> Ads or not, I no longer trust Facebook to not continue violating my privacy WHILE I'm a paying customer
You're right to be skeptical of companies that "believe in an ad supported Internet".
Not so long ago we learned Google's toggle to turn off your web activity history turned off your ability to see your history, not Google's collection of it:
That document goes on to state: "Contrary to Mr Pichai's Congressional testimony, the founder of Google's Privacy and Data Protection Office testified in this case that he is 'not aware of any setting' that users can employ to prevent Google from collecting data related to their app activity."
Much of the issue, allegedly, is that WAA, rather than saving data when on and not saving it when off, simply saves data in a different place – not in the Google Account data set. Addressing the confusion about the bounds of Google Accounts, Hochman said, "So I'm aware that Google may save data in different locations, depending on where that WAA/sWAA switch is set. It is still collecting the same data and still saving it, but it may save it in different places."
Facebook ARPU for Europe is $19.04 per quarter, or $6.33 per month. This is based on monthly active users and includes Messenger. If you adjust for that - someone paying for a subscription is likely to be much more active than an average monthly user - it's likely that 10 EUR is a loss. The big winners are Apple and Google getting their cut if it's an IAP.
The economics are even worse in US/Canada, where an MAU is worth $56.11 per quarter, or $18.70 per month.
I think there's also a major tax difference between subs and ads, working in the same direction.
They don't need to collect VAT on the revenue from the vast majority of ads (basically only ads bought by individuals, which can't be common). They would need to do it for the subscriptions, and the end-user pricing is with VAT included. That's going to be another 20-25% off.
It seems very plausible that they are making less profit from the subscribers than from the non-subscribers at these prices. The pricing might still be more than people are willing to pay, but it's not any kind of scam.
Who are these people that make advertising so valuable? Everyone I know either doesn't click on FB ads, or if they did, they've got a story about how they got scammed by some fly-by-night drop shipper.
Evidently, your friends are clicking on those ads, as they are getting scammed. It's unlikely they just clicked on scams.
It's true that a lot of people essentially never click the ads, but it's also true that seemingly smart and educated people can be extremely dumb about these things.
Ever heard the story of cambridge analytica and the 2016 election? Granted, its an extreme of the system, but there are quiet some actors willing to pay for such services.
That seems plausible but can you cite where these figures are from? Is this just a rough estimate from total numbers for the entire company of $REVENUE / $MAUS?
I wouldn't expect them to be lying but there to be some data hiding in the "average" part of the ARPU. We often want the median or some other percentile, not the mean.
"We define ARPU as our total revenue in a given geography during a given quarter, divided by the average of the number of MAUs in the geography at the beginning and end of the quarter."
So that is about what I expected. I'm not going to dig into this but it could be very meaningful or extremely misleading. Interesting though.
There are two values here: what percentage of people opt for the “ad-free” experience and how much FB makes per user. In fact, as long as their ad revenue per user is LESS than 12.99, this will work out net positive for them.
The only way it would be less is if the alternative is “not having Facebook”, rather than “Facebook with ads”.
I would argue that people who potentially would like to pay for this are worth far less in terms of revenue for Meta than the rest. For instance, I use Facebook semi-regularly, mostly because I follow some people and also have a few Messenger chats open to the side, I ignore their advertising completely. Would I like Facebook ad-free? Yes. Would I pay for it? No. Would I, as a user, care if Meta declared bankruptcy tomorrow and ceased immediately? Certainly not.
The (sometimes) unwritten part of all of those demands is a reasonably priced ad-free version. Down the thread somebody stated an annual revenue of $18 per EU user, so they want to make an order of magnitude more revenue on you in order to not show you ads. Is that reasonable? I don't think so
The people willing to pay for this have more expendable income, and are more likely to take out their CCs and pay for something online. Ad-driven services like fb/insta will make more money from this demographic, and so their revenue "per user willing to pay for no ads" will be significantly higher.
