Seems absolutely unhinged. I don't know who'd pay to doomscroll AI-generated slop and fake news. $49.99 for the top plan, lol.
DANmode•May 31, 2026
But they know who.
fullshark•May 31, 2026
All I can think of is people who need those accounts for professional reasons (i.e. public relations)
suddenlybananas•May 31, 2026
It's a real shame private messaging has ended up being almost exclusively closed-source without any kind of open API.
jjordan•May 31, 2026
How did we let this happen? We used to have open protocols, apps like Pidgin that would bring multiple chat clients together under one interface, IRC, Skype P2P, etc. etc.
Was it spammers that caused this mass migration to ever more closed platforms?
tim-projects•May 31, 2026
They all still exist, but we don't have the collective courage to use them when it means you might miss a status update from your friends.
NegativeK•May 31, 2026
The vast majority of people aren't aware of open versus closed protocols. If enough people they want to communicate with are using it to counterbalance how frustrating it is, they'll use it. It happened because businesses realized there's profit in lock in, and they threw resources at it.
Open protocols are still there and still used, but we're sad because the smaller userbase is frustrating. Just like how people still publish human written content to personal blogs, but they're proportionally non-existent.
WarmWash•Jun 1, 2026
Closed platforms have salaried teams of workers and salaried teams of marketers. Often they usually have user friendly support too.
Open-source always has a certain level of "jank" that tends to decimate interest from common folks.
regexorcist•May 31, 2026
In the EU at least WhatsApp is being forced to interop with other messaging apps. I believe it's being rolled out at the moment.
tgv•May 31, 2026
Yeah, there are precisely two apps that can exchange with Whatsapp: one is still in beta, the other is by invite only, and for "professional networking" or something like that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746476
carlosjobim•May 31, 2026
The world still runs on email.
rossjudson•May 31, 2026
I think that subscribing to another person's life prevents you from living your own. Also, "Everything is Lies, I Guess".
YesBox•May 31, 2026
Discord subscriptions seem to be working. People like to customize their profile (ie express themselves), even though profiles are not something frequently interacted with (that's the surprising part!)
I have a server (for my game) with about 1000 people. Out of the 300 people logged in, 50 of them have custom profiles.
So, it seems like a good idea for Meta.
fontain•May 31, 2026
The main problem is that premium subscriptions don’t generate that much revenue when compared to ads alone. The users who pay are the most valuable users to advertisers and the users who don’t pay are the least valuable. Discord generates about $1 in revenue per user compared to Facebook at closer to $100. For Discord at $1 per user, any subscription that’s a few dollars or more is probably paying for the lost advertising revenue, but it wouldn’t translate for Meta so they aren’t including ad free which drastically reduces the value.
I’ll be surprised if Meta’s subscriptions are as popular as Discord’s without being advertising free. Cosmetics are liked amongst Discord’s audience of nerds, but not Meta’s audience of normal people.
Very interested to see how this works out for Meta. Since they’re not excluding ads, it’s basically free money, so they may as well offer these subscriptions.
rhines•May 31, 2026
I wish these companies didn't need to make billions in revenue. There's no reason why a small company couldn't manage a site like Discord, make enough to pay their developers, and be successful. But instead every company needs to become a unicorn and pay investors billions.
lukeschlather•May 31, 2026
I actually cancelled my Discord subscription because they've gradually been adding more intrusive ads and subscriptions don't protect you from ads.
Marsymars•Jun 1, 2026
> The users who pay are the most valuable users to advertisers and the users who don’t pay are the least valuable.
But also, definitionally, the users who are willing to pay the most are the ones who the see ads as the biggest anti-value (i.e. cost) to themselves - so they'll be the ones most likely to not use the service if they're not given an ad-free option - cutting down the average user value anyway.
airstrike•May 31, 2026
tbh I mostly pay for nitro for cross-server, animated emoji
sillysaurusx•May 31, 2026
How’d you make a game with 1,000 people? It’s impressive.
YesBox•May 31, 2026
They're players, not devs.
sillysaurusx•May 31, 2026
Yeah, I was asking how you got so many players.
YesBox•May 31, 2026
Forgive me for not wanting to write up the history of the game's development. It boils down to product market fit, innovation, and fantasy fulfillment/fun.
This does indeed look great- is it only a demo now?
ro_bit•May 31, 2026
You can get free profile decorations these days from watching ads (discord “orbs”). It would be interesting to know how many of those users have the nitro subscription badge next to their name
YesBox•May 31, 2026
I just counted 35 online profiles with nitro. Same ~300 people online currently
micromacrofoot•May 31, 2026
Yeah this very much a "like Discord" move, and it does work
j45•May 31, 2026
Maybe they could sell privacy/encrypted messages in the subscription after removing it.
Animats•May 31, 2026
"It's free and always will be" - Facebook
ravenstine•May 31, 2026
Whenever companies make statements like this and then people act surprised when they backtrack, I can't help but think of a bit of my favorite dialogue from Star Trek Enterprise.
HARRIS: We had an arrangement!
KRELL: You did what I wanted. I don't need you anymore.
HARRIS: You agreed that both our governments would benefit if the two of us worked together.
KRELL: And you believed me.
avaer•May 31, 2026
"They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks." - Mark Zuckerberg
alex1138•May 31, 2026
Followed by him overwriting people's email addresses and constantly fucking around with privacy settings
Ohhhh but he was young! Be easy on him
(/s)
shevy-java•May 31, 2026
Not only that, but Spybook aka Facebook, also connected offline information, e. g. I think if I recall it was dental care or something like that. I don't remember the year (edit: a google search led me to this article from 2018, but I could swear this was several years before that - see https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43668607), but it was scary that they go and sniff for ALL data they can find about people. This brings mega-corporation to a new level of Evil. And I haven't even gotten to talk about Google here, yet ...
I'd bet good money this is mostly related to Europe's GDPR / DMA actions against Facebook. Ironically, I think Facebook would be in the clear to just charge everyone in Europe and dump ads altogether. :shrug:
f33d5173•May 31, 2026
I didn't see it mentioned that this hid ads. I would be surprised if it did, since facebook makes way more than $4/month off many of it's users, they would be leaving a ton of money on the table if they only charged that to remove ads.
embedding-shape•May 31, 2026
Probably paying would toggle on/off personalization of the ads, but then also they'd charge extra for the ads they show to "paying high-quality users" or something, so they can double-dip both sides.
soupspaces•Jun 1, 2026
"don't be evil"?
meta_ai_x•May 31, 2026
Friendly reminder: HN opinion about this will be completely-out-of-touch with reality
alex1138•May 31, 2026
What reality? The reality is almost nobody likes using Facebook (and many people can't anyway because they get banned while the racist thing or whatever they report never gets taken down) because it doesn't work, messages are hit and miss, nobody sees any status updates, and it's 20 ads per post
pj_mukh•May 31, 2026
I would pay $49.99/mo for an unlimited plan that brings me only my friends' status updates (not their hyper-political likes and comments), just their life updates. Daily stories are great too. But JUST that, no influencers, no ads.
I realize Meta's data shows that our user revealed preferences tells them that we like all the dopamine hijacking garbage but that's like saying "Well users like drugs, so we gave them more". Let me pay you to give me just the vitamins, and none of the sugar.
tim-projects•May 31, 2026
Pay each of your friends $50 one per month, to switch to signal. Problem solved
freedomben•May 31, 2026
$50 per month for unlimited, not $50 per friend, so your solution only works if you only have 1 friend, so it would work for me (self-deprecating joke) but may not for GP.
lostlogin•May 31, 2026
> Pay each of your friends $50 one per month
It an outlay of $50 a moth. Probably better to pay 50/number of friends though.
rkomorn•May 31, 2026
$50 a moth? How about just a lightbulb and an open window?
lostlogin•May 31, 2026
It took me several re reads to get it.
fsflover•May 31, 2026
Or, better, Mastodon or Matrix, which don't rely on a single, easy-to-target server.
dreamcompiler•May 31, 2026
This works for friends and family members who are computer geeks. Signal for everybody else.
fsflover•May 31, 2026
I don't see what's missing in Matrix. Yes, the verification may be somewhat cumbersome, but I helped to deal with it, and it just works now.
john01dav•May 31, 2026
Everything about matrix is cumbersome and glitchy. I have last tried to use it a few years ago and it seemed that Riot/Element had the only decent clients, and those were all Electron on desktop and also seemingly for profit. Signal has the electron problem, as well as many others (like the backup UI being abhorrent), but at least the core functionality works without fuss.
fsflover•Jun 1, 2026
> and also seemingly for profit
They are not for profit, developed by the matrix.org foundation.
hgoel•May 31, 2026
A friend and I have been running a private Matrix server for almost a decade now, it's very lacking in comparison to what the average chat user (especially discord) is used to.
No custom emojis, no self-chat, embeds are inconsistent (e.g. encrypted rooms), multi-image uploads aren't a thing in many clients, adding text when sending an attachment isn't a thing, just to name things we've run into over the years. Most of these have been brought up to the devs many years ago, only to spend forever in spec hell and never actually make it into a release.
We're just tolerating these, because we explicitly moved off discord to have control over our data, but being tech savvy we can handle this. It's nowhere near good enough that I could use it with less savvy people.
komali2•Jun 1, 2026
> Yes, the verification may be somewhat cumbersome
It's a hard blocker. I was running an engineering co-op off it and the onboarding difficulties was what finally led us to switch to discord.
All members are good engineers, but the client apps just had too many rough edges.
I really want the project to succeed so I'll keep checking in on it every year.
charcircuit•Jun 1, 2026
Mastodon and Matrix do rely on a single easy to target server.
fsflover•Jun 1, 2026
What are you talking about? Which server? They are federated systems with many independent servers.
charcircuit•Jun 1, 2026
And if the federated server you are on goes down. You lose everything. If the federated server you are on steals your information or censors you there is nothing you can do.
fsflover•Jun 1, 2026
You have to choose a server that you trust. In centralized systems, you have no choice at all. If you can't find a trusted server, you can set up your own, ask a friend to do it for you, or pay someone to do this job. You are not bound to an artificial monopoly.
lukeschlather•May 31, 2026
Signal is designed with the assumption that data is sensitive and you should err on the side of destroying it.
Facebook is designed more as a shared scrapbook, with the assumption that data is precious and you want to share it with your community, and you should err on the side of oversharing so you don't lose any precious moments. Signal is in no way a replacement for Facebook.
DANmode•May 31, 2026
It is if Facebook was never a good fit for you in the first place.
tim-projects•May 31, 2026
> Signal is designed with the assumption that data is sensitive and you should err on the side of destroying it.
That's... Just not true
> Facebook is designed more as a shared scrapbook
Have you used Facebook in the last 5 years? Its nothing like this at all.
lukeschlather•May 31, 2026
> Have you used Facebook in the last 5 years? Its nothing like this at all.
I use it all the time. Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and we were reminiscing about visiting another friend's house, and we looked up some old birthday party invitations to help us remember when we had been there.
pj_mukh•May 31, 2026
This is exactly what I want Facebook for. The network has all this value baked in, but they'll have to look past its obsession with ads and slop.
lukeschlather•May 31, 2026
Honestly it's all there, if you use the "feeds" view in the menu it cuts out all the random influencer garbage. The search, especially the event search, is not great, but honestly I hope they don't touch it because I'm more worried about them enshittifying it further than I am about getting some creature comforts.
Larrikin•May 31, 2026
When Facebook was food this was how it was used and what people liked. Nobody would care what they've done to the product in the past 10 years to optimize for money over mental health
jsrozner•May 31, 2026
This is absurd. You're just asking for reasonable control over data that ostensibly belongs to you. Moreover, this minimum functionality was resolved years ago with RSS. That you'd be willing to pay so much reflects how well every tech company is doing at using tech against its own users.
pj_mukh•May 31, 2026
Ehhh, what I'm paying for is FB/Insta's ability to bring everyone onto one platform and encourage them to post regularly. RSS, AOL Messenger etc, never were able to do that with any decent success.
That they went past that to just kill their own golden goose is what is now reversible via a payment plan. That might be their only saving grace on this now managed decline.
TFNA•May 31, 2026
But FB/Insta haven't been able to get everyone onto one platform. Generations are balkanized across FB, Instagram, and WhatsApp (all of which Meta bought precisely because it can’t manage with its original social network), and TikTok.
bflesch•May 31, 2026
Nah once they know you can be fleeced for $50 per month, they also know there is much more money to extract from you. Their advertisers would be mad if they remove this juicy cohort of moneybags from their audience.
uyzstvqs•May 31, 2026
What you need is the Stories feature in Signal, then donate that $49.99/month (or however much you want) to their foundation.
canyp•May 31, 2026
Why? You are still giving up privacy. There is 0 reason to be using Meta products, let alone pay for them.
I’ve been considering it but I am not sure if it drops just ads or suggested posts as well.
tmaly•May 31, 2026
I am surprised someone hasn't made a really nice equivalent to Obsidian for Mastadon and just released it for free on the app stores. I am sure one could host a very cheap mastadon instance on a low cost VPS
apsurd•May 31, 2026
I don't believe for a second you'd pay $50 per month!
