Facebook just started requiring EU users to choose: privacy or €9.99/month
"You need to make a choice to continue using Facebook
Laws are changing in your region, so we’re introducing a new choice about how we use your info for ads. You’ll learn more about what each option means for you before you confirm your choice.
Your choice will apply to the accounts in the accounts center.
- Subscribe to use without ads Subscribe to use your Facebook account without ads, starting at €9.99/month (inclusive of applicable taxes). Your info won’t be used for ads.
- Use for free with ads Discover products and brands through personalized ads, while using your Facebook account for free. Your info will be used for ads."
So I guess that's it for me. Deleted the app.
Is this message going to all EU users? Or only those who have restricted data sharing in their FB settings?
I can't imagine that many people who had taken the trouble to opt out of info sharing are going to be willing to pay €120/year for Facebook.
I wonder whether they'll back down. They were showing me plenty of ads, just theoretically not tightly targeted to my "interests". Surely they still made more off that than it's costing to have me as a user.
78 comments
[ 12.6 ms ] story [ 1685 ms ] threadYes, they will back down. It makes no sense to _block_ users simply because they will not consent to targeted ads.
Users who consent will get targeted ads. Users that do not consent will get non-targeted ads. Users who subscribe get fleeced.
Instead of the app try using FB without Javascript: https://mbasic.facebook.com
FB must have "growth" to keep Wall Street happy. _Blocking users_ is inconsistent with that objective. FB will back down but give it some time while they are forced to run this experiment.
It absolutely 100% does. Advertisers in todays age only spend on targeted advertising because it not only works, but the converse of that (spamming users with random ads) degrades user experience.
The whole point of the discussion is that directed ads degraded user experience. What is your point then?
This is literally propaganda for people pushing for control of the internet through the idea of "privacy"
There isn't a world where someone is using and app, and would prefer to see generic advertisements versus finding out about deals on products they care about or new products that they may be interested in.
Unless of course you are bought into the bullshit bogeyman of "oh no, company is building a profile on me, that MUST mean they are going to use it for nefarious means", despite no evidence of this being true, ever. If you believe this, then you either virtue signaling off the ideology that companies and capitalism is evil, or you personally don't feel like you have enough self control to make decisions on your own despite what is being shown to you, and if so you really shouldn't have a say or vote in this.
I've never knowingly clicked on an ad in my life.
I am very aware of how law enforcement, political consultants, and other organizations purchase targeting data from ad companies.
I don't want to be part of it because I don't want to be part of it.
This is literal propaganda. Who said I have to choose between bad ads and even worse ads? Are you insane?
> Unless of course you are bought into the bullshit bogeyman of "oh no, company is building a profile on me, that MUST mean they are going to use it for nefarious means"
Yes, you are insane. This is exactly what they do: profit with the ads, profit with nefarious ways they sell and transform the data they gather.
> If you believe this, then you either virtue signaling off the ideology that companies and capitalism is evil, or you personally don't feel like you have enough self control to make decisions on your own despite what is being shown to you, and if so you really shouldn't have a say or vote in this.
I think you should avoid getting near a keyboard, you doesn't seem to have enough mental acuity for a healthy communication.
Why that? Why not contextual ads?
E.g., if I'm on a facebook page for programming, maybe show everyone there ads for that new keyboard etc. This is without tracking THE USER, it just has to track where you are.
Same for websites. Sure this has drawbacks, but it's not like advertisers didn't make conversions before tracking got the way to go.
Why would anyone settle for less without getting something in return. You wouldn't go into your job and happily take a 30% pay decrease because your boss said "it's not like you weren't surviving before".
User tracking results in better ROI. This is why advertisers pay Facebook for the privilege. And you just expect Facebook to say "oh well, shucks"?
If as you say, when they charge members to not get targeted ads, the paying customers are getting fleeced. So what can these companies do to actually make money??
They are not stopping showing ads, and they are not stopping collecting data. It seems that they're just stopping using the data to target the ads.
I'm from the Netherlands.
You can see it on https://jeuxvideo.com for example.
Some people were saying it’s not legal and it would go away quickly, but it’s still there and it might be legal.
It took 5 years for Facebook's blatant GDPR infringement to be addressed, so give it another 5 years and we might finally see a binding decision on this.
Meta’s revenue per user is around 40 USD iirc.
Tbf, as much as people like whining they definitely get 12 bucks a month worth of entertainment off of Facebook and Instagram. People will easily spend 4-6h on social media daily.
The reality is that this move will just prove that people like to talk but they are not willing to pay for their “freedom”.
people will easily spend no time there too if their algorithms weren't tuned to be addicted. Which can easily be decided to be illegal in many countries based on the current laws already existing - but those companies will spend billions of dollars and use their brainwashing algorithms to prevent that.
The brainwashing is so strong that it goes out of the social media border and overflow to every corner of the web, including HN. But fear no, _tracno5, we don't NEED Meta.
It would be absurd to say they don’t add any value to people’s lives.
We’re not talking about heroin here. You can always just delete all your accounts and live an unplugged life.
And now you have an option to get all the upsides of social media minus the downsides of being tracked/advertised for less than the price of a pizza
Sorry which laws are those?
And for the billions of people with free will who use these services, you know what's better for them than they do?
