[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.

[douglee650]

Next level is to reach out directly and ask them if you can just sponsor directly with said micropayment ($20/month). SUrprisingly, most say no.

Your special kindness is not worth $20/month to even moderately successful creators.

[abenga]

I probably watch too many channels to pay them each outside youtube, it will become quickly logistically unmanageable, if not unaffordable. The maximum I can do is probably 5 channels or so.

[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?

[renegade-otter]

They made a movie about people like you in the 90s, called "Clueless":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld_TueiQiQo&t=105s

[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.

[akdev1l]

LMAO brother you should stop projecting and get little more self assurance that isn’t tied to your wealth

[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.

[bigmadshoe]

So it seems to go in capitalism sadly. If we could maintain healthy competition and avoid collusion, maybe we would be allowed to vote with our wallets. But right now that seems like a distant fantasy.

[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

[bigmadshoe]

Exactly, so hacker news readers are not necessarily the people who would need to be charged the most to remove advertisements. I barely shop.

[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.

[bigmadshoe]

The amount of money you spend doesn’t affect your disposable income, just your savings (beyond calculating interest). Unless we have different definitions of income or disposable.

[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.