[qqtt]

I'm going to go against the grain here and say this is probably a positive thing for Meta products, and honestly every other "free" service to provide these kinds of revenue avenues.

How many times do we hear things like "if the product is free, you are the product" - well, the consequence of that is development resources tend to be pulled into directions that benefit advertisers.

By having material subscription revenue coming in for things outside the advertising space, the product managers can justify investing in features that otherwise would be passed up due to lack of revenue potential from advertising.

Yes, in many ways Meta gets to have their cake and eat it too, because the ads are still there even with the plans, but this does give a meaningful voice to their customers who pay that they can invest in other ways outside of strictly advertising.

[sensanaty]

You paying just signals that you're someone to push more ads to and to harvest more data on, since it means you have disposable income to spend on something as useless as instagram or facebook.

Meta isn't going to stop harvesting all your information just because you pay for a subscription, they'll harvest and sell your data AND take your money.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"Meta isn't going to stop harvesting all your information just because you pay for a subscription, they'll harvest [and sell] your data AND take your money." (Meta sells access not data)

Google has been doing this for a while with YouTube

The data collection and surveillance will of course be used to support online advertising services. The ads can be delivered outside YouTube by other Alphabet business units or partners

There seems to be a myth that paying so-called "tech" companies solves the problem of data collection, surveillance and online advertising. As if for every subscriber the company will voluntarily collect less data, perform less surveillance and sell less ad services, leaving that money on the table

The truth is that these subscribers, by paying the companies that perform data collection, surveillance and advertising services, are actually subsidising the practice

[douglee650]

I pay YouTube Premium and get no ads there. It's totally worth it for me.

I get that they aren't performing less tracking on me, and they've labeled me as "will pay subscriptions for stuff".

But I get so much out of YouTube that's it's a no-brainer.

[ttctciyf]

You can accomplish "no ads" and arguably substantially less tracking without Premium, though, with (e.g.) firefox and ublock origin. The only downside is an occasional ignorable warning that you're "seeing interruptions".

[douglee650]

Or, buy two Starbucks/month to set and forget

[pkamb]

Not when watching on an Apple TV.

[olyjohn]

Are we supposed to be shocked that one of the most locked down devices ever won't let you block ads?

[fragmede]

How does that get money to the people making the videos I like watching?

[pyrale]

I'd suggest getting them money through patreon, kofi or whatever patrons system they use instead. That's much safer for them than YT ad money and helps them feel less pressure when they get demonetized or whatnot.

[olyjohn]

They still get views and subscribers, which increases the popularity of the channel, making it more likely to get recommended.

[PcChip]

there's still an annoying pause in there on video load (and sometimes video skip/scrub) due to how youtube tries to thwart ad-blockers

[fakedang]

> I pay YouTube Premium and get no ads there. It's totally worth it for me.

You pay for YouTube and don't get ads there, but you also just put a big red target on your back for Google to show you ads in all of their other products because you've just outed yourself to them as someone with disposable income. You can't opt out of ads in search, your personal inbox, etc.

[joquarky]

What are they even doing with all of this data collection, especially considering that ads still are terrible at pertaining to my interests?

[bonoboTP]

Make the feed curation algo more addictive.

[MetaWhirledPeas]

...which generates usage data, which in turn feeds itself? Circular economics, how convenient.

[bonoboTP]

Also the ads are not just classical ads for coca cola or a mattress sale, but people and organizations paying to boost their content in the feed, which can be all kinds of manipulation, political, but also more organic looking brand management or astroturfing. Marketing is way more nowadays than just straightforward "here is a product you may be interested in, buy it".

[NBJack]

That's how its always been. The loop just wasn't as efficient a few decades ago.

[MarleTangible]

And YouTube recently (and silently) started approving multiple in-add ads for videos longer than 20 minutes. They destroyed the long-form content creators with their shorts push, and now it looks like they're trying to recover a little.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Intermediary (middleman) creates nuisance then charges subscription fees to temporarily "remove" it for those few who pay

But no amount of payment will remove the nuisance. The intermediary has made it their "business model"

Remove the middleman to remove the nuisance

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

I don't subscribe to "YouTube Premuim" and I get no ads there

I avoid using Google's Javascript to play other peoples' uploaded videos

I get so much relief out of avoiding the Javascript, telemetry, data collection, behavioural surveillance, "recommendations" and ads, and whatever nonsense Google is doing behind the scenes

It's totally worth it for me

[WarmWash]

If I'm paying and still getting unwanted ads...then I am no longer going to be paying.

I'm not sure what win Meta sees here.

[HnUser12]

You may not get ads in the app, but they can still sell your data for other services who will give you ads.