Yeah you'd do it to prove a point. 6 months later, no way in hell.
pibaker•May 31, 2026
Virtue signaling is free. Paying up for my virtues? Never.
schubidubiduba•May 31, 2026
I think I would pay it. The peace of mind knowing that my every move isn't tracked and being used to sell me stuff or engagement bait me is invaluable tbh
apsurd•May 31, 2026
I paid for youtube premium for a few months under the reasoning that I hate those auto playing make money ads so much. Certainly paying for peace is worthwhile.
Youtube legitimately has some quality content. But I ended my subscription because fundamentally, streamlining the path to more Youtube usage is self-enabling devil’s work.
Point being: Im not convinced paying money to these companies is ultimately going to result in a healthier, more safe more private experience, no matter what they claim.
pmontra•Jun 1, 2026
At best they will honor the contract of not tracking your moves through that app. They will use part of your money to buy the information about your moves from other sources, or track you with another app.
fsflover•Jun 1, 2026
> The peace of mind knowing that my every move isn't tracked and being used to sell me stuff or engagement bait
So ~$5 per month. Absolutely reasonable as I said.
kleton•May 31, 2026
> only my friends' status updates
I think that is the Feed's tab, though I have not used the blue app in a long time
fooker•May 31, 2026
You'd do it once and figure out that none of your friends have regular status updates any more.
Cider9986•Jun 1, 2026
I pay $50/mo for internet, this is some nice ragebait.
You can change the feeds with extensions or modded apps for free and ads are blocked by default in any good browser.
lucaspiller•Jun 1, 2026
> we like all the dopamine hijacking garbage
I basically don't use Facebook any more because of this. Opening the app shows me the most sensationalist, fearmongering and outrage bait content they can find. It's worse than news channels (I haven't watched TV for 20 years). I have auto play turned off, and every few months the setting gets turned back on.
The first few posts I see scrolling through:
- US adds mandatory tips ahead of world cup.
- Woman dies after being hit by Audi in city center.
- There was a huge queue for women's toilets at a tech conference.
- 50% off mattresses.
- Some influencer I don't follow bought 20 rolls of 3M tape from Lidl.
Do I still have friends, do they still post stuff? I only see them in the reels/stories section at the top.
The only reason why I still have Facebook is because of groups. It's the main 'groups' tool people use in my country, so there are various local groups I am part of.
input_sh•Jun 1, 2026
There is not a single subscription in the world I would pay more than $20/month for personal purposes, unlimited (and I do mean unlimited) LLM tokens very much included.
Traubenfuchs•Jun 1, 2026
You can turn off political content in IG settings and additionally add hashtags/keywords to specifically filter out content that displeases you.
onel•Jun 1, 2026
That was the premise of halloapp.
I think it was $5 a month and encrypted like WhatsApp, and you had a feed only from your contacts.
It was founded by a guy who worked for WhatsApp for a long time. Apparently it went under in 2024.
I think messaging is just a commoditized service. People will not pay for it
documentorium•Jun 1, 2026
Did you check this out?
https://isactiv.com/ - Private social network - exactly what you describe
mgrunwald_•Jun 1, 2026
I've seen too many of those privacy-respecting alternative social networks. Problem is that you'll post things only for yourself, which may be cool if you don't care about actually having friends there.
ghrl•Jun 1, 2026
I believe you can get close to that with various Instagram mods for Android. They have advanced features like only show posts from followers and stuff like that. I switched to one of them after realizing the 5 second ad breaks I got were only there because I disabled personalized advertising.
lionkor•Jun 1, 2026
You can ditch all that and talk to your friends (text them or call them or visit them) for almost free, actually. You can keep up with people without a middleman.
qweiopqweiop•May 31, 2026
Those features sound so narcissistic to me
iLoveOncall•May 31, 2026
It's insane that those subscriptions don't remove ads. That's the only thing I would even remotely consider paying for on any meta product.
In the current state those subscriptions will just show your friends that you're a huge loser who's willing to pay for custom backgrounds.
fontain•May 31, 2026
Unfortunately, Meta’s ad business is so effective that they would need to charge hundreds of dollars per year for an ad free service just to keep revenue stable. I suspect anything less than $25 per month would be loss making for them.
timpera•May 31, 2026
They do offer a €8/month ad-free Instagram subscription in the EU. I'm subscribed, it's pretty cool.
Cider9986•Jun 1, 2026
If you used Android you can get this for free or just use it on the web with an adblocker.
chistev•May 31, 2026
And even then, they wouldn't remove ads since they'd want to add to their profits!
mrweasel•Jun 1, 2026
The last numbers I saw are almost 10 years old now, and then it was $65 per year in profit for a Facebook user, in the US, a little less for someone in the EU and almost nothing in most other places.
Are there new numbers that one can access? I can imagine the value has gone up, but hundreds of dollars seem like a lot.
figglestar•May 31, 2026
People who pay subscriptions are exactly the sort of people you want to advertise to the most since they've signaled they have money. It's like flashing a big wad of cash in a seedy bar.
AlienRobot•May 31, 2026
Why would they remove the ads from users who have proven that they would even pay for a Facebook subscription?
WarmWash•Jun 1, 2026
The hurdle is instagram makes ~$27/mo per user from ad revenue.
Would you pay $27/mo for instagram?
mrweasel•Jun 1, 2026
You probably couldn't even sell an Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp bundle for ~$25 per month.
This sort of looks like a subscription for influencers, organisation and "power users". Even if you turned off the ads, most of people feed, from what I've seen are basically ads they signed up for, e.g. posts from companies, so I doubt that most even care.
SilverElfin•May 31, 2026
Who is this for? Is it just a way to monetize dying platforms before they inevitably become worthless?
dreamcompiler•May 31, 2026
The last stage of Doctorow's enshittification cycle is "Then, they die."
Interesting. Instagram and Facebook both seem to be filled with AI-generated fake crap today. Even the so-called news items that I see there seem to be fake. I don't even know who would be subscribing. Especially to Facebook as of today....
It is filled with pretty low quality content overall. On the other side, WhatsApp has been getting filled with a lot of bloat. And even today, I find it confusing to use communities in WhatsApp. The entire navigation and experience around that feature confused me a few times. There's been more and more push towards the AI crap on WhatsApp as well.
The only good thing about WhatsApp is, it is used by everyone that I know, so I can connect with them pretty easily and make calls, etc. I hope they don't enshittify it too much to the point where I'll go and use Signal full time.
shevy-java•May 31, 2026
> Instagram and Facebook both seem to be filled with AI-generated fake crap today.
Also youtube, unfortunately. Google does not understand that AI is slowly killing youtube.
I am an expert cat video person, so noticing AI slop is not so hard, but it takes a few seconds (e. g. a mother cat punishing the young cat for "overreach" - the way how the AI video insinuated reality was of course completely false, AI spam slop that lies to real humans). I'd rather wish Google would not waste my time (then again, why am I still using youtube ... one day I'll be degoogled for good. The sooner Google is gone from this planet, the better.)
princevegeta89•May 31, 2026
And also, pretty much any internet-generated social media content, basically. Reddit is another classic example. If you look at many posts in subreddits containing a huge number of users, you could easily tell it is AI-generated, especially these idiotic "Am I the asshole" posts or "askreddit" posts and any other posts involving interesting situations.
Not just that. Even comments, some of those are basically AI crap, cleverly disguised as real users. It is such a waste, honestly. AI has brought upon us a low-quality world to live in, out of nowhere. This is such a pity.
CuriouslyC•May 31, 2026
Shorts are a dumpster fire in terms of fake content. Full length videos are a lot better, as YT has been cracking down on AI generated regular videos, though there are still a fair number of AI narrated/scripted videos and deepfakes of prolific interviewees.
shevy-java•May 31, 2026
> In an announcement, Meta’s head of product, Naomi Gleit, noted that “more fun features” will be added in the future.
Thank you - I don't want any of that.
What exactly are "fun" features, anyway? Do they take away from my time?
yokoprime•May 31, 2026
That's not happening
flufluflufluffy•May 31, 2026
> There are also other features like Super Heart animated reactions for Stories, custom app icons, customizable fonts for profile bios, and access to additional pins for your profile.
Ahh, remember the days of livejournal/myspace, where we got all of those “features” for free because your profile is literally a fucking webpage
AlienRobot•May 31, 2026
Imagine paying for the privilege to display an animated icon.
I blame Bethesda and their horse armor for this.
drnick1•May 31, 2026
Just stop using Meta products. It's really not as hard as it seems. Nobody needs FB to communicate with friends and family. Send texts or emails or use your phone.
Starman_Jones•May 31, 2026
The hardest part about not using Meta products is deciding not to use meta products. When I stopped using Facebook, I had resigned myself to spending a lot of time and effort to stay in touch with my friends and family. As it turns out, all I had to do was mention that I was using Signal, and the people closest to me, then pretty close to me, then kinda close to me all started using that too. The network effect cuts both ways.
ryandrake•May 31, 2026
It’s amazing how strong the Meta FOMO is. I stopped using Facebook over 10 years ago and never even opened Instagram or WhatsApp, and I really am not missing out on anything in life. My actual friends know how to contact me and they do! And it’s really not that hard to say “Sorry I don’t have Whats App, just call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx.”
If someone is prepared to not be my friend because they only want to communicate via a Meta app, then I don’t see why I’d want them as a friend.
doom2•Jun 1, 2026
The annoying thing is how many businesses and communities rely on Meta platforms instead of their own websites and sometimes it's the only way to contact them. If I want to check if the small neighborhood grocery has something in stock? No phone, only Instagram DMs. When I was on vacation abroad and wanted to see if an out of the way farmers market was still happening despite rain? Only Facebook.
The good thing is that it isn't everywhere: Taiwan, Japan, and China usually have apps like Line or WeChat as options. In Europe there's more usage of WhatsApp (which is still Meta owned but also not social media). But in the US (and countries in the Americas), I still see a heavy reliance on Instagram and Facebook.
drnick1•Jun 1, 2026
> want to check if the small neighborhood grocery has something in stock? No phone, only Instagram DMs.
You can use a throwaway account for that or other things such as FB Marketplace. It's not ideal because it generates traffic on FB, but it's better than handing over all your private communications to Zuckerberg.
dmje•Jun 1, 2026
Yeh but you can’t because they need phone validation, no?
erremerre•Jun 1, 2026
Not sure what country are you from. Last time I tried to make a throwaway account to sell something in Facebook Marketplace I was welcome with a submit picture to test if you are real which when uploaded with a IA generated picture got blocked.
wickedsight•Jun 1, 2026
> The annoying thing is how many businesses and communities rely on Meta platforms
During local elections over here (Netherlands), it was impossible to find any info from local parties outside of Facebook. Those parties are also the biggest, usually. I ended up voting for the one party that had a website with their plans for that exact reason.
barbazoo•Jun 1, 2026
I feel blessed to just be able to say no and move in. Not worth it. And nothing will change until some people make the first step. In every community.
itake•Jun 1, 2026
My issues with Signal are two:
1/ meta products trigger organic conversations. People post on Instagram and Facebook that they’re traveling and I will reach out to them if I’m close by. People don’t use Signal that way.
2/ the Facebook groups are very useful for local communities. As a traveler, I reach out to Expat groups for feedback.
barbazoo•Jun 1, 2026
Right. If being on meta is what keeps the "friendship" going and leaving the platform would have negative effect on the relationship, then on my opinion it wasn't a friendship to begin with. But that might just be my outdated view of how humans work.
alex1138•May 31, 2026
Actually it... is but not (just) for the reasons people give (social utility)
You delete a FB acct? It reactivates. Fun! Almost like the company is built off fraud
Iuz•May 31, 2026
I'm thinking about it, but WhatsApp has a real hold on the Brazilian population. Removing it would mean losing the primary way my family and many people I know communicate. It’s ubiquitous here, sadly.
derwiki•May 31, 2026
I don’t know about other places, but in SF, everything around schools is coordinated over WhatsApp—you’d be really doing your children a disservice to opt out.
And I hate it. I had deactivated all my Meta accounts but reactivated WhatsApp because of school stuff.
Loughla•May 31, 2026
Tell your school board to use a dedicated messaging platform built for schools. Cite privacy laws. That's what I did, and it worked.
Unless you're talking about parent groups. Because then you're fucked. Every parent group everywhere uses Facebook or Whatsapp and don't care that not everybody uses it. You will be excluded.
ryandrake•May 31, 2026
I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the philosophy: “you’re not missing out on anything worthwhile by being excluded by people who want to exclude you.” Don’t voluntarily interact with people who make “uses a particular app” a condition of that interaction.
derwiki•May 31, 2026
Which privacy laws?
Loughla•May 31, 2026
FERPA, COPPA, and whatever your particular state has. Just Google it.
derwiki•Jun 1, 2026
Thank you!
grvdrm•Jun 1, 2026
I assume parents. Not actual schools. Same situation here on East Coast. School uses ParentSquare but so much coordination is over iMesssage and WhatsApp.
the_af•Jun 1, 2026
> Tell your school board to use a dedicated messaging platform built for schools. Cite privacy laws. That's what I did, and it worked.
My daughter's school uses a clunky proprietary platform that is way, way worse than WhatsApp. I wish they used WhatsApp! Actually, they also do this, because being non techies their use of tech is all over the place and they adopted the worst of both worlds: school digital platform (very clunky) and, because it sucks, also WhatsApp. So important communications reach me both ways.