Yes. Ironically, paying not to see ads only drives up the value of our attention even higher and makes them want to advertise to us even more. Paying to avoid ads is really just paying for the privilege of doing free market segmentation on their behalf.
Per quarter, not per year. That is also the average across all users, while only the power users (ones that make up a majority of the ad revenue) will pay for a subscription, so their ad value is a lot more than average.
Read the second part of what I wrote. If every existing user was forced to subscribe then $6 would be appropriate. If only people who earn them $50/mo in ads end up subscribing (which is a lot more likely) then Facebook will lose money on this option.
I mean, I pay for YouTube Premium, as I use YouTube regularly.
I won't pay for this, as I use Facebook approximately once a year. I wonder what that will do to Facebook's user numbers if they choose to get rid of users like me though. I suspect the actively active userbase to be much smaller than their usual billion+ user count.
(Pre-Musk even) Twitter gave me an ultimatum about consenting to tracking across the internet or deleting my account. This is why I no longer have a twitter account.
That's false. First, it reduces the number of ads, second, it gives you many pro features like long tweets, edit button, and increased visibility in certain situations.
Some people do have a legit need for some level of verification. However, I also find a surprising number of people who seem to be quite deeply invested in the status, for lack of a better word. This really started pre-Musk when a blue checkmark theoretically meant you were notable (on some axis).
Guess people have a natural aversion to paying for someone else to not do something. It kind of makes sense.
I mean arguably you're not even paying them to not do something, you're paying them to make it easier for you to not do something, and to not complain when you refrain from doing so.
The web is weird when you try to insist on the original meaning of 'user-agent'.
I pay for YT Premium because I think the price is well worth it.
There's no universe where I trust Zucc and Meta. They're just gonna take my money, still collect every molecule of information they can about me and anyone even slightly related to me (while building shadow profiles of the ones without an account), and probably STILL show ads, just more cleverly hidden. (not that I use FB mind you, just in a theoretical world where I did and indeed got offered to pay for FB with no ads)
Showing ads to users is a minor aspect of FB's business model. The data collection and shady markets around it are far more lucrative. By charging a subscription they get users to pay them twice: with the actual subscription, and with their personal data like everyone else, which they'll still profit from.
Plus now they get some good PR in Europe, and potentially more users that buy into this marketing tactic. Absolutely evil company.
No, it's mere speculation on my part. I doubt such proof would exist anyway, as the entire data broker market is intentionally obscured from the public. But it would be foolish not to think that the adtech giants are not major players of its $300bn worth.
A couple lines of thinking lead me to believe this:
- Why would they collect data from people who are not their users, i.e. shadow profiles? Is it really so that when people sign-up they have a better UX, or is it so they can still sell this lower quality data to whoever might find it useful?
- Showing ads to users is only profitable if the user is part of an ad campaign. Meanwhile, user data can be sold perpetually many times, even if they're not directly advertised to on FB. Why _wouldn't_ FB want to be part of this highly unregulated and lucrative market?
Believing anything these companies say publicly is too naive, given their track record of deception. So I don't mind all this being dismissed as FUD. :)
This is total nonsense. Facebook’s most valuable asset is their data which is why they don’t sell it, they rent access to it. It is much better for Facebook if you have to come to them every time you want to target an ad to a 24-28 year old male in the Bay Area with an interest in menswear than if they just sell a CSV with a list of said males.
This is the easiest thing in the world to check: their quarterly earnings are public. If you don’t believe those earnings, I would suggest filing a complaint with the SEC because you would have uncovered one of the larger securities fraud cases of all time.
I am certainly not going to pay for Facebook. I hate everything about it and barely spend any time there.
If I could pay for it to be sane, to actually show what my friends were up to in chronological order, to show what is around me of interest etc we might be talking.
Of course not. It's a complete scam. Imagine paying money for the privilege of doing market segmentation for them. Not to mention the fact they're still vacuuming up vast amounts of your personal information for their surveillance capitalism machine.