[brianmiddleton]

You WILL be getting ads in the app, though. There's nothing in the article that says you won't. This is like Snapchat's subscription. You get more features, but still have the ads. This isn't replacing "if it's free, you're the product", it's "if you're willing to pay, you're an even more valuable product".

[cpt_sobel]

Don't they already have some subscription to get rid of ads?

[brianmiddleton]

In some countries, but not everywhere. I know it exists in the UK, maybe EU as well.

[okanat]

Or even if you block all ads, the statistical value of your data is still important for showing ads to people like you and people around you.

[bko]

Isn't that the whole point of social media like Instagram? To convince the world you have disposable income and are living a lavish lifestyle?

Personally I like signaling that I have money. Why would you want people to think you're poor or cheap, except maybe when you're shopping for a car.

[renegade-otter]

Why would you want to signal that? It relates in no way as to what kind of person you are. In fact, the richer you are, the more questions I have about how you got it and who got shafted along the way.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I wouldn't, you wouldn't, and countless millions also wouldn't.

But there is clearly a demographic who do use social media to signal lifestyle status, often using that lifestyle status to sell products of various kinds.

The erosion of enthusiast fandom into paid influencer "fandom" is whole subculture.

[bko]

> In fact, the richer you are, the more questions I have about how you got it and who got shafted along the way.

What a sad way to live life. Not only because it's untrue (assuming you don't live in North Korea), but it's incredibly dark and destructive.

[renegade-otter]

The fact that you think it's "sad" is a dead giveaway in terms of what you value in life and what you consider a virtue.

[bko]

What do I value? I believe I live in a society where wealth is earned through hard work. It would be awful living in a society where I wrongly think everyone who has something I don't earned it through nefarious means, and there is no way to be an honest broker and create wealth.

[HWR_14]

This does not answer the question that was asked (and which I also wonder): why would you want to signal that you are rich?

[bko]

For attracting members of the opposite sex and wanting to connect with other people of similar wealth as their values and interests more closely correspond with your own. I don't know if you noticed, but there are cultural differences across socio-economic classes.

Are you pretending not to understand?

[akdev1l]

> Why would you want people to think you're poor or cheap, except maybe when you're shopping for a car.

Personally, I don’t generally think about how other people perceive if I have money or not.

[bko]

Ah, you must be one of those that cuts his own hair, shops strictly at thrift shops and wears bags as shoes.

[akdev1l]

I get my hair cut at a place where it costs $45 and I get a haircut every 1-2 months at best.

I wear my shoes until they break. I wear Vans Sk8 old skool high tops most of the time.

I am also on track to retire by 40 if all goes well. (Which is to say I don’t have THAT much money)

[bko]

Ah, so you generally think about how other people perceive if you have money or not. Enough to answer an internet stranger inquiring about your wealth, and flexing about retiring at 40 (congrats).

Thanks for proving my point.

[skeeter2020]

Maybe hthe GP is confident enough to have passed by the shallow indicator of displaying their wealth? The richest people I know personally (and who I deeply respect) absolutely delight in people under-estimating them, assuming they're "poor plebs" like the rest of us. They like money, recognize it's important and appreciate what it allows, but feel no need to advertise it.

[HWR_14]

I mean, people who say "why would I want status symbols" tend to not purchase designer clothes and $500 hair cuts. Because those are status symbols.

But bags as shoes is impractical. You want a sole to protect your feet.

[damnesian]

>you have disposable income to spend on something as useless as instagram or facebook

Useless in the big picture, but I know people who are cobbling together various income streams to maintain basic quality of life- including sponsored posts on social media. Which gives the platforms a very real value. I'm not saying they aren't exploitative, and overall they don't contribute to the advancement of society- but there a a LOT of big employment holes in the west and like these platforms or not, these platforms are plugging a lot of holes, if only mostly timidly except for the usual stars.

[seanclayton]

If it's a tech company it's not "if it's free you're the product" it's just "you're the product" nowadays. I am so happy kids these days no longer trust tech because I'd hate to see how exploited they'd be otherwise.

[thaumasiotes]

> You paying just signals that you're someone to push more ads to and to harvest more data on

No, qqtt is correct that if you're paying, you get a vote. It may not be all that much of a vote, but it's more than you'd have if you weren't paying, and Meta will pay attention to it.

For a recent example of how this works, consider that with the post-October-7th wave of pro-Palestinian activism on US college campuses, a lot of rich Jews moved to squelch it as best they could -- not by offering new donations conditional on universities adopting their favored political positions, but by threatening to suspend their existing, habitual, "unconditional" donations.

