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Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

arstechnica.com

31–40 of 77 posts

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#31
post #7

$14 in Poland would be $3.22 VAT extra. 76 PLN according to current exchange rate. For comparison: My mobile plan: 35 PLN Disney+: 29 PLN Amazon Prime: 11 PLN HBO MAX: 30 PLN Netflix 4k: 60 PLN Apple TV+: 35 PLN Its even more than Netflix 4k, which here has reputation for costing too much.

I suspect it would be like most other services that have a different price in each European country. I would guess the $value is a conversion for the article from one example country.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#33
Judging from the article, it seems that the only reason for this is to shut down regulators with this argument: "You want us to stop tracking users? Users already have that option, it's a subscription". So I believe the pricing is intentionally outrageous, it's not really meant as a reasonable choice.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't sell your data, the whole way they make money is by keeping hold of your data and selling targeted ads. Why would they sell away their competitive advantage?

Selling targeted ads is selling your data (not directly, but selling products that depend on your data). Are they going to continue to use your data to sell targeted ads to others?

Selling your data = "pay us $$$ and we'll give you the name, email, phone number, DoB, SSN, interests, credit score of a million users". Plenty of companies do this today (both legal and illegal), but Facebook isn't one of them.

Selling targeted ads = "pay us $$$ and we'll show your ads to people who match the criteria you select". This is very different from the former.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#37
I think this is a "trick" to get around the GDPR. Many European newspapers already do this:

The GDPR says that it is not allowed that the user who denies their personal data to be stored experiences negative consequences because of that.

So in theory, behavioral advertising is dead in Europe. Because nobody would voluntarily agree to be tracked.

For some reason, many companies go the "Our service is available in two flavours: With behavioral advertising and as a paid service" route. And it seems that has not been challenged in court yet.

I wonder how it could be legal, because not having free access is a negative consequence, isn't it?

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#38
Facebook is basically the only place on the internet where I actually like the ads.

I've discovered and bought many products from them and Facebook gives me a clean way to block and report ads that I think are bad.

Honestly my biggest complaint is that I'll often see something in a Facebook ad, want to buy it 2 months later and there's no way for me to look up which ads I saw on Facebook 2 months ago.

Re: Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe

#40
Will it give me the option to only see stuff from people I follow? Because the worst part of Facebook and Instagram is not the ads but the content that is shown to me to keep me engaged. I want to scroll my friends pictures and when there are no new pictures I want the feed to stop. I'd pay for this even if am still shown targeted ads.
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