Ads aren't the problem with facebook. It's the crappy UI that makes most posts and comment threads unreadable and videos unwatchable. Remember when clicking close or maximize on a video would actually close or maximize a video?
I will never understand how a website/app with such a user-hostile interface can continue to thrive.
When they introduced ads (2012 I think), they also removed the ability see a feed that was a direct reflection of your social graph.
They also jumbled the feed so you can never return to the last thing you were looking at, unless you explicitly "Like" it and then fish through your Activity history.
If I had any assureance they would revert to the pre-2012 UI/UX I'd be tempted by this offer, but I'm not in the EU so it doesn't matter to me.
> I will never understand how a website/app with such a user-hostile interface can continue to thrive.
It's quite simple. You are not the customer; you are the product. The UI/UX for marketers is quite polished. The UI/UX for the users is as twisted as it needs to be to keep you around. It's like giving your dog one of those bowls that forces them to eat slower.
My problem with Facebook is that everyone has stopped posting. Only 2 of my ~100 friends posts regularly anymore. This leads Facebook to polluting my News Feed with very very low quality “suggested posts”. It’s awful content.
I think that no matter how people feel about the whole privacy/ad thing, it's an additional option... and I think everybody is better off having an additional option than not.
But the problem is that a bunch of EU countries have been letting their local newspapers run the same "a subscription or consent to personalize ads" playbook from day 1 of GDPR, with no consequences for 5 years. And there is going to be a paper trail on that, whether it is newspapers that got this approved with their DPAs or it was "just" that the DPAs have been silently burying the user complaints rather than acting on them.
It's going to be quite hard for those DPAs to apply a different policy to Facebook.
I recognize the spirit of your comment; however, "where the money comes from" is of immense importance to a business. When revenue comes from the end users, the business is properly incentivized to serve the users. When the revenue comes from 3rd party advertisers, the relationship between the business and its users is perverted.
I'd love to pay for YouTube but they insist on bundling it with YouTube Music and I already pay for Spotify.
Now maybe they are giving me YouTube Music for free and the price would be the same without it - but it doesn't feel that way and it's enough to make me not subscribe. This kind of shenanigans is enough to drive me and probably many others away.
It's £12.99/month. Would I pay that if the bundling had never been offerered? It feels quite high - I've hit my limit of streaming services I'm prepared to pay for at the moment. I'd probably pay half that for ad-free YouTube.
Surprisingly (to me at least) I'm actually finding enough good content on TikTok to make up for the fact that I can't block ads on YouTube any more. Thus the great cycle of enshittification continues.
Youtube music is really just a UI on top on the existing YouTube features. Even if they didn't offer it as a bundle "service", you could access every song just through Youtube itself.
Yes - I fully admit that it's a weird way of thinking about it, but the psychology around pricing has a lot of this stuff. I genuinely don't know if I'm an outlier or not. Responses to pricing are rarely about rational cost/benefit analysis.
> That makes more sense. For me, it's worth it, but YouTube is my primary video entertainment source.
I have a limit to how much I'm prepared to pay for video serivces each month. If I add one, something else would have to go. So the issues with YT Premium are a mix of the bundling psychology, the indecision about giving up another service - and the competition with TikTok for (sometimes) similar content.
For what it's worth, I would be willing to pay full price for YouTube Premium without YouTube Music. The value is there for me, but I voted with my wallet when they replaced a perfectly good music app with YouTube Music and I'm not willing to send a single penny to the replacement.
On the other hand, is this how much your personal data is worth to Facebook to sell? Do they really make £12.99/month/person on advertisement? Has to be more lucrative than I thought.
Please don't, with enough people cheating it this way, that will destroy my ability to use international cards. Google will start checking card procedence to prevent people from taking regional discounts.