[Lutger]

The 'vote' is real. But it is 'darwinian'. It's not that animals develop a certain adaptation on purpose in order to survive. Instead, out of many random changes an adaptation emerges by selection: those that are the most advantageous get the chance to pass on their genes.

If everybody stops using meta apps and starts using signal, bluesky, mastodon, etc., meta would instantly transform their business (if they still can make a profit).

The problem is, subtly harvesting data from and even shoveling ads into paid subscriptions actually doesn't make consumers immediately and massively cancel their subs. So you can make a profit from subscriptions alone, or make an even larger profit by also collecting and monetizing your customers data. Guess who will win?

[auggierose]

Not sure I understand this. The vote is, pay or not pay. If you pay, you vote yes.

[tgma]

People who spew I'd rather pay, I'd rather pay often majorly underestimate how expensive Google and Facebook would have to be in the western world to offset the ad revenue per person. The irony is this is especially true for you if money is no object to you, as you'd be disproportionately valuable to the ad machine. It's not going to be ten bucks folks.

[bigmadshoe]

You can actually look this information up! For example, Instagram makes approx $2-50 ad revenue per user per year, depending on the region. Apparently it’s highest in North America.

So <$5 per month for someone in the developed world to keep using Instagram and stop being the product. If they redesigned the app around what’s best for users vs advertisers, it actually seems like a great deal, considering many people spend multiple hours per day on apps like these.

Of course this would get pretty expensive for all the services we use. But I personally would happily throw $100-$250 per year at my most used apps to stop being advertised to.

[ivell]

I think we are missing another angle of getting the data. Information is also power. Power to influence people (e.g. Cambridge Analytica). So paying will not stop the data collection. Actually I doubt anything will, unless people really push the regulators to do their job.

[tgma]

If you are in the US and in a demographic who posts on Hacker News, $100-$250 is likely below your monthly revenue contribution to Google alone.

[cocoto]

I’m pretty confident that at least 95% of HN users use adblocking so clearly the users are not worth much to the ad companies. Today I have absolutely zero ads on my devices.

[ipaddr]

I've never paid Google for anything. I usually get a check from them. What does Google sell? Office clone, ads, map api credits, search api credits, ad free youtube, ai credits sometimes phones and speakers that get bricked?

[skeeter2020]

everyone of those things is built around data collection and tracking, which feeds their ad machine.

[lolive]

They sell your digitalSelf habits.

[fragmede]

How's your YouTube Premium subscription?

[AlotOfReading]

Considering cancelling mine because they've introduced ads to it in the form of undismissable "purchase the product being discussed here" affiliate popups.

[jakeydus]

The popups are absolutely massive, too. It’s infuriating.

[bigmadshoe]

I don’t watch enough YouTube to warrant that. My elderly father on the other hand, who watches several hours of YouTube per day on his television, finally got YouTube premium and has found it to be life changing. The TV YouTube app regularly shows 2+ minutes of unskipable adds per video.

[carlosjobim]

It's without a doubt one of the best value for money subscription available, except for electricity, water, a library subscription.

There's an endless amount of the highest quality videos available on YouTube. But you need to let the algorithm understand what you like by using the conveniently named "Like" and "Dislike" buttons.

[zamadatix]

Fantastic, the family plan is probably one of the best subscriptions I've ever purchased. If one reads the comments in this thread you'd be left to assume YouTube Premium would have had to be $100/month/person though and not something Google could ever have considered offering.

[komali2]

That was a great deal when it came bundled with YouTube music. When they bizarrely tried to merge the two products so that when I was interested in watching videos, all I got was music video recommendations, it lost its lustre.

Now I would rather just pay for a couple Patreons. I heard there's some new pay to use YouTube thing out there that creators are pushing, I can't remember the name but I hopped on it and didn't see any extra content beyond what's offered on YouTube so I don't see the point.

Oh and before I got grayjay so I could have ad free casting of videos, premium was nice for when watching on the tv.

[blks]

I pay for multiple patreons, too. I wish patreon wouldn’t be such a shitty website/app. It’s insane what basic features it’s missing.

[skeeter2020]

>> So <$5 per month for someone in the developed world to keep using Instagram and stop being the product.

This is only true if everyone does it; Why would they stop advertising for a tiny market, especially if they can get both? Why decrease the value of the tracking on a smaller userbase? Sales conversion says you'd have to charge $50 or $500 a month and you'd have a much smaller base; does social media like this even work with a fraction of the people?

[kbar13]

most-all of the algorithm-served content (not from my friends list) is ad content, even if it's not a meta-served ad.

all content (even those who make legitimate content, if they intend on making a living on content) is just ads packaged in fancy UGC. we've reached a point of no return for ads and user targeting

[jjulius]

>... and stop being the product.

