Comment by sensanaty
17 hours ago
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.
"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
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.
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".
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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
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.
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
What are they even doing with all of this data collection, especially considering that ads still are terrible at pertaining to my interests?
Make the feed curation algo more addictive.
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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.
You may not get ads in the app, but they can still sell your data for other services who will give you ads.
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".
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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> 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.
Ah, you must be one of those that cuts his own hair, shops strictly at thrift shops and wears bags as shoes.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
>> 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?
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.
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>... and stop being the product.
You will not stop being the product if you pay.
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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
How's your YouTube Premium subscription?
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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.
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So they successfully blackmailed you.
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
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.
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Ultimately the consumer is paying for the ad spend as well, so it can't be an outsized part of the budget.
You're assuming that your own data has no cost. They get data from you for free.
> 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.
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?
Not sure I understand this. The vote is, pay or not pay. If you pay, you vote yes.