I cannot use local cards because of banking issues
That's good. They added that after I stopped using Instagram from the looks of it. I couldn't stand the political reactionism that was being forced down my throat, so I have up on it.
I still won't use it for other political reasons, but at least it seems like the app isn't unusable anymore.
This is why the model is doomed. Even if they offer a subscription service, the platform is still built to serve ads, along with all of the user hostile behavior that made Facebook horrible.
Imagine how different things would look if Facebook adopted a subscription model early on before they became an ad-infested pile of garbage.
Very dependent on location. I pay $18 for a sandwich and $5.50 for a latte, so this seems pretty cheap in comparison. I'd pay for it in a heartbeat. YouTube Premium at $14/mo is IMO one of the best value subscriptions out there.
I'd pay 5.5 for a delicious latte that will push me through my day, produced by a shop that cares about quality and that I also want to stay in business. There's a lot of strings attached to the price tag.
I use so much YouTube, the bundling didn't bother me. I didn't initially care about YouTube Music, but after giving it a try I find it better than Spotify for my purposes anyway so it worked out.
Youtube's relationship with the music industry has led to this weird situation where they basically cannot separate the licensing concerns, hence the pack-in of the music service. I respect that you want to dig your heels in on some weird principle of not paying for something twice, but on a pure time-value-of-money basis, pretty much any music or video streaming service is worth the subscription if you use it more than a couple of hours each month.
When you subscribe to YouTube for ad-free content, you're essentially paying for an uninterrupted viewing experience.
This is similar to how you'd expect no ads when you pay for a service like Netflix.
For example, imagine watching "The Matrix" on Netflix and being unexpectedly interrupted by an Oreo commercial—it would be frustrating, especially since you paid for an ad-free experience.
The issue with YouTube is that if they were to remove baked-in in-stream ads for Premium users, it might require them to compensate content creators more indirectly, which in turn could reduce Google's profits.
This creates a financial disincentive for YouTube to fully eliminate ads.
As a result, you might find be better if you use software like SponsorBlock.
This situation is paradoxical; ideally, paying customers should receive the best user experience directly from the platform, and be rewarded for that.
Technically, there is no limitation, LinusTechTips can perfectly take 1 minute to add a marker for its sponsored segments, at the moment he ticks "This video contains sponsored content".
A more truthful description for YouTube Premium could be: "Pay 10 USD / month, to remove a lot of, but not all the ads", and then you understand it's not that of a good deal.
No, I pay YouTube to not show me YouTube ads. Separately, I also pay several content creators for their content without ads. I pay the person showing me ads to stop showing me ads.
> Wouldn't you get upset if Netflix is streaming to you "The Matrix", and in the middle of it there is an advertising for Oreos?
If that ad is a part of the movie as it was shown in theatres or on other streaming services, then no, I wouldn't be upset at Netflix.
> No, I pay YouTube to not show me YouTube ads. Separately, I also pay several content creators for their content without ads. I pay the person showing me ads to stop showing me ads.
When you use YouTube Premium, you are paying the creator for each view, and they still show you the ads, and you find it acceptable ?
> If that ad is a part of the movie as it was shown in theatres or on other streaming services, then no, I wouldn't be upset at Netflix.
Sounds like you agree to pay for Spotify Premium but still get interruptions in the music.
> When you use YouTube Premium, you are paying the creator for each view, and they still show you the ads, and you find it acceptable ?
Yes. Most (though not all) of the channels I watch don't have inline ads. For those that do, the YouTube client makes them easily skippable (tap your finger four times on the video to skip 30 seconds), but usually I just unsubscribe if they're egregious enough. I wouldn't watch LinusTechTips if he paid me :)
> Sounds like you agree to pay for Spotify Premium but still get interruptions in the music.
You seem not to understand that ads come from different sources and pay different people. Platform ads come from the platform and they pay money to the platform. Many platforms let you pay them to avoid these ads. This is what YouTube Premium is.