You will not stop being the product if you pay.

[bigmadshoe]

This is true. But they would at least design the app around maximizing user satisfaction with the service (to keep you paying), vs maximizing time spent on the app (i.e. through making it addictive) in order to increase ad revenue. The current incentives are perverse.

[jjulius]

That's a nice idea, but then there are all of the times we've started paying for services to have an ad-free experience, only to then have them toss ads back into the mix.

[sdthjbvuiiijbb]

You've missed the point of the comment that you've replied to. There's a well known adverse selection effect because the people who would pay for no ads are exactly the people who you most want to be able to serve ads to: people with lots of disposable income, and people who are power users who see the most ads.

As a result the actual amount that they would need to charge for an ad-free version is higher than the average revenue per user, possibly significantly so.

edit: you can look at YouTube premium for an example of this in practice. It's $16/mo for no ads. That's around 2-3x or more what their revenue per user is.

[tgma]

I also think the figure GP quoted are not US, but lumped together with depressed "developed" economies. US numbers should be a multiple of that.

[bigmadshoe]

Fair point. I think it depends on the person. I know plenty of people without much disposable income who still pay for several subscriptions.

[wahnfrieden]

Advertisers don’t care about disposable income they care about spending habits even if the buyer is irresponsible and can’t afford it

[hvb2]

That's also how you get to little disposable income. It's choices people make and that's their right but it does look odd occasionally.

[pishpash]

So they successfully blackmailed you.

[abdullahkhalids]

Why would you include the money required to pay shareholders, pay the humongous parts of the company doing ad tech, the lobbying money, the fine money, etc. What is the cost of running a social media site?

I have previously calculated that Mastodon costs including development are on the order of 1 EUR/person/year [1]. Even if you 10x it, it's nothing. Facebook does nothing more technically complicated than the forums of the 90s. It's just smarter design.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117385

[tgma]

I am not. I am explicitly saying to offset revenue from ads. That's a different question. Best of luck getting Facebook-level distribution in your 1 EUR Mastodon.

[abdullahkhalids]

There are no technical reasons preventing the Mastodon federated network from scaling to billions of users. An individual server might not be able to scale to even 10 million users, but that is by design. There should be thousands or better tens of thousands of servers each supporting a small number of users, with moderation handled at the server level.

[tgma]

No technical reasons.

[wasmitnetzen]

Ultimately the consumer is paying for the ad spend as well, so it can't be an outsized part of the budget.

[bmitc]

You're assuming that your own data has no cost. They get data from you for free.

[heathrow83829]

fb doesn't actually "sell your data", they use for ad targetting and even then, the ad targetting is waaayyy off, in my experience. they're hardly getting any use out of it for targetting me.

[apsurd]

Heard it here on HN: problem is paying a subscription is purely additive. eventually, inevitably, they’ll take the subscription AND sell your data, serve you ads, etc.

it being against what your payment contract states just means they’ll reinvent and rename the tiers.

[scns]

> they’ll take the subscription AND sell your data, serve you ads

Streaming services claiming prior art here.

[apsurd]

I just remembered there’s a black mirror episode about this. The paid subscription evolution by a “health tech” startup let’s say.

I won’t give away the plot, but it’s so realistically absurd it’s sad, hilarious and terrifying all at once.

[abound]

For those who might want to watch it, the episode is called "Common People", and it's a pretty brutal one.

[moron4hire]

I was just watching that episode literally now and had to nope out of it halfway through because it was making me sick to my stomach.

[kps]

Too young to remember cable TV?

[blitzar]

Sounds like my Amazon Prime subscription - now with more Ads.

[vincnetas]

cable TV would like to have a word with you :)

[zeristor]

Pray they don’t change the terms a second time.

[micromacrofoot]

Yeah this is the worst, never pay for something that has ads. It's teaching these companies it's ok.

[thayne]

From what I can tell, that's already the case for these subscriptions. They give you some extra stuff but you're still getting ads, and they are still collecting your data

[komali2]

It seems like there's no solution, then: companies will always chase the next dollar that allows them to exceed growth expectations on the earnings call. It seems like no matter what, anti-user behavior in pursuit of profit is inevitable.

Is there a solution to this?

[foxylad]

The golden age of the internet was when it was an enthusiast's space. It is now almost entirely a corporate space, where the remaining enthusiasts' content is scraped 100K times a day and sold without attribution by the corporates.

The fediverse is a step in the right direction, and Meta charging may create another wave of converts there. It has a lot of growth pains to endure yet, but the ability to painlessly spin up your own instance could be very attractive to young people looking for their own non-corporate spaces on the internet.