Sigh
carlosjobim•May 31, 2026
There are lots of other important uses for these platforms.
For the down voters: Such as finding local business information or events in your community, and tons of other stuff which isn't anywhere else.
Facebook + Instagram already has more current information than the rest of the web combined.
TFNA•May 31, 2026
You are years behind. It was in 2016 that, when traveling and wanting to exchange contacts with cool local people I met, I first began to get the response “My e-mail address? I don’t have email.” Already then many younger people were only on social media, and it was expected that you would exchange those contacts. And some countries never had the email moment at all, so even older people don’t use it.
Ditto for phones, if you mean the PSTN – as time goes on, fewer and fewer people have ever really used that. When people around the world are communicating via their smartphones with a phone-number-based protocol, it’s overwhelmingly WhatsApp, and guess who owns that?
apsurd•May 31, 2026
What's actually being said is that these people are not your friends/family and probably shouldn't be.
That definitely sounds harsher than intended. It's a meditation really. Nobody needs FB and Instagram. (please read as a meditation)
TFNA•May 31, 2026
Everyone is free to define “need” and who their friends should be as strictly as they want, because, sure, some people could become total hermits. But it’s not going to strike most people as a reasonable definition.
You mention “FB and Instagram”, and I haven’t used either in a decade myself. But the OP did mention “Meta products” and you are ignoring the elephant in the room: WhatsApp. In many countries it has completely replaced the PSTN: you cannot contact a business (they won’t answer normal calls and may not post email addresses), cannot get the necessary info on how to check into the reception-less accommodation one booked, and one will find it hard to maintain contact with people one may well wish to maintain contact with.
Larrikin•May 31, 2026
"just don't meet people because they don't communicate via your one specific method"
skillina•Jun 1, 2026
That statement applies to the person who won't be your friend because you don't have an Instagram, not to the person who refuses to install an arbitrary app as a precondition to becoming friends.
komali2•Jun 1, 2026
There's friends and there's friends.
Someone might be perfectly happy being your friend, and not understanding why you never come to their parties that they advertise via the group chat on whatever platform, or insta posts or whatever.
"If they cared enough they would message me directly on my obscure to normies messaging platform!" Yeah your best friend might. The greater social circle?
I get it, I'm trying to get everyone on signal or onto federated platforms, but I'm realizing that if I wanna talk to The People, I need to go to where The People are.
isolatedsystem•Jun 1, 2026
There was an old YouTube video of a young guy standing around somewhere in East Asia, placards in hand, recording himself showing messages on those placards about why you should quit social media, set to Marching The Hate Machines.
It had a placard in it saying something like "You don't have 100 friends. You have like 4. And that's OK."
The more I'm getting older, the truer this has become. There is something extremely zen-like about letting the past trail away like the wake of a ship, as Watts said.
In an ideal world, those people were dear to me, and me to them, and we would all stay in touch and be one big happy family, n'importe the distance. But it takes plenty out of me just to be there for those that matter most. And for them, putting up with my quirks is burdensome but not an unscalable wall. As it is for me with their quirks in reverse.
kingstoned•May 31, 2026
How do they not have email when it's required to sign up for various sites, plus having android phones requires gmail, plus official documents, bank accounts, job applications etc. tend to ask for email; email is used for work as well...?
TFNA•May 31, 2026
Notice how in the last several years, a lot of popular sites have allowed signing up with phone numbers, no email address required. Besides making the service more accessible to a generation that doesn’t use email, getting a person’s phone number is great for profiling them for advertising reasons.
In many countries, either WhatsApp or a PSTN number for receiving an SMS is used today for the things that you think are done with email. I have lived in two countries that have highly digitized government services, and they were provided over an official app where email wasn’t part of the signup flow.
Sure, maybe some people use email at work (but WhatsApp has eaten into even that in some regions), but then that address is so associated with work that they don’t use it for social contacts.
ValentineC•May 31, 2026
Good luck trying to not use Meta products (specifically WhatsApp) as a (non-tech) professional outside the US needing to communicate with their counterparts.
The best compromise for such people, I guess, would be a work phone number that's solely for business WhatsApp communication.
drnick1•Jun 1, 2026
I don't think it would be difficult to explain, especially in a professional capacity, that you don't use Whatsapp or Facebook because it does not meet your privacy requirements of your business.
outime•May 31, 2026
>It's really not as hard as it seems
Only on HN could someone post a take like this without getting laughed at. Outside our very geeky HN bubble, hardly anyone (let's say in Europe, but all my friends in the US use it as well) uses anything other than WhatsApp. There's literally zero reason for the average user to switch.
wyclif•Jun 1, 2026
WhatsApp as the only contact point is a pretty strong signal that the user is from a developing world country. I'm not from that part of the world, so I don't use WhatsApp.
rahkiin•Jun 1, 2026
If you count -all of europe- as a developing country, sure.
In europe we never had free unlimited texts. Internet was cheaper than calling/texting, especially with everyone having wifi at home and work. So a cross-platform messaging app appeared and has replaced text and calling.
wyclif•Jun 1, 2026
Sure, it's not airtight. WhatsApp is popular in Europe. But as an American, when I see somebody say "You can only contact me on WhatsApp", it's not exactly a green text bubble signal.
Synaesthesia•Jun 1, 2026
The entire rest of the world is not just 3rd world countries.
KoftaBob•Jun 1, 2026
> we never had free unlimited texts. Internet was cheaper than calling/texting
I always found this peculiar, you would think it would be the other way around. I wonder why that is?
yonatan8070•Jun 1, 2026
In Israel it's the de-facto standard way to communicate. If I'd even suggest to someone to switch to Signal, I'd get laughed out of the room.
bee_rider•Jun 1, 2026
I’m pretty sure it is extremely popular almost everywhere except the US (and maybe China? I think they have their own thing). We’re the odds ones out in this case.
contubernio•Jun 1, 2026
In Spain whatsapp is universal and necessary for everything personal and professional.
Some hard core committed communists prefer telegram, but even they usually have to have whatsapp too. No one uses signal or even knows what it is.
prmoustache•Jun 1, 2026
I am living in spain and I never used whatsapp professionally. I've had a few messages sent by medical clinics to confirm appointment, delivery workers to drop a package or some others pros but if you don't have whatsapp they just call you anyway so it is not necessary.
Most people in Spain still rely and prefer voice calls than messages anyway. I believe half the country must still be illiterate as they manage to send voice message but struggle to send written messages on whatsapp.
On a personal level you lose a bit of information when you don't have whatsapp. For example I didn't join the whatsapp group of my dance class and I am often unaware of stuff they mention on it but that doesn't prevent me to attend said classes.
yurishimo•Jun 1, 2026
I think this is a Spanish/Portuguese language thing... I am in some clubs with many Spanish speakers and they love to send voice memos! I am in Europe though so maybe the Brazilians I know have adapted to their European counterparts.
contubernio•Jun 1, 2026
Absolutely inaccurate. I am nationalized Spaniard living here 2+ decades. Almost no one over 50 calls on the phone and when they do they almost always send a message first. The large public institution I work in is removing landlines completely because they get too little use to justify the cost.
I am (mostly against my will) in multiple professional and personal Whatsapp groups. Use is constant and daily and unavoidable. It is the principal means of communication in both work and personal settings. Calls are always a second option.
I suspect your experience reflects only partial integration in local culture.
prmoustache•Jun 1, 2026
Removing landline only means people have mobile phones, not how they use them.
I am in andalusia, hardly the most modern area if you discount the migrants that call themselves expats.
TFNA•Jun 1, 2026
As the other person mentions, WhatsApp adoption is vast in Europe, including the bulk of the continent where “developing world country” isn’t a reasonable label. I travel frequently across Europe, and when I book reception-less accommodation, WhatsApp is often the only way that self-check-in details are provided. Saying that “I don't use WhatsApp” might even lead to the reservation being immediately canceled on their part.
isolatedsystem•Jun 1, 2026
I'm in Europe, with a bunch of non-geeky friends, coming from all walks of life who have Signal installed.
As a sibling comment to yours stated, the hardest decision was deciding to stop using Meta.
I have a militant "let the leaves fall where they may" attitude towards stopping relationships with companies I detest (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta...) It all always works out fine.
TFNA•Jun 1, 2026
I travel a lot within Europe and socialize, and Signal adoption is pretty limited continent-wide. You are lucky. Even when people do have Signal, a stock response if I ask “Do you have Signal?” is “Oh, sure, I use it to buy drugs”, which probably doesn’t help the app’s image in the eyes of the surrounding society.
NamlchakKhandro•Jun 1, 2026
I'm not on what's app. So you need to switch to something else if you want to chat with me.
AnthonyR•Jun 1, 2026
Haha I love the super out of touch takes on here sometimes. Not using WhatsApp or Facebook where I live absolutely introduces major difficulty to communication and even every day interactions where almost 100% of communication in various social groups is happening on these platforms. Should I ask them to move?
jjulius•Jun 1, 2026
Where there's a will, there's a way. If your friends want to, they'll find you.
Marsymars•May 31, 2026
The sticky bit I have is facebook marketplace - it's wiped out the other classified marketplaces in my area.
I'm not making any serious money off the old stuff I sell, but the alternative to selling it (or even giving away low-value stuff that's still functional) on facebook is basically just throwing it out / destructively recycling it.
skillina•Jun 1, 2026
I maintain Meta accounts for two purposes. Facebook Marketplace, and following local businesses on Instagram because it's become the de facto platform for many artists/bars/restaurants/popups to distribute information. I don't add friends, I don't "like" posts, and I don't doomscroll the garbage they put in my feed.
I'm willing to give Meta the information that I enjoy old cars, bar trivia, and breakfast sandwich pop-ups.
w-ll•Jun 1, 2026
What does facebook marketplace have over craigslist?
adonese•Jun 1, 2026
in my region (middle east) facebook marketplace is the defacto listing. I know craiglist (just from me being on internet for so long) but i don't think it operates here. And for sellers they also only know facebook.
NewJazz•Jun 1, 2026
Listings and audience.
cheema33•Jun 1, 2026
> What does facebook marketplace have over craigslist?
Users.
In Portland, Oregon area Craigslist was popular, but is now a ghost town. Everybody has moved to Facebook marketplace.
Marsymars•Jun 1, 2026
Locally, craigslist was never a thing. I cross-post everything I sell to Facebook and Kijiji, but I get an order of magnitude more sales from my Facebook posts. (And Kijiji has gated certain categories behind a paywall, so e.g. I can't post a $20 car part without paying $5 for the ad.)
NewJazz•Jun 1, 2026
The instagram thing is annoying. Like the primary to find out about social events in my city seems to be Instagram. Yoga teachers post their schedules there, bars/venues post their events there, reddit is often an afterthought and still I'd prefer something else. But what??
the_af•Jun 1, 2026
> Just stop using Meta products. It's really not as hard as it seems. Nobody needs FB to communicate with friends and family. Send texts or emails or use your phone.
I'm in WhatsApp groups with friends who live abroad, SMS is not an option. We could use another chat app, but then I'd have to convince every friend from every group to use something else. WhatsApp is what every friend I have agrees on.
I belong to several hobby groups that exist only on Facebook or Reddit (or Discord, but I dislike it for several reasons). I'd like to ditch both Facebook and Reddit, but that would mean leaving those hobby groups, and given the joy they bring me, I'm not willing to pull the plug yet.
So you see, it's really not that easy.
pmontra•Jun 1, 2026
All it would take is WhatsApp going paid plans only. All of Europe will switch to Telegram as primary messaging platform in a couple of days.
Hence a paid only WhatsApp will never happen until every plausible alternative will be made impossible either by acquisition or by law.
okanat•Jun 1, 2026
Whatsapp became successful by being cheaper than SMSes in Europe. But yeah people probably switch to the next convenient app.
TFNA•Jun 1, 2026
> All of Europe will switch to Telegram as primary messaging platform in a couple of days.
I don't think you realize how much Telegram is associated with hated Russia and the local far-right in several European countries.
laweijfmvo•Jun 1, 2026
i missed a flight once (it was a small private cessna while on vacation). turns out they had tried calling me on WhatsApp, which i don’t use.
komali2•Jun 1, 2026
The only way to know the correct meshtastic configs for Taiwan is to join the meshtastic Taiwan Facebook group.
Or attend an event in person. They advertise their in person events on the meshtastic Facebook group.
rootusrootus•Jun 1, 2026
Ha, I fell for that the first time, not getting me twice. That was my wake up call for how insular the HN bubble is and how utterly convinced people here are that they represent or understand normies.
jjulius•Jun 1, 2026
The FOMO everyone here is responding with is wild.
CuriouslyC•May 31, 2026
Honestly don't know how Meta keeps customers. Facebook is hanging on for dear life with geriatrics and marketplace. Insta is a cesspool of fake content that needs to die in a dumpster fire. Not sure why you'd use WhatsApp over alternatives like Signal now.
It's almost like the people still using Meta services are metaphorical bots or low agency human beings.
derwiki•May 31, 2026
WhatsApp: all school stuff seems to be coordinated over WhatsApp
mrweasel•Jun 1, 2026
Yes, you could use Signal, but my take is that people don't want yet another account for something. Facebook works and it has all the other activities people need to keep track of. For most you wouldn't be replacing Facebook or WhatsApp with Signal, you'd add Signal to an already busy phone.
