144
lolive wrote: post #83

I barely use all those services. But I wonder how i would react if Reddit became a paywall.

With the constant Enshittification. It's only a matter of time.

Will usenet resurrect from there? As usual the BIG issue is the search engine.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#378

Post by documentorium »

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…

Did you check this out? https://isactiv.com/ - Private social network - exactly what you describe

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#379

Post by PatronBernard »

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…

C'mon, it's the oldest trick in MBA book: make a much-used service paid, make the free version of it terrible and you force people to get the paid service.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#380

Post by panja »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #357
dgellow wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is fairly common in Western Europe

[flagged]

Like you said "in my experience."

You could use it for other things lol. My entire boring friend group uses it for none of those.

Post reply on HN