We may also see some renewal via large companies (Meta in particular) imploding, from mismanagement and disenchanted users. My experience marketing a new product is that online advertising is completely ineffective now the web is filled with slop, no matter how well targeted it is. We've recently pivoted to optimise for word-of-mouth with orders of magnitude better results. I think any adtech company without a solid alternative profit stream is in for a rough ride (and no, AI is not a solid profit stream for anyone but Nvidia).

[apsurd]

well Apple is stated as an easy counter example. They charge money for premium hardware and software. everything else is downstream. So while they could squeeze at every possible opportunity, they are less incentivized to abuse the relationship because their core proposition is: you pay money for our premium hardware and software.

it’s imperfect but contrasts this with the modern approach of grow at all costs, light money on fire and punt entirely on how to ever make money. it usually doesn’t end well for customers.

[circularfoyers]

Which sadly appears to not even be holding for them now that they decided to start displaying ads on their App Store.

[cocoto]

Do not forget the new recents ads in Apple Maps.

[avd201]

If you don't pay for a product, you are a less valuable product than if you'd pay for the product.

[doctorwho42]

Eh, and Microsoft has shown that even if you pay they will still fuck with the product and . make it worse

[windexh8er]

This is just a copy of the YouTube model, to your point. It's not that you're going to get a premier experience. It's that you'll be spared from full enshittification. Only tech bros could possibly think making the default subscription level so bad that it would drive revenue. But here we are.

[adjejmxbdjdn]

> By having material subscription revenue coming in for things outside the advertising space, the product managers can justify investing in features that otherwise would be passed up due to lack of revenue potential from advertising.

You’re a Meta decision maker presented with 3 options. Which one do you pick? (remember, you’re not you…you’re a Meta decision maker trying to justify a trillion dollar valuation).

- Possible additional ad revenues

- Possible additional subscription revenues

- Possible additional ad and subscription revenues

[rtpg]

to put a finer point on this: I pay for certain newspapers (well, digital subscriptions).

Still plenty of ads in the articles!

[xbmcuser]

Plus now they even have your credit information for better ad targeting

[choppaface]

credit card itself can’t be used to ad targeting. But plenty of proxies make this point largely irrelevant.

[DANmode]

> credit card itself can’t be used to ad targeting

Incorrect.

Credit card networks / issuers explicitly describe using payment, spending, and your personal data,

for marketing, personalization, audience segmentation, and advertising.

Mastercard’s privacy notice states that it may use personal and transaction-related information to: “Provide you with personalized services and recommendations” “Offer and support loyalty programs” “Provide content and advertising tailored to your individual interests” “Analyze spending behavior to improve the effectiveness of marketing programs and advertising.”

Visa has also historically offered an opt-out specifically for using card transaction data…

[fodkodrasz]

If only I could get rich, structured data access to my spending data... but many banks only allow pdf statement downloads, in inconvenient ways, and their UIs for drilling down into data...

Where can I buy my own data from the brokers?

[choppaface]

i meant the credit card number itself

[ipaddr]

If the grocery store is selling your data (and they are) and meta has a connecting card number ads could be targeted.

[seanclayton]

Your lack of complaining is expected and depended on, but I do encourage your continued enthusiasm in that acceptance! Someone's bottom line depends on it, and they probably make way more money than you so they really need it!

[Freak_NL]

I'm fine with the static ads in the digitised print edition and the paper edition I get on Sataruday (even though I find some objectionable), but I block any and all digital ads with uBlock Origin, whether I'm a subscriber or not. I pay for a good national newspaper; they either make do with that or lose me as a long-time subscriber.

[janalsncm]

Newspapers are struggling/dying. A counterexample is services like HBO/Netflix which have ad-free tiers.

[gmueckl]

Insufficient information. Each option will address a different part of the market with a different size. Unless the potential revenue is estimated for each option, an informed decision is not possible.

[CTDOCodebases]

These products already do what basically everyone wants them to do.

The problem is now people are conditioned to having their privacy violated so they are still the product and they will pay to be the product.

The network effects with a product like WhatsApp are strong so that this opens the door to dark patterns for the non paying customers. After enough time the same level of effort will go into the now subscription app that went into it when it was free.

YouTube is a good example of this phenomenon.

[emayljames]

The YouTube app on Android is terrible, even with the premium. Autoplay has been notoriously broken for years

[CTDOCodebases]

I have premium and for over a month I couldn’t save videos to playlists in the app.

[chias]

As Cory Doctorow is fond of saying

> The thing that determines whether you’re the product isn’t whether you’re paying for the product: it’s whether market power and regulatory forbearance allow the company to get away with selling you.