People don't care about the platform, they just want shit to work and for better or worse, Facebook works for them.
lolive•May 31, 2026
I barely use all those services.
But I wonder how i would react if Reddit became a paywall.
chistev•May 31, 2026
With the constant Enshittification. It's only a matter of time.
lolive•Jun 1, 2026
Will usenet resurrect from there?
As usual the BIG issue is the search engine.
TZubiri•May 31, 2026
It's time for that EPS to turn into BV baby!
pioyi•May 31, 2026
Just use email...
cryo32•May 31, 2026
This is a brilliant take. I was talking to friends the other day and we were reminiscing about the old days where you'd email and phone people. And if there was a family event you'd shove a quite write up and some photos on your personal web site and email the links out to people. Some parts of the family would mail a newsletter around periodically.
We decided to do the same again.
tapoxi•May 31, 2026
My Mom (70s, retired special ed teacher) got the family on Signal and it's a breeze to do video calls or send pictures/messages to people.
They occasionally have a donation popup but it's one of the easiest and least intrusive programs I've ever used, and it just works.
the_af•Jun 1, 2026
Email is not chat and it's certainly not Instagram. Your suggestion will only work for people who are not really users of WhatsApp or Instagram.
jjulius•Jun 1, 2026
No, the suggestion "only" works for those of your friends who truly value you. If they want to connect with you, they'll find a way. If they don't, they won't.
the_af•Jun 1, 2026
Ah, yes, "truly value". The measure of how much one is valued is whether people are willing to move out of a chat app due to some sort of nerd principle. Needless to say, I disagree.
I value my (various groups of) friends more than I value moving out of WhatsApp, and for what anyway? WhatsApp is perfect for our needs. If it becomes paid-only, we'll move out of it, but not before. I don't need dealing with this kind of nerdy crusade. And I need to have WhatsApp installed anyway for different family members [1] and the parent school groups and official comms from school.
Sorry, but that suggestion is a no-go in the real world. It only works in the micro-bubble of HN.
---
[1] Let me preempt your likely "but convince all of your family of using <thing> instead...". No. Just no.
jjulius•Jun 1, 2026
>The measure of how much one is valued is whether people are willing to move out of a chat app due to some sort of nerd principle.
Why do they have to be "willing to move out"? They're free to continue to use whatever they want, but how they get in touch with you might be different. Also, what's up with using "nerd" as a pejorative? Why the hostility?
But at the end of the day, yeah, it's not all that off-base. The measure of how much someone values staying in touch with you is generally going to be reflected in how much effort they put into doing so.
>Sorry, but that suggestion is a no-go in the real world.
What is "the real world"? Is there a standard definition that is applicable to everyone everywhere? I live in "the real world", too, and have no issue conversing with all of my family, parents from my kid's school, and official notifications from school without WhatsApp or social media. Texts, phone calls, emails, regular in-person meets/activities all work wonders, as does the school's communication system that can be accessed via a browser, or the notices/bulletins my kids bring home on paper that typically cover most of what's communicated via the browser (but I digress).
>It only works in the micro-bubble of HN.
No, it works where it works, and it doesn't where it doesn't. The thing that a lot of people in the comments in these types of threads seem to miss is that this is very obviously a "YMMV" situation, wholly dependent upon what's around you. Sure, fine, use WhatsApp because you need important information from your kid's school(s) if that's literally the only way they communicate - I'm a reasonable individual who won't criticize such a move, because your hands are tied. C'est la vie.
>[1] Let me preempt your likely "but convince all of your family of using <thing> instead...". No. Just no.
There's no pre-empting necessary on your part because I had no intention of it, but, uhh... thanks for the assumption, I guess? You don't have to bother convincing anyone. "Here's how to reach me," one time is all that needs to be done. If they want to reach you, they'll reach you. No extolling of virtues required, and trying to convince someone not to use something is not necessary.
the_af•Jun 1, 2026
> Why do they have to be "willing to move out"? They're free to continue to use whatever they want, but how they get in touch with you might be different. Also, what's up with using "nerd" as a pejorative? Why the hostility?
No, I'm not going to force them to communicate differently with me just out of some sort of principle. WhatsApp works. And I do want to talk to them, it's not an "either way, who cares" deal for me.
And there's no hostility, I was merely pointing out how much HN can be out of touch with reality sometimes. "Nerdy" is only a hostile adjective if you want it to be. Do you?
> What is "the real world"? Is there a standard definition that is applicable to everyone everywhere? I live in "the real world", too, and have no issue conversing with all of my family, parents from my kid's school, and official notifications from school without WhatsApp or social media.
I already explained this in my first comment to which you replied: the only people who see no trouble in replacing all these apps are those who don't use them for anything interesting. Like you. Meanwhile, other people exist in the rest of the world, and it's not so easy...
> The thing that a lot of people in the comments in these types of threads seem to miss [...]
Exactly. We just disagree on what is missed.
> "Here's how to reach me," one time is all that needs to be done. If they want to reach you, they'll reach you.
No, this is not how it works. This is, like I said, a very HN micro-bubble thing to say.
jjulius•Jun 1, 2026
>No, I'm not going to force them to communicate differently with me just out of some sort of principle.
Nobody's asking you to force them. :)
>I already explained this in my first comment to which you replied: the only people who see no trouble in replacing all these apps are those who don't use them for anything interesting. Like you. Meanwhile, other people exist in the rest of the world, and it's not so easy...
Yes, your comment said that it "will only work for people who are not really users of WhatsApp or Instagram". My point is that I have plenty of friends and family who regularly use both of those platforms, and they also regularly communicate with me outside of those platforms. It took no haranguing on my part, I just let them know how to say hey if they wanted to.
>No, this is not how it works.
It is! I genuinely think you'd be surprised at how many people would go along with it.
>This is, like I said, a very HN micro-bubble thing to say.
Except that it's not. What is "HN" about walking away from tech? That's a growing trend in our contemporary society. You argue that it's a "very HN" thing to do, yet I'm the only person in my friends and family group that would be considered a "techie", and everyone who I communicate with seems to have had no problem getting in touch with me outside of those tech apps.
the_af•Jun 1, 2026
> Nobody's asking you to force them
If you're not forcing them, and you want to keep in touch with them, aren't we back where we started? "It's not so easy".
> It took no haranguing on my part, I just let them know how to say hey if they wanted to.
Perfect, it worked for you. It doesn't work for others. Let's say it with me: "it's not so easy".
> It is! I genuinely think you'd be surprised at how many people would go along with it.
It's not! There are many groups out there for which your experience doesn't apply. It's a bubble. And it's a bit presumptuous to assume your interlocutor has no experience trying to change things. At one point, some things are not worth the effort and one has to pick their battles.
> Except that it's not. What is "HN" about walking away from tech?
The HN bubble I refer to is the one where they (we actually, of course I'm not immune) think their microcosm of experiences, very principled and nerd- or tech-focused, and often for specific cultures or nations, applies to the rest of the world. It's typical of some HN'ers to announce to the world that they have LEFT FACEBOOK FOR GOOD and that they aren't missing anything important. Great for them!
It's helpful to always remember: not everyone is like you/me/us, and... wait for it... "it's not that easy".
jjulius•Jun 1, 2026
Alrighty. :)
aspectop•May 31, 2026
for insta and Facebook ok but for whatsapp they just wanna suck any kind of money they can. Soon whatsapp will be bloated with ads all over
chistev•May 31, 2026
Soon? They have ads already.
the_af•Jun 1, 2026
Interesting. There are no ads for messaging. I only use WhatsApp for messages (individual and groups). I've never used status updates or any other nonsense (I don't even understand why one would want to do status updates, but some people seem to use them).
All of this to say: ads are only in status updates and channels (no idea what this is, never used one) and apparently not in every region.
aspectop•Jun 1, 2026
the channel’s in whatsapp is just so annoying, i have seen mostly channels are created based around promotion of their products no usecase and yeah no ads on WhatsApp till now
qqtt•May 31, 2026
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.
pertymcpert•May 31, 2026
Agreed. Nothing wrong with charging for a product.
sunaookami•Jun 1, 2026
You are paying with your data already.
apsurd•May 31, 2026
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•May 31, 2026
> they’ll take the subscription AND sell your data, serve you ads
Streaming services claiming prior art here.
apsurd•May 31, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
For those who might want to watch it, the episode is called "Common People", and it's a pretty brutal one.
moron4hire•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
Too young to remember cable TV?
blitzar•Jun 1, 2026
Sounds like my Amazon Prime subscription - now with more Ads.
vincnetas•Jun 1, 2026
cable TV would like to have a word with you :)
micromacrofoot•May 31, 2026
Yeah this is the worst, never pay for something that has ads. It's teaching these companies it's ok.
zeristor•Jun 1, 2026
Pray they don’t change the terms a second time.
avd201•Jun 1, 2026
If you don't pay for a product, you are a less valuable product than if you'd pay for the product.
doctorwho42•Jun 1, 2026
Eh, and Microsoft has shown that even if you pay they will still fuck with the product and . make it worse
komali2•Jun 1, 2026
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?
apsurd•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
Which sadly appears to not even be holding for them now that they decided to start displaying ads on their App Store.
cocoto•Jun 1, 2026
Do not forget the new recents ads in Apple Maps.
foxylad•Jun 1, 2026
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).
windexh8er•Jun 1, 2026
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.
thayne•Jun 1, 2026
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
timoth3y•May 31, 2026
> "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•May 31, 2026
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•May 31, 2026
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.
darth_avocado•May 31, 2026
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•May 31, 2026
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).
laweijfmvo•Jun 1, 2026
“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.
dymk•Jun 1, 2026
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.
kalleboo•Jun 1, 2026
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.
skillina•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
Article yesterday suggesting we name these interrupting popus dickovers.
vineyardmike•Jun 1, 2026
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.
phyrex•Jun 1, 2026
Those plans exist in Europe. Not sure if they're available elsewhere or how popular they are there
sethops1•Jun 1, 2026
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.
whyenot•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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).
qwerpy•Jun 1, 2026
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.
prmoustache•Jun 1, 2026
Are there ads on whatsapp? I've never seen one.
brianmiddleton•Jun 1, 2026
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.
jmspring•May 31, 2026
So, pay them to keep doing what they already do?
ksd482•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
s/rather than/as well as/g
platevoltage•May 31, 2026
It's because you'll still be the product even if you pay.
h4kunamata•May 31, 2026
>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.
sensanaty•May 31, 2026
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.
WarmWash•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
You may not get ads in the app, but they can still sell your data for other services who will give you ads.
okanat•Jun 1, 2026
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.
brianmiddleton•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
Don't they already have some subscription to get rid of ads?
brianmiddleton•Jun 1, 2026
In some countries, but not everywhere. I know it exists in the UK, maybe EU as well.
tgma•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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.
fragmede•Jun 1, 2026
How's your YouTube Premium subscription?
bigmadshoe•Jun 1, 2026
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.
komali2•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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.
AlotOfReading•Jun 1, 2026
Considering cancelling mine because they've introduced ads to it in the form of undismissable "purchase the product being discussed here" affiliate popups.
jakeydus•Jun 1, 2026
The popups are absolutely massive, too. It’s infuriating.
carlosjobim•Jun 1, 2026
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.
tgma•Jun 1, 2026
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.
ipaddr•Jun 1, 2026
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?
lolive•Jun 1, 2026
They sell your digitalSelf habits.
skeeter2020•Jun 1, 2026
everyone of those things is built around data collection and tracking, which feeds their ad machine.
cocoto•Jun 1, 2026
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.
kbar13•Jun 1, 2026
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
sdthjbvuiiijbb•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
Fair point. I think it depends on the person. I know plenty of people without much disposable income who still pay for several subscriptions.
hvb2•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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.
wahnfrieden•Jun 1, 2026
Advertisers don’t care about disposable income they care about spending habits even if the buyer is irresponsible and can’t afford it
bigmadshoe•Jun 1, 2026
Exactly, so hacker news readers are not necessarily the people who would need to be charged the most to remove advertisements. I barely shop.
ivell•Jun 1, 2026
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.
pishpash•Jun 1, 2026
So they successfully blackmailed you.
jjulius•Jun 1, 2026
>... and stop being the product.
You will not stop being the product if you pay.
bigmadshoe•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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.
skeeter2020•Jun 1, 2026
>> 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?
bmitc•Jun 1, 2026
You're assuming that your own data has no cost. They get data from you for free.
abdullahkhalids•Jun 1, 2026
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.
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•Jun 1, 2026
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.
wasmitnetzen•Jun 1, 2026
Ultimately the consumer is paying for the ad spend as well, so it can't be an outsized part of the budget.
1vuio0pswjnm7•Jun 1, 2026
"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
joquarky•Jun 1, 2026
What are they even doing with all of this data collection, especially considering that ads still are terrible at pertaining to my interests?
bonoboTP•Jun 1, 2026
Make the feed curation algo more addictive.
MetaWhirledPeas•Jun 1, 2026
...which generates usage data, which in turn feeds itself? Circular economics, how convenient.
bonoboTP•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
That's how its always been. The loop just wasn't as efficient a few decades ago.
MarleTangible•Jun 1, 2026
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.
douglee650•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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".
fragmede•Jun 1, 2026
How does that get money to the people making the videos I like watching?
pyrale•Jun 1, 2026
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.
abenga•Jun 1, 2026
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.
