
Survey results: How much would you pay for Facebook without ads? - kawera
https://www.recode.net/2018/4/11/17225328/facebook-ads-free-paid-service-mark-zuckerberg
======
watertom
Advertisers have succeeded for years and years using Billboard, Radio, TV,
Newspaper, and magazines with very limited viewer demographics.

I don't understand why we've decided as a society that the advertisers
__DESERVE __all the data they want. Better serving the needs of the consumer
is complete joke, it 's all about control.

This is one of the few area where the government, meaning you and I, __NEEDS
__to step up and protect the citizens.

 __ALL __data collection should be opt in, I should know what data they
collect, who they share it with, and for what purpose. I should have the
options to opt out and have all my data deleted.

~~~
Meekro
As a small business owner, I love the fact that I can advertise to people who
are searching for a particular thing, or have a particular demographic, or
whatever. I never could have launched my company without it. Clearly those
people got some value out of it as well: they were told about a company that
they didn't know existed, and wound up signing up for an account with that
company. Win-win.

Everyone has known for years that Facebook tracks everything they do. Facebook
hasn't really tried to hide that fact. The silent majority chose to use it
anyway because whatever benefits they get outweigh the loss in privacy. I am
in that majority, and the last thing I need is some vocal minority second-
guessing my choice.

~~~
watertom
I absolutely believe that you should be able to advertise to someone looking
for your service, but that doesn't mean if I'm offering advice in a forum that
you as an advertiser should get my name, IP, email, browsing habits etc.
shared with you just because I mentioned your product category.

I don't think the organization hosting the forum, should be parsing my content
submission and inserting your ad while sharing my info.

~~~
Meekro
I've bought ads on Google and Facebook, and they never shared anyone's
personal details with me. I just told them the keywords and demographics I was
interested in, and I uploaded my ad, and they showed it to people. There was
never a button labeled "Download spreadsheet of your ad targets' personal
data" or anything like that. If there was such a button, I would agree with
you that it's going too far.

~~~
marricks
Okay, but google and Facebook have that sort of information on your audience
and guess what, they can wittingly or unwittingly share it with others, which
is a huge problem.

And it’d be pure naïveté to think the government wouldn’t take advantage of
such systems to monitor and target activists and dissidents. The mere
existence of such finely targeted ads is a threat.

------
jasode
Somewhat related survey: 70% won't even pay a measly _8 cents per month_ to
avoid ads.[1]

The random suggestions out there saying Facebook could theoretically charge
users $5/month for zero ads is naive I think.

Also, a general point about surveys... Asking people about _hypothetical
payments_ usually overestimates what they would actually do with _real money_.
Surveys asking factual questions like _" how many children do you have?"_
yield more accurate results than _" would you pay $9 for product X?"_

E.g. the article says 25% would pay $6/month for no ads. Probably the more
realistic answer is to divide that by 10 and estimate that only 2.5% would
actually pay that subscription amount to Facebook.

[1] [https://www.tune.com/blog/mobile-ads-70-of-smartphone-
owners...](https://www.tune.com/blog/mobile-ads-70-of-smartphone-owners-wont-
pay-even-1-to-avoid-ads/)

------
jdlyga
How about data collection free? I don't care about ads, those are easily taken
care of.

~~~
pcunite
I wonder, will I ever have the right to be digitally invisible (except for my
consent)? So, if a FB user posts a picture of me, their service can determine,
"This person does not yet exist in our system. We do not display images of
people without their consent. Thank you for using FB."

------
SCdF
> Facebook generates about $9 a month per user in the U.S. by targeting you
> with ads.

That is so much higher than I thought it would be.