In Brazil, false advertising is a crime (and I guess in many other countries). At least for me when I used instagram, 95% of the ads served were scam. The people buying the ads are criminals, the people selling too.
Which regulation is that?
They’ll make the argument that the customer has a reasonable choice: see targeted ads or pay for the service.
I’m betting They’ll follow up saying the business model in the EU will not be viable without personalised ads (which it really probably won’t) and that they’ll consider leaving the EU altogether. Then the EU can have fun figuring out what will be the economic impact for its economy after they get cut off the largest social network
Meta has ditched Canadian news already. If the finances don’t make sense in the EU, I won’t be surprised they just ditch it
Threads hasn't really gotten off the ground, and I'd say a good part of the reason why is that it excludes the EU, which is full of very online-engaged people.
The means by which Meta is doing that are scummy and hopefully will still prove to be illegal, but none of that is the EU's doing.
I'd be surprised if there was much, if any, fallout from the disappearence of Meta from the EU space. Not that I hold out any hope of it.
One sure exception would be Whatsapp. It's really baked into society in many countries, including here in the Netherlands where it's the normal mode for most person-to-person communication, including customer-business contacts.
This is what many established media in Germany are doing. Either pay to read without data collection, or read for free and be tracked. No lawsuits so far - which doesn't necessarily mean they won't follow of course.
ha-ha, if only! Your advert slots will just be filled with generic adverts. (Think big brands/dumb ads/tv ads)
I read this kind of argument regularly to justify any subscription service, and simply, it's bogus. Maybe you, as the commenter might feel you get $12 per month worth of entertainment or spend 4-6h on the site daily, but that's simply not true for everyone.
I deleted my facebook account over a decade ago, so it's value to me is exactly $0 per month, but I've seen this argument made for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube, etc, none of which I have a subscription for. Now, all of those I perhaps would get some value from, but less than the minimum subscription value.
Currently, I can still enjoy Youtube for free, but their recent push to make advertising far more obnoxious will probably push me away entirely. When that day happens, even though I enjoy watching Youtube occasionally, it's simply not worth the price of the minimum subscription, so I will just stop using it. It's actually already pretty close to that point for me - recently, adverts seem to be far more frequent than before and I've noticed a few occasions when I've had two back-to-back 30-second un-skippable adverts every 5-10 minutes. When these tactics eventually force me off the platform, their revenue from me will go from a little per month from ad revenue to $0 per month.
Obviously implicit in GP comment is that _people who use these services_ derive great value from them.
Nobody expects someone who deleted their account to think $12 is a reasonable price.
The point is that the poster I was replying to believes that because they think it's good value at $12 per month, it's necessarily the same for everybody. It isn't.
Similar forms of entertainment cost the same.
You’re the one with the subjective opinion here because you personally don’t see value in it and make the assumption that is the absolute truth
I think you need to stop spending so much time on Facebook, and spend a bit more time reading a dictionary.
You firstly made an assertion that "they [in this context, everyone who is whining that it's too expensive] definitely get 12 bucks a month worth of entertainment off of Facebook and Instagram".
You secondly state that "I’m not saying I believe $12 is good value. It’s not a matter of opinion. It’s just a fact."
Both of these are subjective opinion, because it's what you believe and while some will agree with you, there are others who disagree with you.
You accuse me of making the assumption that what I'm saying is absolute truth, which is weird, because that's exactly what you were doing in your argument.
Read again what I wrote: "Maybe you, as the commenter might feel you get $12 per month worth of entertainment or spend 4-6h on the site daily, but that's simply not true for everyone."
That's not making any claim of absolute truth, rather it's saying that your claim that it's good value for everybody is false. And it's obviously false, because there's at least one person for who it isn't true.
You know it seems to me that people spend a lot of time trying to solve a non existing problem, in this endless entropy.
Just let go, already.
So you install this on a home always-on RaspberryPI or something and, after filling out some details, it just works. Would that be possible at all?
Some scripts that in the background get the right certificates and set the right records and so on should be possible, no?
I've managed to wean all but one of my clients off self-hosted email. They are paranoid and insist on keeping it in-house. It's such a big time suck to deal with spam filter tuning and blacklist removal requests and the like, but they keep paying the hourly rates for it.
You may as well post only a UUCP bang path or a Telex identifier as your sole contacts, that's how baffled half of the people would be.
For the record, I am from Denmark which is in the EU. If people here use WhatsApp they are either expats or they need it to communicate with foreigners.
The force of meta is not just addictive algos (algos are pretty shitty), but that is is available for everyone and everyone is on the network.
Instead, call your parents, the people you care about, and get them to spend time with you. Send them postcards, and make them know you genuinely care.
Meta even lets you download Messenger without Facebook. The same is true for Whatsapp. Just use them for communication if you must. There's no reason why anybody needs social media on their phone or in their life.
They are basing this subscribe or ad based model on a non-binding comment in a judgement last spring. Should hopefully only be a matter of time until it is ruled illegal.
https://noyb.eu/en/meta-facebook-instagram-move-pay-your-rig...
The problem this time for tech industry is there's not a lot of VC money floating around to create new overvalued service's.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38068635
Obv like I said will they still harvest and I think they will.