PcChip•Jun 1, 2026
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
1vuio0pswjnm7•Jun 1, 2026
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
1vuio0pswjnm7•Jun 1, 2026
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
thaumasiotes•Jun 1, 2026
> 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.
auggierose•Jun 1, 2026
Not sure I understand this. The vote is, pay or not pay. If you pay, you vote yes.
Lutger•Jun 1, 2026
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?
seanclayton•Jun 1, 2026
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.
bko•Jun 1, 2026
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.
akdev1l•Jun 1, 2026
> 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•Jun 1, 2026
Ah, you must be one of those that cuts his own hair, shops strictly at thrift shops and wears bags as shoes.
skeeter2020•Jun 1, 2026
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.
akdev1l•Jun 1, 2026
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)
HWR_14•Jun 1, 2026
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.
renegade-otter•Jun 1, 2026
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.
bko•Jun 1, 2026
> 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.
HWR_14•Jun 1, 2026
This does not answer the question that was asked (and which I also wonder): why would you want to signal that you are rich?
renegade-otter•Jun 1, 2026
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.
TheOtherHobbes•Jun 1, 2026
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.
angled•Jun 1, 2026
Aren't people here old enough to recall paying for WhatsApp's original subscription fee?
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•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
Maybe they enforced it first on some regions and since it backfired other regions didn't have to pay.
pmontra•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
Your signals are not only used to advertise to you but people like you and people who know you.
pks016•Jun 1, 2026
There are story ads now.
bmitc•Jun 1, 2026
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.
rozap•Jun 1, 2026
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.
Yokohiii•Jun 1, 2026
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.
adjejmxbdjdn•Jun 1, 2026
> 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•Jun 1, 2026
to put a finer point on this: I pay for certain newspapers (well, digital subscriptions).
Still plenty of ads in the articles!
xbmcuser•Jun 1, 2026
Plus now they even have your credit information for better ad targeting
choppaface•Jun 1, 2026
credit card itself can’t be used to ad targeting. But plenty of proxies make this point largely irrelevant.
ipaddr•Jun 1, 2026
If the grocery store is selling your data (and they are) and meta has a connecting card number ads could be targeted.
DANmode•Jun 1, 2026
> 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…
janalsncm•Jun 1, 2026
Newspapers are struggling/dying. A counterexample is services like HBO/Netflix which have ad-free tiers.
Freak_NL•Jun 1, 2026
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.
seanclayton•Jun 1, 2026
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!
gmueckl•Jun 1, 2026
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.
mrandish•Jun 1, 2026
> 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.
blks•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
Govt won’t do it. They want that data too.
nxpnsv•Jun 1, 2026
But here you are the product AND you pay for it. At least I think you still get ads and tracking…
frail_figure•Jun 1, 2026
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.
tw04•Jun 1, 2026
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.
CTDOCodebases•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
The YouTube app on Android is terrible, even with the premium. Autoplay has been notoriously broken for years
CTDOCodebases•Jun 1, 2026
I have premium and for over a month I couldn’t save videos to playlists in the app.
csomar•Jun 1, 2026
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.
nelox•Jun 1, 2026
AI is expensive and ad revenue alone won't cover it.
lelanthran•Jun 1, 2026
> 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.
chias•Jun 1, 2026
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.
godelski•Jun 1, 2026
> 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•Jun 1, 2026
> they no longer are making enough money
Have they ever made enough money according to their own desire?
latexr•Jun 1, 2026
> 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.
palata•Jun 1, 2026
> 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.
haritha-j•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
> "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.
vasco•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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.
PatronBernard•Jun 1, 2026
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.
general_reveal•Jun 1, 2026
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.
chris_wot•Jun 1, 2026
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?
renegade-otter•Jun 1, 2026
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.
skeeter2020•Jun 1, 2026
>> 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.
otikik•Jun 1, 2026
> 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.
voxleone•Jun 1, 2026
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•Jun 1, 2026
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.
everdrive•Jun 1, 2026
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.
Danox•Jun 1, 2026
You’re right you’re going against the the grain it isn’t positive for the end user.
torben-friis•May 31, 2026
I'd have been happy to pay for a WhatsApp-like service if they had not been acquired. Flawless service for like a decade, no complains. Only issue was the difficulty of moving between Android and iOS.
Meta? Fuck off. We all know they're already doing awful stuff with our data, they've had more bugs last year than all of whatsapps previous history combined, and whatever price they request now is step one for enshittification.
sometimelurker•May 31, 2026
is meta low on $? why would they do this?
Painsawman123•May 31, 2026
after they introduced Community notes, it isn't far fetched to say that they're simply copying Twitter...
chistev•May 31, 2026
Zuckerberg copying? Who would have thought.
brcmthrowaway•May 31, 2026
Paying FU money to folks creating dashboards takes a toll.
righthand•May 31, 2026
A lot of posters here are missing the part where people use Meta products to market their art, performance artists, visual artists, musician, digital entertainment artists, craftsmen, etc all rely on the network effect to be discovered. Until you can replace that then people wont just use email, txt their audience, etc.
And just to say it is actually sad there is no alternative because most of those artists dont really gain a valuable network effect from posting there. But it is how younger unestablished peoples establish themselves as existing. There are entire comedy/music scenes that essentially require you to have an Instagram account.
ethanpil•May 31, 2026
Anyone here remember the early days of WhatsApp, pre-Facebook, when it required an annual subscription fee of $1?
embedding-shape•May 31, 2026
Remember clearly the first time that message popped up, asking for $1/year, and I think you could basically "skip for now" and then it'd pop back up again later again. I remember thinking how brilliant it was, just hitting 100K active users in a year would be $100K, more than enough for a person, and at their scale they'd make it work long-term. Then of course eventually the $20B purchase happened and it became a product in someone's portfolio instead essentially.
20 billion dollars to steal people's phone numbers
Anything Zuckerberg needs antitrust immediately
mjamesaustin•Jun 1, 2026
A small annual subscription is a great way to add friction to bots. I truly wish every platform I used had one.
qingcharles•May 31, 2026
I've so far been unable to find these options in any of the apps in the USA. Anyone spotted them?
danpalmer•May 31, 2026
I use WhatsApp for almost all my communication with family and friends. I'm also happy to pay for things that improve my experience.
...but it's unclear what this subscription would give me. The announcement has no real details, the article is light on detail, and the WhatsApp website has no mention of this subscription.
I get that it's hard. What I want is a good text and call app, and that's hard to charge for at scale. But every feature that Meta has added to justify charging (AI, stories, profiles, etc), makes the product worse for me and makes me less likely to pay for it.
They're in a hard place.
kwanbix•May 31, 2026
Before Meta aquisition, I paid 1 dollar per year for WhatsApp. Now it iwl be 35.88.
ablation•Jun 1, 2026
I've never paid for it, and never will. You don't HAVE to subscribe to "WhatsApp Plus" you know.
chistev•May 31, 2026
Do you know of any successful business without a Meta presence? Is that really possible in this age? Really interested to know.
They have a stranglehold on everything. It's inescapable.
I looked for this in the article and I couldn't find any mention of it. I suspect no. And I suspect that's why it's not mentioned in the article: they think people won't notice.
Cider9986•Jun 1, 2026
Shameful reporting that this isn't mentioned.
odo1242•Jun 1, 2026
It sounds a lot like Discord Nitro
notsydonia•Jun 1, 2026
This seems smart of them in the sense that many creator/website owners have lost significant traffic that Google used to send their way and so are reluctantly pivoting back to paying more attention to social - for discovery.
But speaking as someone who deleted a high following FB page that I probably shouldn't have because the back end of it was so infuriating, I don't understand this offering. It seems like a lot of bling and clutter. Most people who need to use Meta for biz reasons want the same thing - live support that is not a bot or a human that may as well be a bot.
And not to get too granular but if you've used IG lately, for example, you notice that trying to do anything on the back end (eg: set up up some boosted posts or schedule things) takes the user through a maze and sometimes you end up in the old legacy Facebook pages, which has links that don't relate to any of the contemporary features. It sounds minor but it essentially barely functions and each click to confirm something sends you to another section to confirm something else. You also need a FB page to do anything on an IG page and a tonne of other petty thwartings. The fact that their brand new subscriptions/Meta platform seems just as confusing is alarming. I don't know how a company with this much money can not design an un-hellish back end or offer reasonable customer support.
Their A.I. monitoring is also completely off the chain, closing accounts and locking profiles for opaque reasons that cannot be questioned.
NamlchakKhandro•Jun 1, 2026
I feel like I can explain this away with what I imagine happened in most middle managers driven development companies:
the most factorio-esque spaghetti decision driven sunk cost fallacy thing ever.
zemo•Jun 1, 2026
So who will buy their cursed campus when they collapse?
abixb•Jun 1, 2026
Maybe Oracle can acquire it back and put a few more giant hard-drive-inspired buildings there (it was orignally Sun Microsystems' campus).
arrty88•Jun 1, 2026
Time to delete these apps. They were novel like MySpace and live journal but now they make the wrong people rich with no value add
compounding_it•Jun 1, 2026
A new paid social media network with high privacy settings would defeat meta products quite easily. From what I understand, it costs around 27$ a year per user for Meta to run the business. At 5$ per month with limitations on size of your profile (like number of pictures), it would be quite easy to run a social media of this sort. This kinda of social media is what eventually everyone will move towards (and currently want). Small social circles, extremely private, and connections and discovery in very limited ways that allow you to maintain privacy and your 'inner' circle.
Social media is here to stay, unfortunately. Meta, LinkedIn, X, I wouldn't invest in the long term.
yalogin•Jun 1, 2026
What exactly are privacy expectations of a social media app/network? Has that been quantified?
compounding_it•Jun 1, 2026
No data collection for any other reason than security practices, and for reasons that pertain to public security (not necessarily legal). A 30 day retention policy would be more than enough. Without discovery, public profiles, advertising and usages targeted towards you engaging more with the platform, the data collection and telemetry becomes quite unnecessary.
If you are paying for the usage (mostly server and development costs), your data need not be used for anything other than actually improving the product and security.
Currently the data is purely to extract profits and keep you hooked. This is what they have made you believe social media is about. Its not. You aren't hooked on iMessage and FaceTime scrolling reels and wasting hours. It's actually used to connect with people.
whiplash451•Jun 1, 2026
> it costs around 27$ a year per user for Meta to run the business
And a lot of this is probably spent maintaining the ad machine
Sol-•Jun 1, 2026
Do you really believe that, given all the failed social media competitors? The network effects seem too strong.
przm•Jun 1, 2026
I’d genuinely pay for Instagram if it didn’t show me reels and slop content, and instead showed only content from people I follow
herf•Jun 1, 2026
Guess you can't pay to get end-to-end encryption back in Instagram DMs? They dropped it a couple weeks ago.
unnouinceput•Jun 1, 2026
was never end to end, was you to server and then server to other party. Meaning Zuky boi always had access to your messages in clear (and NSA + all other 3 letters agencies)
derencius•Jun 1, 2026
I was paying for the ads-free subscripton for instagram and I recently I canceled as a way to reduce social media usage. And the ad version of Instagram is so annoying that it is helping a lot more.
If this new sub becomes a status signaling, it might work.
brianmiddleton•Jun 1, 2026
The article mentions that this is a subscription for additional features. It doesn't say anywhere that you won't get ads. I think the ads-free subscription option is only available in certain markets, like the UK.
HeartStrings•Jun 1, 2026
Thanks for the generous spyware offer, I’m just gonna keep using Signal.
rhubarbtree•Jun 1, 2026
I paid for a while, but they kept showing me crap in the feed rather than posts I wanted to see. Stupid videos etc. So I cancelled.
submeta•Jun 1, 2026
I cannot imagine that students, kids, or half the world where paying 3 usd a month is impossible, will keep using whatsapp when they have to pay a fee. They will look for alternatives immediately. Telegram?
But actually this is a good move. I tried to convince my family and friends to use alternatives, without success. But now I see hope.
Have stopped using FB and IG years ago, was stuck with WhatsApp because of half the world using it.
wg0•Jun 1, 2026
The fundamental problem is - users base is flattened out so are the ad revenues.
Now we need something new to show to the shareholders and that is this.
karel-3d•Jun 1, 2026
I can't imagine paying for Facebook but I can imagine paying for WhatsApp. It's a great app that's for free and has no ads.
rupatiwari25•Jun 1, 2026
WhatsApp feels like one of the few products where people might actually pay. It's become critical infrastructure for communication in many countries, not just another social app.
nicce•Jun 1, 2026
It is just a name. If it disappears, people can switch over for something else in a day that works similarly. Is it then critical?
rupatiwari25•Jun 1, 2026
I don't mean irreplaceable. I mean it's become the default communication layer for a huge number of people, which gives it a level of importance beyond a typical social app.Sure, people would move. But the value isn't WhatsApp itself it's the fact that everyone you need to talk to is already there. That's what makes it hard to replace overnight.
lou1306•Jun 1, 2026
Well people _used_ to pay for it, in fact. Except it was 3 EUR/year rather than 3 EUR/month...
dabedee•Jun 1, 2026
It's very difficult to do business in Western Europe without Whatsapp. I have probably asked more than 60 people to switch to Signal and the social burden it introduces (i.e. asking a new acquaintance to install a new app) can have negative signalling effects (e.g. you don't adapt, create more work, why do you care so much about privacy, etc.)