Separately, the content provider may also include ads in the content you are streaming on the platform. You can try to find a way to pay the content provider for an ad-less stream, but the system isn't as well set up for that situation, at least for video. Podcasts are pretty well set up for this model, and I do pay for many ad-less podcasts.
> "The Matrix", and in the middle of it there is an advertising for Oreos, though you paid for the ad-free experience
Interesting that you picked a movie series quite well known for it's product placement marketing-- I'm sure if Nabisco had been on board, the Oracle would happily have given Neo an Oreo instead of a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie.
"Neo, we're going to meet the Oracle, (camera panning out), but first, let me introduce you to Twinkies. Have you heard about this sponge-cake ? Get 2 boxes for 4.99 USD, and get extra -10% if you enter THEMATRIX code during checkout."
ARPU is an average so it includes every user, including users that never buy anything from an ad because they can't afford it. The average goes up a lot due to a minority of wealthy users. Those users will also be more likely to pay to remove ads. So Meta is afraid that the ad revenue will go down a lot and that's why they increase the monthly subscription by more than the current ARPU.
This is similar to collective insurance. If the rich people all self-insure and remove themselves from the pool, the viability of the collective insurance gets risked because you're only left off with the people that actually need help and nobody with a surplus to share.
For ads you get left off with a cohort of users that can't afford to pay to remove ads so can't also afford to pay for stuff advertised in said ads. Which means the ads will become more like TV ads for awareness rather than direct purchase, which will lower ad-based ARPU.
Wouldn't you also need to factor in that the people who will pay to avoid ads are likely already using ad blockers (or hate ads, in which case showing them an ad for your product is likely counter-productive)?
It's per Q so ~80/years. Difference between $80 (average ad revenue per year) vs $120 per year subscription is reasonable as subscriptions skew power users.
Not universally, it all depends on how one values the use/enjoyment/value that they get out of the experience, and everybody values their time/enjoyment/convenience differently.
Wouldn't that mean that Facebook could charge a lower ad-subsidized price? Facebook earns 18/user*year - so 10/month is adding a 100$ surcharge to not see ads. If they offered an ad laden service for 8/mo and the ad-free experience for 10/mo that'd line up with your logic.
Would be interesting to see a "price" for users actually being shown generic ads but with absolutely no profiling or other "personalized" experience.
I would never trust that entity anyway, even if they offered it, but curious what fraction of their haul is really the surveillance and behavioral profiling part as distinct from the placing-ads-on-a-surface part (which is how newspapers, TV and billboards operated forever).
The economics of ad-supported but non-tracking platforms is an important parameter as we contemplate what options do we have for less evil online platforms.
Great. Now people can pay FB to not see any ads, while FB will still collect their data and sell it to data brokers.
All social media sites should pay users to use their services in exchange for their data. The cost of them providing a service pales in comparison to the value of user data. And there's no way they're giving up that lucrative part of their business.
Make no mistake. This is not some benevolent side of FB where they're seeing the evil of their ways. This is just a marketing tactic to attract more users they can exploit.
FB does not sell to data brokers and because fb is a public company when know exactly how much they profit from user data. Overall FB made about $3.22 per user and the vast majority of that came from selling ads.
You have no idea what you're talking about lol... Facebook or Google does not sell your data.
It's literally against their own interests to, even if you think they're completely evil... Them and Google have a data monopoly, why the heck would they ever sell that monopoly? They'll charge to have access through their ad platforms, but would never sell it, even if it were legal...
There's FTC, and EU regulations that govern big tech... I'd except better from Hacker News Readers...
Really? And they keep shadow profiles out of the goodness of their hearts? That data can't be used for advertising directly, but it sure is lucrative to _somebody_.
> It's literally against their own interests
Their only interest is increasing profits, by any means necessary. Selling parts of the data they collect is not a one-time transaction, but a subscription. So it's not like they're giving away their secret sauce.
