Awful to see our personal privacy and social lives being ransomed like this. €10 seems like a price gouge for a social media site, and I’m even seeing a price tag of 150SEK (~€15) In Sweden.
Instead of paying 10€/month for a desktop subscribtion you can also just use adblocker which does the exact same thing.
An ad blocker doesn’t prevent FB and Instagram internal tracking and usage of personal data, and they don’t work on the phone app.
Neither does the subscribtion
Fair enough.
Price is a thing, but having the option to chose is definitely good.
Now comes the real question: do you really trust the Zuck to implement a “do not share/sell anything” policy ? 'Cause yeah, if I’m paying, I’m expecting that none of my data is being sold/processed/transmitted to another company. Paying to just remove ads is … pointless.
I mean I would argue that the important choice - not use FB/Instagram at all - isn’t an option for most people. People’s lives depend on this software, a lot of people would have a really hard time connecting with friends or participating in community organizations without access to Meta’s locked-in user base.
This is why the option to pay for your own privacy rights is a false choice, and why these gatekeepers need stricter regulation from the EU. These companies make billions in profits from their monopoly positions and privacy rights abuses.
100% this. I’d argue though, that the price point is fair. In 2018, Facebook earned an average of roughly $110 in ad revenue per American user according to this article.
That’s impressive that customers pay that much to advertise on Facebook if true. that’s an average CPM of like $50. (5 cents per ad view)
At the same time, that article also claims that personalized ads are only worth 2x as much as regular ads, so that implies that FB/Instagram users should have the option to pay $5/month for ads without data tracking. I doubt that personalized ads are actually worth that much, but still.
The price might be fair for american users. The average european user makes Facebook about $60 per year. Sorce: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/
The thing is, there’s no “we’ll show you generic ads with no tracking” option. It’s accept being tracked or pay (two shitty options).
It seems that companies can’t do ads nowadays unless it’s targeted ads, and that makes you think it’s not ads what gives money, but selling your data. To whom? For what ends? You’ll never know. And that’s the problem.
So, the options given are unacceptable. The only reasonable option is to download your data and close the account.
They won’t stop tracking you. They’ll just not show you ads. They can still track amdnusr the data though to customise your feed according to your data.
I’ve uninstalled the apps.
Also the price is pr account. It’s not a reasonable price but they don’t want you to pick that option anyway
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Social media ≠ social lives.
People need to remember this and not give their social lives to private companies.
Most of society doesn’t realize this yet, sadly.
Unfortunately, trans people and otherkin don’t have much choice if they want to be safe in certain areas
I agree. I’m myself part of a minority and social media are great to find a community and exchange with people of this community.
My comment was about the post speaking about Meta. My go to for a safe space is now Mastodon which I don’t consider as a company. We can always change instance or build our own. This is really different from other social media.
To provide a better point, I could answer to your comment from here. This is a huge difference between the closed Meta and federation.
You said social media isn’t social lives. I think Lemmy and Mastodon are still social media.
My first comment has two statements if not three. The first is about social media and social lives. And, we have to learn that these aren’t the same. They have different definitions and are two separate things.
The second is about private companies and that we don’t have to put our social lives in the hand of private companies. The article is about Meta.
Now, Lemmy and Mastodon are different as they are federate social media. They don’t follow the second statement but the first is still true. And people have to keep this in mind when they use Lemmy and Mastodon. They must differentiate between social media and lives. If people use these two, they only avoid the private companies.
Now, Lemmy and Mastodon is a ridiculous small fraction of social media users. The vast majority relies on private companies. And people put their social lives there. This is an issues.
I think forcing a differentiation between social media and social lives can be dangerous. I say this in the context of trans and otherkin people who use free social media. I think they are in the best position to judge their own safety individually.
You’re speaking about accessibility of the safe space. It’s easier to access a social media and use it as a safe space. But, it doesn’t opposite with the fact that social live and social media are different.
Safe space was a thing before the event of social media. Social media helps people discovering their differences and accepting these. This is access to the information and not social live. I didn’t write people have to avoid social media.
Before the wide spreading of the internet, people would move to a different town, will reach specific places for safe spaces. They were free or used networks and didn’t rely on private companies like Meta. This is a huge difference.
I think you’re ignoring me again. I said in the context of trans people who use free social media. Like the fediverse.
And yeah, we had ways of doing it before the internet. And they sucked. Fewer people knew they were queer, and they stayed closeted for longer. And their safe spaces could be raided by the police, and that’s how we got Stonewall. I like the internet better.
otherkin
lol
In the case of Facebook, the average value of an active user’s data to Facebook is about $2 per months.
They shouldn’t be allowed to charge more than that.
Respectfully, an article from four years ago that I cannot read in full without creating an account, which seems to just reference a calculator from FT that is over a decade old at this point (whose sources I also cannot seem to find) doesn’t impress me. Do you have anything more recent, preferably that sites sources, that you can share? I’m genuinely interested in what data is actually worth
All valid points. Tbh I’m not on FB or any of meta’s services, and I don’t care about FB enough to put in more research time. I consider this a data point to start from.
Facebook should be required to show how a single set of a random user’s data actually means even close to 13€ a month of revenue for them. This is not a good they willingly put out on the market, this is an alternative the law forces them to give to people, and it should actually have to be equivalent.
This is a classic. Make the price high enough that nobody wants to pay it, but low enough that law enforcement doesn’t complain. Everybody will click on the „I’m Ok with tracking“ button.
And for those who pay, they will still probably sell their data to advertisers and hike the prices in 2-3 years.
They don’t sell the data. It is used by Facebook to identify you and your interests and advertisers then pay Facebook to use this information to target their desired audiences with relevant ads. The data stays with Facebook. It’s misleading to to say that they’re selling your data because that’s not exactly what’s happening. Advertiser has no use for the user data itself. Advertising platforms do.
They don’t sell the data, they sell access to the data and some other things they calculated from it. That’s just semantics at this point.
I don’t think it’s just semantics, when many people literally think they’re handing over your data to a third party, when that is not actually the case. That would be significantly more concerning than what they’re doing now, which already is concerning enough.
erm…Cambridge Analytica?
They didn’t sell that data either
True, they just pretty much gave them away
The wording in the message was also “we won’t use your data for ads” - which I understood as that they will still track it…
They sure will! They basically just removed untargeted ads and replaced it with addfree subscription. Major loss for users
unrelated, but why can’t I see a single comment?
Did you pay for them? It’s 12c per comment, or you can buy the whole thread for 70c
I noticed that a lot of comments don’t show up if you don’t set your language right in your lemmy settings. I just set it to N/A and also shift clicked on English, and it made a lot of invisible comments show up.
that actually did the trick. thank you so much
Is it a good news for alternative social media ?
I mean now that people have to pay to use facebook, wouldn’t they move to the fedi ?
Also do we want the racist uncle and the boomer memes on the fedi ?
People don’t have to pay though. The general idea that I hear from most is, that by accepting, things will be as they habe always been. They don’t realise or seem to care thatbit has always been illegal