I personally abhore Facebook (and IG,Whatsapp) and don't want to use any of them; I have uninstalled/reinstalled Whatsapp many times. Out of practical concern, I now only use Whatsapp in business settings where it would create tension and create social awkwardness not to. But I dislike the fact that I do.
dgellow•Jun 1, 2026
Telegram is fairly common in Western Europe
thejackgoode•Jun 1, 2026
.. which is a worse option for different reasons than WhatsApp
yurishimo•Jun 1, 2026
It does have a nice Bot API though. For building personal stuff or just sharing between friends, the risks can be mitigated (imo).
dgellow•Jun 1, 2026
It also has the best cross-platform chat UX since pretty much forever, and just a generally really well polished interface.
k4rli•Jun 1, 2026
Okay, what are the reasons? It's difficult to see how Meta is in any way more trustworthy than the country which Telegram is from. I trust TG secret chats much more than Whatsapp's supposed e2e.
Traubenfuchs•Jun 1, 2026
In my experience: Only for drug dealers, cheaters, people doing sex stuff secretly for whatever reason (e.g. not being out of the closet), "underground/alternative vibe" communication channels (e.g. raves, hackers) and russophiles...
panja•Jun 1, 2026
Like you said "in my experience."
You could use it for other things lol. My entire boring friend group uses it for none of those.
scott01•Jun 1, 2026
Same. Also the “russophile” part sounds kinda racist.
dgellow•Jun 1, 2026
It's a standard chat application, people are also using Facebook, WhatsApp, etc for illegal/immoral discussions. I've been using it as my main chat client for more than 10y and have never used or felt the need to use the community channels, it's just a great messenger.
Doing illegal stuff in public Telegram channels is extremely stupid, they aren't encrypted, you're pretty much giving your information to law enforcement (I know Telegram is often blocking sharing info on their users to law enforcement, but you can be sure agencies are monitoring your telegram channel discussions).
The Russophile comment is pretty frustrating given Telegram is the most commonly used messenger in Ukraine and lots of Eastern Europe...
venzaspa•Jun 1, 2026
Why not settle on a chat which actually uses e2e encryption by default though?
There's truth to the Russophile comment though, Telegram is regularly used by GRU and the FSB to recruit people to commit acts of vandalism and terror and is pretty well documented. It's also commonly used to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories. My mum has fallen for several of these via Telegram.
dgellow•Jun 1, 2026
Sorry for your mum. FWIW you have the same content on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit.
Telegram has a larger Russian speaking audience because of the founder, who created VK in Russia. But that doesn’t make it Russophile. Ukraine is organizing pretty much all their resistance on Telegram…
The public channels are where the trash content is, I’ve never used them myself, you have to explicitly look for that feature, it’s not like they are shown in the chat interface directly.
> Why not settle on a chat which actually uses e2e encryption by default though?
Because I care more about the quality of user experience, and Telegram has been awesome to use since I first tried it
abcd_f•Jun 1, 2026
This sort of anecdotal evidence tells more about you than Telegram ;)
TrackerFF•Jun 1, 2026
I think it is interesting to see how fractured things are even in western Europe.
I'm in Scandinavia, and at least here, Messenger is by far the most dominant messaging app.
Meta in general has a really tight grip here.
bondarchuk•Jun 1, 2026
Whatsapp is also from Meta.
jraby3•Jun 1, 2026
Same in Israel. Doctors, schools, etc all use WhatsApp. You can't live without it here.
rcMgD2BwE72F•Jun 1, 2026
All my close family now use Signal after me and a sibling pushed for this. That's 30+ persons. The network is growing too, since all children and new partners join in 1:1 and groups.
rcMgD2BwE72F•Jun 1, 2026
All my close family now use Signal after me and a sibling pushed for this. That's 30+ persons. The network is growing too, since all children and new partners join in 1:1 and groups.
We like having two apps: WA for friends, Signal for family. There are only few reasons to mix the two.
timbaboon•Jun 1, 2026
Yep, same in South Africa. I still haven't accepted those T's & C's from a few years ago so can't chat with most businesses. In some cases there is no other option, so I just... don't use that company.
On the other hand, I've convinced a lot of my friends to get Signal. I'm the only person that they speak to on Signal, but that's fine ;)
pbiggar•Jun 1, 2026
We work on helping people move to Signal from WhatsApp. It'll be easier once they have a Communities feature, as WhatsApp is very far ahead there.
The main advice we got is that although you need to migrate individuals, the main focus should be on migrating channels. If you have a family group chat, that's the target. Tell people about how Meta spies on them, etc, and then support everyone in the channel to individually set up Signal if necessary.
jwr•Jun 1, 2026
In Central Europe (Poland), too.
Nobody, and I do mean nobody, realizes that using Whatsapp by default (which everyone accepts) synchronizes their entire contacts list to Meta. It's a golden trove of valuable data for an ad targeting company.
People don't realize that there is so much that can be inferred about you from your contacts. Whether you have kids, which schools they go to, and similar personal information.
All of this is not even on the radar and people reduce privacy to "whether someone listens in on my calls or conversations" and tend to brush it off, because they honestly don't care about that part.
Signal doesn't make it easier by refusing to allow encrypted iCloud backups for so many years (which means people lose data when they lose their phones!) and recently introducing a subscription backup service instead of allowing me to do an encrypted iCloud backup. It's hard to explain to people that they should use an inferior product just because of "privacy".
a1371•Jun 1, 2026
> The new "Plus" plans are tailored to each individual app, with Facebook Plus and Instagram Plus focused more on social expression, while WhatsApp Plus focuses on personalization and messaging.
If only Google Plus lived long enough to see this day...
zimpenfish•Jun 1, 2026
If these subscriptions gave you access to the relevant APIs (via something like IFTTT is fine), I'd be happy to pay.
But if you take away even read-only API access to services[0], I'm a) not going to pay and b) going to stop using your services.
[0] I really don't feel like converting my Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp accounts to the "business" variants just to get access to the APIs.
donbreo•Jun 1, 2026
Will there finally be an option to disable calls completely? If not, I ain't paying.
lblock•Jun 1, 2026
I already did not know what was included in my google one account. Now I can not know what included in my meta one account :)
maxehmookau•Jun 1, 2026
Wait, I'm paying and I still get targeted ads shown to me? But I do get "super reactions"? Come on.
m000•Jun 1, 2026
I think this is all theatrics to avoid EU regulation. Subscriptions for Meta products have already been a thing in the EU for several months.
It went a bit like this:
- EU mandates that users should be given the option to opt out from non-essential cookies.
- Meta responds by implementing an ad-free subscription-based model in EU, which allows them to dodge regulation.
- EU of course sees through their scheme and prepares to sanction them.
- Meta rolls-out subscriptions worldwide, so that it becomes harder for EU to claim that subscriptions were specifically created for dodging EU regulation.
egorfine•Jun 1, 2026
I am a happy Instagram user. As a Ukrainian, this is the only connection left with lots of my friends now as we are scattered around the world. And I would happily pay $2.99/m for Instagram to have those better features.
Problem is, facebook WILL raise the prices on these subscriptions every few months until they could not anymore. So I will have to pay probably like $12.99/m in a couple of years.
fsflover•Jun 1, 2026
> this is the only connection left with lots of my friends now as we are scattered around the world
Time to suggest them to join Mastodon and Pixelfed? Relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is a bad way to keep contact with friends.
egorfine•Jun 1, 2026
> Time to suggest them to join Mastodon and Pixelfed
Sure. Guess how many of them will actually do it?
> Relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is a bad way to keep contact with friends.
I'd say it's exactly the opposite: relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is currently the best way to keep contact with friends.
Unfortunately.
LtWorf•Jun 1, 2026
> Guess how many of them will actually do it?
That's how much they value your friendship then :)
jjulius•Jun 1, 2026
This is getting down voted, but it's true.
I've ditched those forms of social media, and haven't really had trouble keeping in touch with most people I'd like to keep in touch with, whether it's emails, calls, texts or regular meets/activities in meatspace. The people in your life who truly care about you will make a genuine effort to remain in touch with you.
If people don't want to make that effort, why do I need to be connected to what they're doing every day?
ilivethere•Jun 1, 2026
I don't believe the willingness to install yet-another-messaging-app is a good measure of friendship value.
Between SMS, messenger, instagram, whatsapp, discord, slack, ms teams, signal, there's a point where juggling too much messaging apps become a burden instead of convenience.
joenot443•Jun 1, 2026
Have you had much success migrating entire friend groups over to platforms they’ve never heard of?
I think insisting on using weird products nobody in the real world knows about is a “bad way to keep contact with friends”
fsflover•Jun 1, 2026
I didn't succeed in moving entire friend groups. But I did move some friends, which is good enough.
abcd_f•Jun 1, 2026
Nice little detail - WhatsApp was a $1/year subscription before they sold to Zuckerberg ... with the exact subscription cost now conspicuously missing from the app's Wikipedia page.
mimischi•Jun 1, 2026
Except it wasn’t for all users. IIRC it either didn’t show for all, or it was the WinRAR equivalent of you being able to say “maybe later” and it left you alone for a long while.
meszmate•Jun 1, 2026
So now you can pay $3.99/mo for the privilege of custom profile fonts and animated reactions while still getting served ads between Reels. Truly the premium doomscrolling experience.
b3lvedere•Jun 1, 2026
I do not need any of the three, so i will not pay.
True, a lot of other people i know, including family and corpo, use Whatsapp. I will not pay to stay in contact with them. They can go back to sms or email if they want to. Or pay for me.
rickcarlino•Jun 1, 2026
Meta’s reputation has eroded so much that many will view this as an act of desperation rather than a chance to reframe social media. The idea of paying for social media to become the customer rather than the product has been both discussed and tried. There is such a deep lack of trust from years of bad deeds that I doubt anything positive will come out of this.
baggachipz•Jun 1, 2026
Not just that, but there's no mention of removing ads or tracking. So it sounds like people get to pay for the privilege of being the product on a platform which has degraded to the point of being absolutely useless.
skeeter2020•Jun 1, 2026
I can't imagine the economics would work to support anything close to what they make from the ads & tracking model. They'd probably have to charge $39.99/month from everyone to compete.
zamadatix•Jun 1, 2026
$196.2 B ad revenue / 3.58 B daily users (as the average rate over the year) comes out to < $5/month from everyone.
Of course, the trick is you don't actually get "everyone". You get the users with more money, who are more valuable ad targets. Still, $39.99/m seems like it'd be pretty high.
hmokiguess•Jun 1, 2026
Reminds me of the Discord Nitro thing which is toxic and awful to deal with if you have to use it for anything serious.
lenerdenator•Jun 1, 2026
Tell ya what. Give me an absolute guarantee - legally-enforced - that you'll never share any of my data ever again (unless subpoenaed or warranted) and will stop using my news feed as an ad feed, and I might consider it.
Fire Mark Zuckerberg into the stratosphere and I'll will you my worldly possessions.
annagio_•Jun 1, 2026
And the award of most stupid company that somehow is still alive goes to Meta!
There are people who will subscribe and its sad.
phplovesong•Jun 1, 2026
I cant see many paying for whatsapp or facebook/instagram. These are now taken for granted as being "free". Im pretty sure users would just migrate to signal/telegram/other if it ever became a paid service.
phplovesong•Jun 1, 2026
Facebook is so doomed. I recently logged in (after close to 10 years), and whooah the feed was wild.
90% was these weird pages having very sexual teasing shorts, or bikini girls / latex pants etc. None of the pages were something is had ever seen before, or even followed.
The rest 9% was AI gen low qulity shorts, and the remaining 1% was actually from someone i did was friends with, but even thise seemes like some tool had generated them, as in "follow my new business page" etc.
The facebook that once was seem to be totally gone by now, and im not even sure what it is anymore.
I never got an instgram account, but i guess its the same low quality shit over there.
specproc•Jun 1, 2026
You know what feature I'd love for WhatsApp? Out-of-office.
"Hi there, I am no longer using WhatsApp. To contact me, please..."
nkotov•Jun 1, 2026
I would be willing to pay for IG subscription that's ad-free. It's gotten hilariously terrible right now that every 3-4 stories has a 2-page ad with a button on it. It's gotten so bad to the point where I stopped checking stories.
Subscribe on Facebook.com or Instagram.com:
€5.99 per month for one account, plus €4 per month (or price in applicable local currency) for each additional account in the same Accounts Center
akulbe•Jun 1, 2026
Do subscriptions make the ads go away? If not, it's hard to see much value proposition in them.
sim04ful•Jun 1, 2026
I'm rather surprised it took Meta this long in the wake of X introducing subscription plans quite long ago now.
hbn•Jun 1, 2026
Like the article mentioned, they already did fast-follow subscription when X did it with the Meta Verified subscription
67 Comments
Was it spammers that caused this mass migration to ever more closed platforms?
Open protocols are still there and still used, but we're sad because the smaller userbase is frustrating. Just like how people still publish human written content to personal blogs, but they're proportionally non-existent.
Open-source always has a certain level of "jank" that tends to decimate interest from common folks.
I have a server (for my game) with about 1000 people. Out of the 300 people logged in, 50 of them have custom profiles.
