[ori_b]

In addition to everything else, they've been saying that their new advertising model involves sponsored stories showing up on your newsfeed, and arranging and highlighting the timeline so that paid stories show up (and in fact, they already have paid stories labelled as such showing up on their pages occasionally).

I don't trust a company that turns my friends into shills. It's slimy.

I use facebook because it's convenient for keeping in touch with friends and keeping up to date with events. I don't like it or trust it much.

[melissamiranda]

Any company offering a free service has to make money somehow, and since they know 5% of internet browsing is on the Fb newsfeed, it's actually not surprising.

I wonder, would you pay a $5 subscription so that Facebook doesn't show you ads and lets you own your data? Someone else suggested it.

[ori_b]

I would not pay that to get rid of ads. However, ads don't bother me. The "social placement" advertising that (ab)uses my friend's content to turn them into shills is what I find a significant turnoff, combined with the other invasive and slimy methods of data collection mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

I don't care if Facebook does advertising. However, the slimy methods used burn any trust I have in them, and as a result, I'm not going to hand them any extra data if I can avoid it.

[WettowelReactor]

I am curious why this is not a more popular option across the board. Free with AD's or pay for no ads and no tracking. I would gladly pay for some of the free services if I could get these options and wont even use them for free while the tracking is in place.

[carbocation]

Then you have the New York Times: pay and they still display ads.

[drcube]

And real newspapers. And magazines, cable tv, movies, etc...