Or more simply:

> Companies don’t make you the product because you don’t pay — they make you the product because you can’t stop them.

As far as feature development goes, Meta isn't looking under the couch cushions for change. If they want to invest in a feature, they will.

[darth_avocado]

Id pay money to not see ads. Like YouTube premium. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. Can’t believe they rolled out all these different plans and left out the one thing a lot of people would buy.

[cm11]

Does Youtube Premium track and build profiles and use and sell them? I assume so because Google, but does Premium remove advertising (in the broad sense of the business model and profiling) or remove just ads? YT in general seems "kinder" than others at a few things, like you can remove history and activity and even get a blank homescreen.

Aside: I think it's funny how with an NYT subscription, you still get not only ads, but frequent article-covering ads for NYT subscriptions (asking to upgrade to a family account).

[vineyardmike]

Most of these big companies don’t actually sell your data directly, they monetize it through first party ads. If you have a well-oiled ad machine with strong first party data, selling the data just gives it to competitors, and is overall less valuable than using it for yourself.

I’d assume they’re still building that profile while you use the product, but you won’t see any ads, and can still delete the data from the various points like you’ve mentioned.

[laweijfmvo]

“full” premium removes all advertising, and it’s quite pricey in the US. “Lite” premium removes ‘most’ ads but doesn’t allow downloads at all.

[kalleboo]

I believe the ads that "lite" Premium doesn't remove are on anything that has ContentID music in it, as they have to pay higher fees to the record labels for those.

[dymk]

It’s $16/month for full premium. It’s all relative, but I wouldn’t describe that as quite pricey for a platform with that large a library.

[skillina]

I've been considering writing a nastygram to the NYT about their nonsense popups. Every time I open their web page I get not only the family account popup, but also a "use our app, it's better!" popup.

I refuse to install your app just because you intentionally trash the web experience with popups.

[slumberlust]

Article yesterday suggesting we name these interrupting popus dickovers.

[brianmiddleton]

Someone willing and able to pay for something as frivolous as Instagram or Snapchat makes them priceless to an advertiser. They want to make it easier to identify those people.

But yeah, when Snapchat rolled out their subscription program, I was all set to buy it to get rid of the annoying ads and AI in my chat list, then I realized I could do none of that. So now I just use it a lot less, which is probably better for them anyway.

[phyrex]

Those plans exist in Europe. Not sure if they're available elsewhere or how popular they are there

[sethops1]

I paid for YouTube Premium until they started showing me ads for YouTube TV (and maybe YouTube Red at the time?). Cancelled and got into DNS adblocking.

[qwerpy]

Of all of the sites/apps that are immune to DNS adblocking, I thought YouTube was at the top of the list. Not that DNS adblocking isn’t a good thing, but I’d think Google & meta would make sure they couldn’t be defeated so easily.

[whyenot]

Maybe this was something country or region specific. I don’t remember ever seeing ads for TV, Red, or other products with my US premium subscription. Now, some channels will promote specific products in their videos (like the mini ads some do for square space, nordvpn, etc), but YouTube, now has a button you can click to jump over that garbage.

[the_af]

It must be country/region specific.

Other people are mentioning that in the US there are two tiers of Premium, "Full" and "Lite", but I only see one tier in my country (fully ad-free, allows downloads).

[prmoustache]

Are there ads on whatsapp? I've never seen one.

[godelski]

  > How many times do we hear things like "if the product is free, you are the product"

Do their subscriptions give people an ad free experience? Does it give them extra privacy?

To me it sounds like they no longer are making enough money, so now they are asking people to pay to be the product

[pyrale]

> they no longer are making enough money

Have they ever made enough money according to their own desire?

[godelski]

I think you already know my answer to that lol

[haritha-j]

None of the packages mention anything about removing ads do they? They're some silly premium features like custom stickers and themes. I don't see anything about removing ads.

[qwertox]

> "if the product is free, you are the product"

I feel like this is no longer true. You are now the product regardless of you paying for it or not.

[everdrive]

I think given that meta has already sort of destroyed so many things, it's difficult to see this measure causing any _harm_. I'm not sure it's a panacea, as since you said meta will just take your money and track you. But the "tracking you ship" has already sailed. Maybe in a perfect world the "taking your money" bit is successful enough that they try to make that experience better? Ideally, meta would just take 100% of its intellectual assets and pay to have them subducted by the Mariana Trench, but I don't think that'll be happening for me.

[mrandish]

> this is probably a positive thing for Meta products

If it was a subscription that eliminated all ads AND enshittification anti-patterns, like not putting every single notification, 'share my...' and 'show me...' option on separate toggles helpfully sub-divided into a dozen or more separate pages - I would be all in.