So, it seems like a good idea for Meta.
I’ll be surprised if Meta’s subscriptions are as popular as Discord’s without being advertising free. Cosmetics are liked amongst Discord’s audience of nerds, but not Meta’s audience of normal people.
Very interested to see how this works out for Meta. Since they’re not excluding ads, it’s basically free money, so they may as well offer these subscriptions.
But also, definitionally, the users who are willing to pay the most are the ones who the see ads as the biggest anti-value (i.e. cost) to themselves - so they'll be the ones most likely to not use the service if they're not given an ad-free option - cutting down the average user value anyway.
See for yourself: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
HARRIS: We had an arrangement!
KRELL: You did what I wanted. I don't need you anymore.
HARRIS: You agreed that both our governments would benefit if the two of us worked together.
KRELL: And you believed me.
Ohhhh but he was young! Be easy on him
(/s)
I realize Meta's data shows that our user revealed preferences tells them that we like all the dopamine hijacking garbage but that's like saying "Well users like drugs, so we gave them more". Let me pay you to give me just the vitamins, and none of the sugar.
It an outlay of $50 a moth. Probably better to pay 50/number of friends though.
They are not for profit, developed by the matrix.org foundation.
No custom emojis, no self-chat, embeds are inconsistent (e.g. encrypted rooms), multi-image uploads aren't a thing in many clients, adding text when sending an attachment isn't a thing, just to name things we've run into over the years. Most of these have been brought up to the devs many years ago, only to spend forever in spec hell and never actually make it into a release.
We're just tolerating these, because we explicitly moved off discord to have control over our data, but being tech savvy we can handle this. It's nowhere near good enough that I could use it with less savvy people.
It's a hard blocker. I was running an engineering co-op off it and the onboarding difficulties was what finally led us to switch to discord.
All members are good engineers, but the client apps just had too many rough edges.
I really want the project to succeed so I'll keep checking in on it every year.
Facebook is designed more as a shared scrapbook, with the assumption that data is precious and you want to share it with your community, and you should err on the side of oversharing so you don't lose any precious moments. Signal is in no way a replacement for Facebook.
That's... Just not true
> Facebook is designed more as a shared scrapbook
Have you used Facebook in the last 5 years? Its nothing like this at all.
I use it all the time. Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and we were reminiscing about visiting another friend's house, and we looked up some old birthday party invitations to help us remember when we had been there.
That they went past that to just kill their own golden goose is what is now reversible via a payment plan. That might be their only saving grace on this now managed decline.
I’ve been considering it but I am not sure if it drops just ads or suggested posts as well.
Yeah you'd do it to prove a point. 6 months later, no way in hell.
Youtube legitimately has some quality content. But I ended my subscription because fundamentally, streamlining the path to more Youtube usage is self-enabling devil’s work.
Point being: Im not convinced paying money to these companies is ultimately going to result in a healthier, more safe more private experience, no matter what they claim.
Why would you trust Meta to keep its promises?
Even Apple is not to be trusted with that, see, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
Meanwhile, FB has all my network that I can't recreate or self-host so yes, I would pay that.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680125...
I think that is the Feed's tab, though I have not used the blue app in a long time
You can change the feeds with extensions or modded apps for free and ads are blocked by default in any good browser.
I basically don't use Facebook any more because of this. Opening the app shows me the most sensationalist, fearmongering and outrage bait content they can find. It's worse than news channels (I haven't watched TV for 20 years). I have auto play turned off, and every few months the setting gets turned back on.
The first few posts I see scrolling through:
- US adds mandatory tips ahead of world cup.
- Woman dies after being hit by Audi in city center.
- There was a huge queue for women's toilets at a tech conference.
- 50% off mattresses.
- Some influencer I don't follow bought 20 rolls of 3M tape from Lidl.
Do I still have friends, do they still post stuff? I only see them in the reels/stories section at the top.
The only reason why I still have Facebook is because of groups. It's the main 'groups' tool people use in my country, so there are various local groups I am part of.
In the current state those subscriptions will just show your friends that you're a huge loser who's willing to pay for custom backgrounds.
Are there new numbers that one can access? I can imagine the value has gone up, but hundreds of dollars seem like a lot.
Would you pay $27/mo for instagram?
This sort of looks like a subscription for influencers, organisation and "power users". Even if you turned off the ads, most of people feed, from what I've seen are basically ads they signed up for, e.g. posts from companies, so I doubt that most even care.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
The only good thing about WhatsApp is, it is used by everyone that I know, so I can connect with them pretty easily and make calls, etc. I hope they don't enshittify it too much to the point where I'll go and use Signal full time.
Also youtube, unfortunately. Google does not understand that AI is slowly killing youtube.
I am an expert cat video person, so noticing AI slop is not so hard, but it takes a few seconds (e. g. a mother cat punishing the young cat for "overreach" - the way how the AI video insinuated reality was of course completely false, AI spam slop that lies to real humans). I'd rather wish Google would not waste my time (then again, why am I still using youtube ... one day I'll be degoogled for good. The sooner Google is gone from this planet, the better.)
Not just that. Even comments, some of those are basically AI crap, cleverly disguised as real users. It is such a waste, honestly. AI has brought upon us a low-quality world to live in, out of nowhere. This is such a pity.
Thank you - I don't want any of that.
What exactly are "fun" features, anyway? Do they take away from my time?
Ahh, remember the days of livejournal/myspace, where we got all of those “features” for free because your profile is literally a fucking webpage
I blame Bethesda and their horse armor for this.
If someone is prepared to not be my friend because they only want to communicate via a Meta app, then I don’t see why I’d want them as a friend.
The good thing is that it isn't everywhere: Taiwan, Japan, and China usually have apps like Line or WeChat as options. In Europe there's more usage of WhatsApp (which is still Meta owned but also not social media). But in the US (and countries in the Americas), I still see a heavy reliance on Instagram and Facebook.
You can use a throwaway account for that or other things such as FB Marketplace. It's not ideal because it generates traffic on FB, but it's better than handing over all your private communications to Zuckerberg.
During local elections over here (Netherlands), it was impossible to find any info from local parties outside of Facebook. Those parties are also the biggest, usually. I ended up voting for the one party that had a website with their plans for that exact reason.
1/ meta products trigger organic conversations. People post on Instagram and Facebook that they’re traveling and I will reach out to them if I’m close by. People don’t use Signal that way.
2/ the Facebook groups are very useful for local communities. As a traveler, I reach out to Expat groups for feedback.
You delete a FB acct? It reactivates. Fun! Almost like the company is built off fraud
And I hate it. I had deactivated all my Meta accounts but reactivated WhatsApp because of school stuff.
Unless you're talking about parent groups. Because then you're fucked. Every parent group everywhere uses Facebook or Whatsapp and don't care that not everybody uses it. You will be excluded.
My daughter's school uses a clunky proprietary platform that is way, way worse than WhatsApp. I wish they used WhatsApp! Actually, they also do this, because being non techies their use of tech is all over the place and they adopted the worst of both worlds: school digital platform (very clunky) and, because it sucks, also WhatsApp. So important communications reach me both ways.
Sigh
For the down voters: Such as finding local business information or events in your community, and tons of other stuff which isn't anywhere else.
Facebook + Instagram already has more current information than the rest of the web combined.
Ditto for phones, if you mean the PSTN – as time goes on, fewer and fewer people have ever really used that. When people around the world are communicating via their smartphones with a phone-number-based protocol, it’s overwhelmingly WhatsApp, and guess who owns that?
That definitely sounds harsher than intended. It's a meditation really. Nobody needs FB and Instagram. (please read as a meditation)
You mention “FB and Instagram”, and I haven’t used either in a decade myself. But the OP did mention “Meta products” and you are ignoring the elephant in the room: WhatsApp. In many countries it has completely replaced the PSTN: you cannot contact a business (they won’t answer normal calls and may not post email addresses), cannot get the necessary info on how to check into the reception-less accommodation one booked, and one will find it hard to maintain contact with people one may well wish to maintain contact with.
Someone might be perfectly happy being your friend, and not understanding why you never come to their parties that they advertise via the group chat on whatever platform, or insta posts or whatever.
"If they cared enough they would message me directly on my obscure to normies messaging platform!" Yeah your best friend might. The greater social circle?
I get it, I'm trying to get everyone on signal or onto federated platforms, but I'm realizing that if I wanna talk to The People, I need to go to where The People are.
It had a placard in it saying something like "You don't have 100 friends. You have like 4. And that's OK."
The more I'm getting older, the truer this has become. There is something extremely zen-like about letting the past trail away like the wake of a ship, as Watts said.
In an ideal world, those people were dear to me, and me to them, and we would all stay in touch and be one big happy family, n'importe the distance. But it takes plenty out of me just to be there for those that matter most. And for them, putting up with my quirks is burdensome but not an unscalable wall. As it is for me with their quirks in reverse.
In many countries, either WhatsApp or a PSTN number for receiving an SMS is used today for the things that you think are done with email. I have lived in two countries that have highly digitized government services, and they were provided over an official app where email wasn’t part of the signup flow.
Sure, maybe some people use email at work (but WhatsApp has eaten into even that in some regions), but then that address is so associated with work that they don’t use it for social contacts.
The best compromise for such people, I guess, would be a work phone number that's solely for business WhatsApp communication.
Only on HN could someone post a take like this without getting laughed at. Outside our very geeky HN bubble, hardly anyone (let's say in Europe, but all my friends in the US use it as well) uses anything other than WhatsApp. There's literally zero reason for the average user to switch.
In europe we never had free unlimited texts. Internet was cheaper than calling/texting, especially with everyone having wifi at home and work. So a cross-platform messaging app appeared and has replaced text and calling.
I always found this peculiar, you would think it would be the other way around. I wonder why that is?
Some hard core committed communists prefer telegram, but even they usually have to have whatsapp too. No one uses signal or even knows what it is.
Most people in Spain still rely and prefer voice calls than messages anyway. I believe half the country must still be illiterate as they manage to send voice message but struggle to send written messages on whatsapp.
On a personal level you lose a bit of information when you don't have whatsapp. For example I didn't join the whatsapp group of my dance class and I am often unaware of stuff they mention on it but that doesn't prevent me to attend said classes.
I am (mostly against my will) in multiple professional and personal Whatsapp groups. Use is constant and daily and unavoidable. It is the principal means of communication in both work and personal settings. Calls are always a second option.
I suspect your experience reflects only partial integration in local culture.
I am in andalusia, hardly the most modern area if you discount the migrants that call themselves expats.
As a sibling comment to yours stated, the hardest decision was deciding to stop using Meta.
I have a militant "let the leaves fall where they may" attitude towards stopping relationships with companies I detest (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta...) It all always works out fine.
I'm not making any serious money off the old stuff I sell, but the alternative to selling it (or even giving away low-value stuff that's still functional) on facebook is basically just throwing it out / destructively recycling it.
I'm willing to give Meta the information that I enjoy old cars, bar trivia, and breakfast sandwich pop-ups.
Users.
In Portland, Oregon area Craigslist was popular, but is now a ghost town. Everybody has moved to Facebook marketplace.
I'm in WhatsApp groups with friends who live abroad, SMS is not an option. We could use another chat app, but then I'd have to convince every friend from every group to use something else. WhatsApp is what every friend I have agrees on.
I belong to several hobby groups that exist only on Facebook or Reddit (or Discord, but I dislike it for several reasons). I'd like to ditch both Facebook and Reddit, but that would mean leaving those hobby groups, and given the joy they bring me, I'm not willing to pull the plug yet.
So you see, it's really not that easy.
I don't think you realize how much Telegram is associated with hated Russia and the local far-right in several European countries.
Or attend an event in person. They advertise their in person events on the meshtastic Facebook group.
It's almost like the people still using Meta services are metaphorical bots or low agency human beings.
People don't care about the platform, they just want shit to work and for better or worse, Facebook works for them.
We decided to do the same again.
They occasionally have a donation popup but it's one of the easiest and least intrusive programs I've ever used, and it just works.
I value my (various groups of) friends more than I value moving out of WhatsApp, and for what anyway? WhatsApp is perfect for our needs. If it becomes paid-only, we'll move out of it, but not before. I don't need dealing with this kind of nerdy crusade. And I need to have WhatsApp installed anyway for different family members [1] and the parent school groups and official comms from school.
Sorry, but that suggestion is a no-go in the real world. It only works in the micro-bubble of HN.
---
[1] Let me preempt your likely "but convince all of your family of using <thing> instead...". No. Just no.
Why do they have to be "willing to move out"? They're free to continue to use whatever they want, but how they get in touch with you might be different. Also, what's up with using "nerd" as a pejorative? Why the hostility?
But at the end of the day, yeah, it's not all that off-base. The measure of how much someone values staying in touch with you is generally going to be reflected in how much effort they put into doing so.
>Sorry, but that suggestion is a no-go in the real world.
What is "the real world"? Is there a standard definition that is applicable to everyone everywhere? I live in "the real world", too, and have no issue conversing with all of my family, parents from my kid's school, and official notifications from school without WhatsApp or social media. Texts, phone calls, emails, regular in-person meets/activities all work wonders, as does the school's communication system that can be accessed via a browser, or the notices/bulletins my kids bring home on paper that typically cover most of what's communicated via the browser (but I digress).
>It only works in the micro-bubble of HN.