> There's FTC, and EU regulations that govern big tech...
Please, that's such a naive take. Governments have been far too slow and lenient to enact and enforce regulations, partly because they're in a symbiotic relationship with Big Tech.
Besides, the FTC regulates a minor aspect of what makes Big Tech harmful. EU leads the way in regulations, yet it's still far behind the schemes these companies pull.
> I'd except better from Hacker News Readers...
There's a downvote button you can express your dissatisfaction with. :)
That's the official response, sure. How does it make business sense to store data about _all web users_ on the very small chance that a tiny percentage of them will sign up to FB and have a better UX? It doesn't, _unless_ they're profiting from that data in some way.
Give them uBlock Origin? It's free, and as far as I'm aware removes (as in: makes them invisible) all FB ads including the sponsored posts or whatever it's called in the timeline. Technically not the exact same thing as not being served ads in the first place (which presumably is what you'd be paying for), but still, worth it.
Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are the only major sites that are able to circumvent my adblocker. Between the three of them, YouTube provides an incredibly high value for the price they charge, while the other two are of limited benefit in comparison. Facebook has also declined greatly in the past couple of years, while YouTube has improved greatly.
I would gladly pay for a version of Instagram without adverts but I don't see how it's possible.
They can eliminate the "sponsored posts" but the algorithm is still going to recommend to me all sorts of poisonous stuff for engagement. That's the real problem that I'd like to pay away - just leave me with what I follow and nothing else.
What I think is going to happen - if interest rates persist and wars keep on waging, that you'll pay the subscription but you'll still see the ads and if you want not to see the ads AT ALL then you'll have to pay for some premium tier or something.
This is hostage negotiation, not a reasonable price. The revenue per user comparisons are absurd.
What does it matter what Facebook can sell your attention for? You own your attention.
Facebook used network effects to monopolize its audience and then switched them to ad consumers when they had the eyeballs. There is no way to launch such an ad heavy service in an upfront way.
Fair proposition I guess. Privacy is important but leaves the question - how to fund the platform which isn't cheap to operate for sure.
Not a fan boy at all, far from it but have to hand it to the self driving batteries on the wheels guy - he did it with twitter and then others are moving in that direction it seems.
Seems like a true consent based "Reject all" button is a critical danger to Facebook's business model. Other articles [1] report they are currently in violation of GDPR rights in Europe.
> The move follows years of privacy litigation, enforcements and court rulings in the EU — which have culminated in a situation where Meta can no longer claim a contractual right (nor legitimate interest) to track and profile users for ad targeting. (Although, at the time of writing, it is still doing the latter — meaning it is technically operating without a proper legal basis. But this summer Meta announced an intention to switch to consent.)
> [...]
> As we reported earlier this month, Meta is relying on a line in a ruling handed down by the bloc’s top court, the CJEU, earlier this year — where the judges allowed the possibility — caveated with “if necessary” — of an (another caveat) “appropriate fee” being charged for an equivalent alternative service (i.e. that lacks tracking and profiling). So the legal fight against Meta’s continued tracking and profiling of users will hinge on what’s necessary and appropriate in this context.
Typical shady Facebook behavior trying to force everyone to press "Accept all" since otherwise their business model is broken. Hopefully the EU will move quickly to close the legal loophole they are trying to exploit.
Of course they will. Paying for this scam will only increase the value of your attention and the value of the personal information they sell. Demonstrating you have enough disposable income to pay extortion fees not to be bothered will only make them advertise to you even more.
Ads are only one annoyance. What about the surveillance and data collection (user data, metadata, telemetry, etc.). Do the subscription terms prohibit FB/IG from collecting data or limit what Meta and subsidiaries can do with collected data.
The sting in the tail here: you will not be advertised to, but only as long as you remain subscribed. Your behaviors are still collected while paying ransom, and once you stop paying, as a self-identified high-value ad target, you can expect to be a roast on a spit.
