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

arstechnica.com

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

#71

Post by jsnell »

jerf wrote: post #47
TekMol wrote: post #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…

"I wonder how it could be legal, because not having free access is a negative consequence, isn't it?" I think even in Europe the claim that any company has an obligation to serve you for 100% free, getting nothing out of it whatsoever, is not going to fly very far. It isn't even a moral issue per se; it's just impossible. Companies need some sort of income. One can speculate on how nice it would be if that were not t…

It's not that there is an obligation to serve you for free. But the only alternative to personalized ads can't be a subscription.

What do you do if a user refuses the use of their data for ad targeting? In the worst car you show them untargeted ads. Ideally you target ads on ways that don't require that user's personal data, such as being based solely on the page content.

The newspapers are blatantly violating the GDPR, and it is kind of disgusting that the DPAs are choosing to selectively not enforce the law due to political reasons (governments can't afford to be seen as being against the local media).

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

#73

Post by octacat »

Gasp0de wrote: post #56
octacat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they want you on the app, so they would specially not show you stuff from friends, so you have to scroll more. If you know that there is no updates - it is not engaging.

But if I pay for no ads, do they need me to engage? Their income is fixed to 14$/month no matter the amount of engagement. Actually, they save server costs if I engage less.

The amount of wasted time is a "great" metric for the investors :)

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

#74

Post by Gasp0de »

octacat wrote: post #73
Gasp0de wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if I pay for no ads, do they need me to engage? Their income is fixed to 14$/month no matter the amount of engagement. Actually, they save server costs if I engage less.

The amount of wasted time is a "great" metric for the investors :)

I don't think META is looking for investors. And for advertisers, only the wasted time of those who are shown ads is of interest.

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

#75

Post by Gasp0de »

o10449366 wrote: post #69
Gasp0de wrote: post #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.

This is already a feature and has been for a long time. Instagram allows you to only see posts from people you follow and will tell you when you've seen all new content from the past X days.

Really? How can I enable that?

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

#76

Post by xnx »

jerf wrote: post #44
croes wrote: post #21

So for $14 I get no ads but I'm still tracked?

If this were to become a major income for Facebook or any similar company, the economic calculus would change such that all the tracking becomes an expense that doesn't generate a return (since we can't use it to serve ads). If this program succeeds and goes the distance it will eventually come to someone's attention that they can cut their costs quite significantly by stopping tracking subscribers beyond the minimum…

> I mean, after all, if you cut out the immense spend they're making to throw ads at you, how much would it actually cost to provide the "good" part of Facebook's services to an average user? It really isn't much and it continues to drop.

I've often wondered about this. A social network could be operated quite inexpensively if you didn't have to pay for sales, marketing, attention hacking, etc. (Twitter is kind of testing this hypothesis.) Social networks should be as boring and everyday as blogs and email.

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

#77

Post by octacat »

Gasp0de wrote: post #74
octacat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of wasted time is a "great" metric for the investors :)

I don't think META is looking for investors. And for advertisers, only the wasted time of those who are shown ads is of interest.

Stock holders, fixed :) It is a pretty good metric of how the company is doing. I.e. if paying customers still spend a lot of time on the app, they would pay the next time. If the time decreases, there is a risk they would not prolong subscription.
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