No, it works where it works, and it doesn't where it doesn't. The thing that a lot of people in the comments in these types of threads seem to miss is that this is very obviously a "YMMV" situation, wholly dependent upon what's around you. Sure, fine, use WhatsApp because you need important information from your kid's school(s) if that's literally the only way they communicate - I'm a reasonable individual who won't criticize such a move, because your hands are tied. C'est la vie.
>[1] Let me preempt your likely "but convince all of your family of using <thing> instead...". No. Just no.
There's no pre-empting necessary on your part because I had no intention of it, but, uhh... thanks for the assumption, I guess? You don't have to bother convincing anyone. "Here's how to reach me," one time is all that needs to be done. If they want to reach you, they'll reach you. No extolling of virtues required, and trying to convince someone not to use something is not necessary.
No, I'm not going to force them to communicate differently with me just out of some sort of principle. WhatsApp works. And I do want to talk to them, it's not an "either way, who cares" deal for me.
And there's no hostility, I was merely pointing out how much HN can be out of touch with reality sometimes. "Nerdy" is only a hostile adjective if you want it to be. Do you?
> What is "the real world"? Is there a standard definition that is applicable to everyone everywhere? I live in "the real world", too, and have no issue conversing with all of my family, parents from my kid's school, and official notifications from school without WhatsApp or social media.
I already explained this in my first comment to which you replied: the only people who see no trouble in replacing all these apps are those who don't use them for anything interesting. Like you. Meanwhile, other people exist in the rest of the world, and it's not so easy...
> The thing that a lot of people in the comments in these types of threads seem to miss [...]
Exactly. We just disagree on what is missed.
> "Here's how to reach me," one time is all that needs to be done. If they want to reach you, they'll reach you.
No, this is not how it works. This is, like I said, a very HN micro-bubble thing to say.
Nobody's asking you to force them. :)
>I already explained this in my first comment to which you replied: the only people who see no trouble in replacing all these apps are those who don't use them for anything interesting. Like you. Meanwhile, other people exist in the rest of the world, and it's not so easy...
Yes, your comment said that it "will only work for people who are not really users of WhatsApp or Instagram". My point is that I have plenty of friends and family who regularly use both of those platforms, and they also regularly communicate with me outside of those platforms. It took no haranguing on my part, I just let them know how to say hey if they wanted to.
>No, this is not how it works.
It is! I genuinely think you'd be surprised at how many people would go along with it.
>This is, like I said, a very HN micro-bubble thing to say.
Except that it's not. What is "HN" about walking away from tech? That's a growing trend in our contemporary society. You argue that it's a "very HN" thing to do, yet I'm the only person in my friends and family group that would be considered a "techie", and everyone who I communicate with seems to have had no problem getting in touch with me outside of those tech apps.
If you're not forcing them, and you want to keep in touch with them, aren't we back where we started? "It's not so easy".
> It took no haranguing on my part, I just let them know how to say hey if they wanted to.
Perfect, it worked for you. It doesn't work for others. Let's say it with me: "it's not so easy".
> It is! I genuinely think you'd be surprised at how many people would go along with it.
It's not! There are many groups out there for which your experience doesn't apply. It's a bubble. And it's a bit presumptuous to assume your interlocutor has no experience trying to change things. At one point, some things are not worth the effort and one has to pick their battles.
> Except that it's not. What is "HN" about walking away from tech?
The HN bubble I refer to is the one where they (we actually, of course I'm not immune) think their microcosm of experiences, very principled and nerd- or tech-focused, and often for specific cultures or nations, applies to the rest of the world. It's typical of some HN'ers to announce to the world that they have LEFT FACEBOOK FOR GOOD and that they aren't missing anything important. Great for them!
It's helpful to always remember: not everyone is like you/me/us, and... wait for it... "it's not that easy".
All of this to say: ads are only in status updates and channels (no idea what this is, never used one) and apparently not in every region.
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.
it being against what your payment contract states just means they’ll reinvent and rename the tiers.
Streaming services claiming prior art here.
I won’t give away the plot, but it’s so realistically absurd it’s sad, hilarious and terrifying all at once.
Is there a solution to this?
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
I refuse to install your app just because you intentionally trash the web experience with popups.
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.
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).
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.
Of course, they could still sell your data anyway. That's why it's important to pay attention to their T&C.
I miss the days where 'the product' is only what we got, and not being the victim of an executives stalking campaign.
Well, now they will keep doing what they are doing while being paid because your data is their business model.
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.
I'm not sure what win Meta sees here.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
You will not stop being the product if you pay.
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?
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
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 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.
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
But no amount of payment will remove the nuisance. The intermediary has made it their "business model"
Remove the middleman to remove the nuisance
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.
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?
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.
Personally, I don’t generally think about how other people perceive if I have money or not.
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)
But bags as shoes is impractical. You want a sole to protect your feet.
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.
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.
Circa 2016: https://www.techspot.com/news/63504-whatsapp-waves-goodbye-a...
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
Still plenty of ads in the articles!
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…
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.
I wonder if fully forbidding personalised ads will actually make gdp of developed nations to shrink.
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.
Maybe. Or maybe this is the final stop on the route to enshittification: bill both the advertisers and the users.
> 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.
To me it sounds like they no longer are making enough money, so now they are asking people to pay to be the product
Have they ever made enough money according to their own desire?
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.
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.
I feel like this is no longer true. You are now the product regardless of you paying for it or not.
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.
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.
It’s Facebook. Why would anyone trust them?
Like no ads? that's usually the #1 you pay for and no mention of that.
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.
Meta? Fuck off. We all know they're already doing awful stuff with our data, they've had more bugs last year than all of whatsapps previous history combined, and whatever price they request now is step one for enshittification.
And just to say it is actually sad there is no alternative because most of those artists dont really gain a valuable network effect from posting there. But it is how younger unestablished peoples establish themselves as existing. There are entire comedy/music scenes that essentially require you to have an Instagram account.
Anything Zuckerberg needs antitrust immediately
...but it's unclear what this subscription would give me. The announcement has no real details, the article is light on detail, and the WhatsApp website has no mention of this subscription.
I get that it's hard. What I want is a good text and call app, and that's hard to charge for at scale. But every feature that Meta has added to justify charging (AI, stories, profiles, etc), makes the product worse for me and makes me less likely to pay for it.
They're in a hard place.
They have a stranglehold on everything. It's inescapable.
But speaking as someone who deleted a high following FB page that I probably shouldn't have because the back end of it was so infuriating, I don't understand this offering. It seems like a lot of bling and clutter. Most people who need to use Meta for biz reasons want the same thing - live support that is not a bot or a human that may as well be a bot.
And not to get too granular but if you've used IG lately, for example, you notice that trying to do anything on the back end (eg: set up up some boosted posts or schedule things) takes the user through a maze and sometimes you end up in the old legacy Facebook pages, which has links that don't relate to any of the contemporary features. It sounds minor but it essentially barely functions and each click to confirm something sends you to another section to confirm something else. You also need a FB page to do anything on an IG page and a tonne of other petty thwartings. The fact that their brand new subscriptions/Meta platform seems just as confusing is alarming. I don't know how a company with this much money can not design an un-hellish back end or offer reasonable customer support.
Their A.I. monitoring is also completely off the chain, closing accounts and locking profiles for opaque reasons that cannot be questioned.
Social media is here to stay, unfortunately. Meta, LinkedIn, X, I wouldn't invest in the long term.
If you are paying for the usage (mostly server and development costs), your data need not be used for anything other than actually improving the product and security.
Currently the data is purely to extract profits and keep you hooked. This is what they have made you believe social media is about. Its not. You aren't hooked on iMessage and FaceTime scrolling reels and wasting hours. It's actually used to connect with people.
And a lot of this is probably spent maintaining the ad machine
If this new sub becomes a status signaling, it might work.
But actually this is a good move. I tried to convince my family and friends to use alternatives, without success. But now I see hope.
Have stopped using FB and IG years ago, was stuck with WhatsApp because of half the world using it.
Now we need something new to show to the shareholders and that is this.
I personally abhore Facebook (and IG,Whatsapp) and don't want to use any of them; I have uninstalled/reinstalled Whatsapp many times. Out of practical concern, I now only use Whatsapp in business settings where it would create tension and create social awkwardness not to. But I dislike the fact that I do.
You could use it for other things lol. My entire boring friend group uses it for none of those.
Doing illegal stuff in public Telegram channels is extremely stupid, they aren't encrypted, you're pretty much giving your information to law enforcement (I know Telegram is often blocking sharing info on their users to law enforcement, but you can be sure agencies are monitoring your telegram channel discussions).
The Russophile comment is pretty frustrating given Telegram is the most commonly used messenger in Ukraine and lots of Eastern Europe...
There's truth to the Russophile comment though, Telegram is regularly used by GRU and the FSB to recruit people to commit acts of vandalism and terror and is pretty well documented. It's also commonly used to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories. My mum has fallen for several of these via Telegram.
Telegram has a larger Russian speaking audience because of the founder, who created VK in Russia. But that doesn’t make it Russophile. Ukraine is organizing pretty much all their resistance on Telegram…
The public channels are where the trash content is, I’ve never used them myself, you have to explicitly look for that feature, it’s not like they are shown in the chat interface directly.
> Why not settle on a chat which actually uses e2e encryption by default though?
Because I care more about the quality of user experience, and Telegram has been awesome to use since I first tried it
I'm in Scandinavia, and at least here, Messenger is by far the most dominant messaging app.
Meta in general has a really tight grip here.
We like having two apps: WA for friends, Signal for family. There are only few reasons to mix the two.
On the other hand, I've convinced a lot of my friends to get Signal. I'm the only person that they speak to on Signal, but that's fine ;)
The main advice we got is that although you need to migrate individuals, the main focus should be on migrating channels. If you have a family group chat, that's the target. Tell people about how Meta spies on them, etc, and then support everyone in the channel to individually set up Signal if necessary.
Nobody, and I do mean nobody, realizes that using Whatsapp by default (which everyone accepts) synchronizes their entire contacts list to Meta. It's a golden trove of valuable data for an ad targeting company.
People don't realize that there is so much that can be inferred about you from your contacts. Whether you have kids, which schools they go to, and similar personal information.
All of this is not even on the radar and people reduce privacy to "whether someone listens in on my calls or conversations" and tend to brush it off, because they honestly don't care about that part.
Signal doesn't make it easier by refusing to allow encrypted iCloud backups for so many years (which means people lose data when they lose their phones!) and recently introducing a subscription backup service instead of allowing me to do an encrypted iCloud backup. It's hard to explain to people that they should use an inferior product just because of "privacy".
If only Google Plus lived long enough to see this day...
But if you take away even read-only API access to services[0], I'm a) not going to pay and b) going to stop using your services.
[0] I really don't feel like converting my Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp accounts to the "business" variants just to get access to the APIs.
It went a bit like this:
- EU mandates that users should be given the option to opt out from non-essential cookies.
- Meta responds by implementing an ad-free subscription-based model in EU, which allows them to dodge regulation.
- EU of course sees through their scheme and prepares to sanction them.
- Meta rolls-out subscriptions worldwide, so that it becomes harder for EU to claim that subscriptions were specifically created for dodging EU regulation.
Problem is, facebook WILL raise the prices on these subscriptions every few months until they could not anymore. So I will have to pay probably like $12.99/m in a couple of years.
Time to suggest them to join Mastodon and Pixelfed? Relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is a bad way to keep contact with friends.
Sure. Guess how many of them will actually do it?
> Relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is a bad way to keep contact with friends.
I'd say it's exactly the opposite: relying on a foreign, for-profit megacorp is currently the best way to keep contact with friends.
Unfortunately.
That's how much they value your friendship then :)
I've ditched those forms of social media, and haven't really had trouble keeping in touch with most people I'd like to keep in touch with, whether it's emails, calls, texts or regular meets/activities in meatspace. The people in your life who truly care about you will make a genuine effort to remain in touch with you.
If people don't want to make that effort, why do I need to be connected to what they're doing every day?
Between SMS, messenger, instagram, whatsapp, discord, slack, ms teams, signal, there's a point where juggling too much messaging apps become a burden instead of convenience.
I think insisting on using weird products nobody in the real world knows about is a “bad way to keep contact with friends”
True, a lot of other people i know, including family and corpo, use Whatsapp. I will not pay to stay in contact with them. They can go back to sms or email if they want to. Or pay for me.
Of course, the trick is you don't actually get "everyone". You get the users with more money, who are more valuable ad targets. Still, $39.99/m seems like it'd be pretty high.
Fire Mark Zuckerberg into the stratosphere and I'll will you my worldly possessions.
90% was these weird pages having very sexual teasing shorts, or bikini girls / latex pants etc. None of the pages were something is had ever seen before, or even followed.
The rest 9% was AI gen low qulity shorts, and the remaining 1% was actually from someone i did was friends with, but even thise seemes like some tool had generated them, as in "follow my new business page" etc.
The facebook that once was seem to be totally gone by now, and im not even sure what it is anymore.
I never got an instgram account, but i guess its the same low quality shit over there.
"Hi there, I am no longer using WhatsApp. To contact me, please..."
Subscribe on Facebook.com or Instagram.com: €5.99 per month for one account, plus €4 per month (or price in applicable local currency) for each additional account in the same Accounts Center