~~~
jlgaddis
IIRC, that was for one particular quarter and during that quarter ARPU was
apparently higher than average.

~~~
mfoy_
Even if that number is 3x higher than average, it's still an order of
magnitude higher than I would have guessed.

------
Panino
> 77 percent would stick to the regular ads version, while 23 percent said
> they’d pay not to have ads.

If/When 77% of its users leave Facebook, a substantial portion of the
remaining 23% would be less inclined to pay for using the service.

Maybe it would be worthwhile to explore a freemium model where a certain
amount of storage (photos, videos, text) is free but beyond it costs. Or it
could be interesting to turn FB into a sort of MMORPG where certain activity
costs or credits in some way. Without changing its path FB set to follow
MySpace.

------
fataliss
I personally would never pay for Facebook, since I don't get much use of it
anyway. It's a nice to have, I check it every other month to see if anything
important happened in my extended friends' circle, and that's about it. I also
know for a fact that while I hate ads, I hate wasting my money even more.
Browsing FB with an ad blocker makes it essentially ad free. (At least for the
main pages) The only concern left is data gathering/privacy. Assuming that FB
isn't lying about selling data to anybody, then I'm ok with my data just
sitting around on their servers, informing ads I never see.

Now for a heavy user, I could see the appeal of paying to remove adds (ads
between & injected in videos seems annoying) but I highly doubt that the math
would checkout for FB. These users are the most engaged ones and probably make
for the bulk of their ads revenue. They'd be foolish to offer them a small
$5/m membership and lose all ad revenue from them.

All that to say: Since the low value customers are probably unwilling to pay
and the high value ones would need to pay a lot to make up for ad revenue
loss, I don't believe there ever will be a successful pay to remove ad model
on Facebook.

------
naravara
This kind of misses the point. Facebook designed its product, services, and
its entire business model around the need for serving you ads. The idea of a
Facebook "without ads" almost seems like a contradiction in terms, because if
the need to serve you ads wasn't baked right into the service's design it
would never look or work the way it does.

I may be willing to pay some nominal amount of money for a service that
fulfills Facebook's ostensible mission of "connecting people" (however vague
that is). This would probably have wound up looking a lot more like Facebook's
original iteration, which was functionally just a personal homepage and
message board.

A service that made it free to view, like, and share content but charged a fee
on the order of a postage stamp to post stuff (up to a certain amount of
stuff) would probably have much less reach, but a way way waaaay higher signal
to noice ratio. I'd happily pay $0.45 cents to send a party invitation or
share a photo album to a service like that assuming we don't have some race-
to-the-bottom situation where nobody will pay.

~~~
teaneedz
Not just ads — highly targeted ads based on pervasive tracking.

It didn't have to be this way but most of tech jumped onto this bandwagon—or
maybe the data brokers and ad tech types magnified their snake oil benefits
just enough to fuel this beast.

The issue is so much larger than Facebook. It's good to see it get attention
though.

------
mmmBacon
People tend to forget that Facebook and Google are massive physical machines
for computing and networking that require extensive physical infrastructure to
operate. The reality is that a user subscription model would not generate
enough revenue to support the infrastructure required by something like
Facebook or Google.

------
sorokod
"Facebook generates about $9 a month per user in the U.S. by targeting you
with ads."

What does this mean? FB gets paid on average this amount per user / month?
Users on average spend this amount following an advert presented by FB?
Something else?

------
Sharlin
I pay ~€10 a month for Spotify, Netflix, etc. I'd pay the same for Facebook
(as long as they also kept the regular ad-based service so people wouldn't
leave en masse).

~~~
dylan604
You would pay that, but what if you were married with 2+ teenage kids all with
an account? Would ~40/month be worth it?

------
robotsquidward
I wouldn't pay anything to _Facebook_ for their service, but I would pay for a
Facebook competitor who offered a similar type of service. If only out of
spite.

------
czardoz
The real question is, would you pay for Facebook at all?

~~~
justadudeama
Also, the people with the money to pay for Facebook are also probably the ones
that have the money advertisers are after.

------
wombatpm
I'm for a 60-40 split. Facebook can keep 60% of the revenue I generate them, I
get 40% of the take. I might even use facebook more.

~~~
giarc
Technically you are getting a split because you get the service. However, if
you wanted a revenue split, Facebook would have to reduce the service you get,
therefore making Facebook less interesting.

------
panarky
Maybe Facebook should pay you for your data.

~~~
giarc
They do, in the form of photo storage, messaging platform, event/calendar
planning, etc etc etc.

~~~
teaneedz
No, that's the window dressing and free samples to attract my attention and
eyeballs. Many didn't really understand that their digital pockets were being
picked as they walked around Facebook's store—and even after leaving the
store.

Sure Facebook could charge me to come into their store, but does anyone really
believe they will stop pickpocketing my digital wallet?

They might eliminate ads at first, before one day allowing a few select ads
from select partners to appear again. They will still be collecting data to
monetize another way.

------
trisimix
Ill pay 30$ a month for the right to privacy