Seriously, what if Meta just said, in effect, "give us $XX a year" and you will be a "VIP Account" that's invisible to all our analytics systems, data collection, aggregation and profiling. The only metric where you will even be visible to our reporting systems is "VIP Account Revenue" as your payments hit our account. We will not care (or even know) if your usage is literally zero minutes a year.

I'm sure all the reasons you're thinking of for why Meta would never do this are probably correct. Those same reasons are why the reasonable-sounding thought "this does give a meaningful voice to their customers who pay" is moot. I believe there is no subscription amount Meta would accept to genuinely shift their entire way of thinking about even a small subset of users. Therefore, this much smaller subscription won't actually change anything that matters. This is just the diary farm trying to collect extra money by renting plastic stall decorations to the cows their business owns and milks. By definition these features will be trivial and purely cosmetic because anything that actually changes user behavior, would impact the real business and will be decided based on that.

[bmitc]

That's ignoring that WhatsApp has been free for a long time and was end to end encrypted. Then a multi billion dollar corporation bought it and has slowly whittled away at it.

[jmspring]

So, pay them to keep doing what they already do?

[ksd482]

Yes. The difference is now the money is coming from you rather than selling your data. Which is what you want.

Of course, they could still sell your data anyway. That's why it's important to pay attention to their T&C.

[MajorTakeaway]

The only real way to opt out is to not use 'the product'.

I miss the days where 'the product' is only what we got, and not being the victim of an executives stalking campaign.

[pyrale]

s/rather than/as well as/g

[otikik]

> if the product is free, you are the product

I used to think like that, but then I realized that

> if you are paying for the product, nothing guarantees that you are not the product anyway

Companies like money and they will have no qualms against double dipping. Even if you refuse to be their customer (and thus they lose the revenue coming from you) as long as the majority of their customers are ok with being a product, they will keep doing it.

[frail_figure]

This is Meta. You will always be the product. This is like asking us to tip them in addition to all the horrible things they're doing either way.

[angled]

Aren't people here old enough to recall paying for WhatsApp's original subscription fee?

Circa 2016: https://www.techspot.com/news/63504-whatsapp-waves-goodbye-a...

[okanat]

Whatsapp wasn't owned by Facebook at the time..

[prmoustache]

I don't think anyone ever paid the whatsapp subscription fee. I remember they announced it, nobody accepted paying it and the app kept functionning and they dropped the idea.

[sunaookami]

Friends of mine did for Android or the app stopped functioning. You also had to pay a one time fee to even download it on iOS. But yeah, most users didn't have to.

[prmoustache]

Maybe they enforced it first on some regions and since it backfired other regions didn't have to pay.

[latexr]

> How many times do we hear things like "if the product is free, you are the product"

As of late, not many times. Because it’s become clear that for the big players you’re the product even if you pay. See for example Netflix or Hulu, where you pay a subscription and are advertised to.

[nxpnsv]

But here you are the product AND you pay for it. At least I think you still get ads and tracking…

[Yokohiii]

The only truth here is that meta is preparing for the AI bot apocalypse. When everything turns into AI noise, people will move on. Segmenting real (paying) users and bots is a strategy to sustain their business model, not welfare.

[skeeter2020]

>> product managers can justify investing in features that otherwise would be passed up due to lack of revenue potential from advertising.

Like no ads? that's usually the #1 you pay for and no mention of that.

[h4kunamata]

>How many times do we hear things like "if the product is free, you are the product" - well

Well, now they will keep doing what they are doing while being paid because your data is their business model.

[voxleone]

Their offer for subscribers are nothing but beads and sequins. A genuine offer [the kind i could accept] should contemplate an ad, bot and algo-free experience.

[plagiarist]

There used to be a single streaming service that had the majority of the content with zero ads. Now we are back to ad-ridden cable TV pricing with nearly zero product features. Paying these shitbirds will not cause them to invest in the product. Meta isn't even generating any of the content, at least streaming services are doing that much with the money they are given.

[blks]

The only way for this model to work, is for governments to put high pressure on tech giants to put the breaks on the whole surveillance & data selling business. Otherwise they will take your money and sell your data at the same time.

I wonder if fully forbidding personalised ads will actually make gdp of developed nations to shrink.

[wahnfrieden]

Govt won’t do it. They want that data too.

[rozap]

You're right it's a good thing, but I think they're maybe 10 years too late. The issue is that their product is hateful, non-functional, and my feelings toward the brand are probably more negative than any other brand I can think of. So why would I give them money? It's a tough sell.

