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

401–410 of 533 posts

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#401

Post by carlosjobim »

fragmede wrote: post #189
bigmadshoe wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually look this information up! For example, Instagram makes approx $2-50 ad revenue per user per year, depending on the region. Apparently it’s highest in North America. So Of course this would get pretty expensive for all the services we use. But I personally would happily throw $100-$250 per year at my most used apps to stop being advertised to.

How's your YouTube Premium subscription?

It's without a doubt one of the best value for money subscription available, except for electricity, water, a library subscription.

There's an endless amount of the highest quality videos available on YouTube. But you need to let the algorithm understand what you like by using the conveniently named "Like" and "Dislike" buttons.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#402

Post by chris_wot »

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 purchase a subscription, you need to value and trust the service. To trust the service the provider needs to show it can be trusted.

It’s Facebook. Why would anyone trust them?

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#403

Post by lou1306 »

rupatiwari25 wrote: post #325

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.

Well people _used_ to pay for it, in fact. Except it was 3 EUR/year rather than 3 EUR/month...

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#404

Post by akdev1l »

bko wrote: post #399
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.

Isn't that the whole point of social media like Instagram? To convince the world you have disposable income and are living a lavish lifestyle? Personally I like signaling that I have money. Why would you want people to think you're poor or cheap, except maybe when you're shopping for a car.

> Why would you want people to think you're poor or cheap, except maybe when you're shopping for a car.

Personally, I don’t generally think about how other people perceive if I have money or not.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#405

Post by bigmadshoe »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #265
bigmadshoe wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. I think it depends on the person. I know plenty of people without much disposable income who still pay for several subscriptions.

Advertisers don’t care about disposable income they care about spending habits even if the buyer is irresponsible and can’t afford it

Exactly, so hacker news readers are not necessarily the people who would need to be charged the most to remove advertisements. I barely shop.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#406

Post by bigmadshoe »

hvb2 wrote: post #264
bigmadshoe wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. I think it depends on the person. I know plenty of people without much disposable income who still pay for several subscriptions.

That's also how you get to little disposable income. It's choices people make and that's their right but it does look odd occasionally.

The amount of money you spend doesn’t affect your disposable income, just your savings (beyond calculating interest). Unless we have different definitions of income or disposable.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#407

Post by renegade-otter »

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…

I have serious doubts that Meta is aiming to improve these products. Every time I open Instagram - ironically of course - it just seems like more and more AI slop.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#408

Post by renegade-otter »

bko wrote: post #399
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.

Isn't that the whole point of social media like Instagram? To convince the world you have disposable income and are living a lavish lifestyle? Personally I like signaling that I have money. Why would you want people to think you're poor or cheap, except maybe when you're shopping for a car.

Why would you want to signal that? It relates in no way as to what kind of person you are. In fact, the richer you are, the more questions I have about how you got it and who got shafted along the way.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#409

Post by rickcarlino »

Meta’s reputation has eroded so much that many will view this as an act of desperation rather than a chance to reframe social media. The idea of paying for social media to become the customer rather than the product has been both discussed and tried. There is such a deep lack of trust from years of bad deeds that I doubt anything positive will come out of this.

Re: Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

#410

Post by baggachipz »

rickcarlino wrote: post #409

Meta’s reputation has eroded so much that many will view this as an act of desperation rather than a chance to reframe social media. The idea of paying for social media to become the customer rather than the product has been both discussed and tried. There is such a deep lack of trust from years of bad deeds that I doubt anything positive will come out of this.

Not just that, but there's no mention of removing ads or tracking. So it sounds like people get to pay for the privilege of being the product on a platform which has degraded to the point of being absolutely useless.
Post reply on HN