[tw04]

That’d be more relatable if they weren’t actively trying to remove encryption from their messaging to spy and serve even more ads at the same time they’re trying to charge a fee for the pleasure of giving them your data to sell.

[general_reveal]

Sisters, a 8B local model that hallucinates is better than that 50bn in sweaty VR shit they made. It is what it is, slap a monthly fee on the 3B model and move on, I suppose.

[vasco]

To me this is more like the arc of

1. Get cable TV there's no ads!

2. Everyone switches to cable

3. Cable now has ads too

Than what you describe but I feel like it's maybe more positive of a change than that. But just slightly.

[vel0city]

In the US, cable had ads from day one. Especially considering originally it was just the OTA broadcasts bundled together.

Several of the first cable-only TV channels were ad supported from the start, and several others started including ads within a few years in.

[chris_wot]

To purchase a subscription, you need to value and trust the service. To trust the service the provider needs to show it can be trusted.

It’s Facebook. Why would anyone trust them?

[lelanthran]

> How many times do we hear things like "if the product is free, you are the product" - well, the consequence of that is development resources tend to be pulled into directions that benefit advertisers.

Maybe. Or maybe this is the final stop on the route to enshittification: bill both the advertisers and the users.

[pmontra]

Are there ads in WhatsApp? I never saw one. Facebook, I remember a lot of ads. Instagram, probably but I don't have an account there.

[okanat]

Whatsapp metadata is one of the strongest signals about you. Your friends and family and your patterns of texting tells quite a bit information about you.

[sometimes_all]

That's nice, but used to what end, especially if you are not a Instagram/Facebook user, and have a decent ad-blocker set up?

[okanat]

Your signals are not only used to advertise to you but people like you and people who know you.

[pks016]

There are story ads now.

[csomar]

Except their "impersonation protection" subscription sounds more like a racket than a product. Basically, pay us or we'll spoil your brand. Now, they want to charge point addicts for getting access to very basic and limited stats about their 2 seconds videos.

[Danox]

You’re right you’re going against the the grain it isn’t positive for the end user.

[ncr100]

I disagree with that particular 'against the grain' (.. that this somehow is a positive thing for Meta products ..) for the critical reason that META corp is an established Advertising business and pivoting to non-Advertising-supported is likely infeasible. I think it is an absurd idea that introducing subs will help improve Meta's products, outside of this HN discussion .. there is no reasonable, direct connection between the two concepts. For instance, Metas own culture will sabotoge the effort.

It is certainly worthwhile IMO to consider the positive things for Meta -- I believe it's truly only to capture more of the market, and improving Meta's products means something which only META defines, like a snake eating its own tail.

This move is di-worsification -- Meta is fundamentally not in the subscription business. They don't provide ongoing accruing value..the subscription doesn't gain a user access to functionality.

My straw-man phrase, to illustrate the preposterousness .. for lols only .. "If only they had more money to invest in features which delight users." They have enough money.

[platevoltage]

It's because you'll still be the product even if you pay.

[palata]

> How many times do we hear things like "if the product is free, you are the product"

This is old school. Now we know for a fact from the "enshittification" concept that you are always the product. If they can keep abusing you AND make you pay on top of that, it's better than abusing you without making you pay.

There are no good monopolies, the solution really is to fight them.

[nelox]

AI is expensive and ad revenue alone won't cover it.

[timoth3y]

> "if the product is free, you are the product"

This is not true. You are the product whether you are paying or not.

If the company thinks they can make money by selling your data/attention/access, they will do so. Paying them does not stop them from monetizing you.

These new paid tiers will be slowly enshitified just like most modern paid plans.

[anon35]

You seem to be attacking a different statement that no one says: "if the product isn't free, you aren't the product". There's no "if and only if" in the maxim.

Pretty sure you agree that if the product is free, the company is definitely getting value by monetizing something else of yours. It very much is true as written.

[the_af]

From a formal logic standpoint, you're correct.

But the context of the parent's and grandparent's comments was (paraphrased) "if you don't pay, you're the product, therefore it makes sense to pay in this case". But given what we know of Meta and their ilk, we have good reason to believe this is absolutely NOT the case: you'll pay but you'll still be the product, and their offerings will keep on the road to enshitification. So parent comment is correct given this context.

I don't believe they were making the case that free Facebook is in any way healthy or good for you.

[pertymcpert]

Agreed. Nothing wrong with charging for a product.

[sunaookami]

You are paying with your data already.

[PatronBernard]

C'mon, it's the oldest trick in MBA book: make a much-used service paid, make the free version of it terrible and you force people to get the paid service.

[renegade-otter]

I have serious doubts that Meta is aiming to improve these products. Every time I open Instagram - ironically of course - it just seems like more and more AI slop.