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Facebook and Instagram to offer ad-free service in UK for up to £3.99 a month
- evertedsphere 1y ago> Web users will be charged £2.99 a month and mobile phone users £3.99 a month to scroll through Facebook and Instagram without targeted ads. I wonder how much information this provides about the relative value of mobile users vs web users. It's complicated by the fact that part of the pricing strategy here is likely not maximizing revenue as much as it is…making it just too expensive for many people to want to pay, thus shaping public opinion in the right direction. > If the accounts are linked, users only need to pay one monthly fee. Is this because they manage to get some value from that edge existing in the graph even if they can't turn that into ad revenue?
- jsheard 1y agoI think the price discrepancy is due to Google and Apple taking a cut of in-app purchases. Meta should get roughly the same amount of money either way.
- ManlyBread 1y agoThe cost of blocking ads has been equal to zero for nearly two decades now. I see no reason to suddenly start paying for this kind of stuff.
- asddubs 1y agoa lot of people use apps to access these platforms
- 4ndrewl 1y agoAny preferred ones?
- asddubs 1y agoI'm a caveman, I'm just trying to explain why it might be useful for some people
- ManlyBread 1y agoTheir suffering is their own choice.
- tcfhgj 1y agohttps://revanced.app/patches?pkg=com.facebook.katana&s=facebook https://revanced.app/patches?pkg=com.facebook.katana&s=faceb... https://revanced.app/patches?pkg=com.instagram.android&s=instagram https://revanced.app/patches?pkg=com.instagram.android&s=ins...
- pjc50 1y agoIt's quite annoying to use Instagram on a mobile with adblock, and it also has quite a lot of ads (one every two posts!), not to mention the "organic" ads. I wonder if those are counted as well.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Flimm 1y agoThis article is on theguardian.com , and it has started to require a paid subscription for all readers who don't want to share their data with 131 third parties. There is no privacy-respecting free option. The paid subscription is £5 per month, and it doesn't eliminate all ads. (This requirement may depend on which country you're in.)
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago"doesn't eliminate all ads"... ug.
- megapolitics 1y agoWhy would there be a privacy-respecting free option? The content is not free to produce.
- Flimm 1y agoThere are many ways to monetize free online websites. The most obvious way is advertising. Advertising can be privacy-respecting. The Guardian in particular is funded by a trust fund, by donations, by advertising, and maybe by other sources of revenue as well.
- vovavili 1y ago>Advertising can be privacy-respecting Not the effective kind.
- grishka 1y agoThe entire previous history of humanity we only had non-targeted ads in newspapers, on billboards, and on TV and radio, and everyone was ok with that. But suddenly, on the internet, it's somehow "not possible" to have advertising that isn't personalized or even dynamic at all. How so?
- cdfsdsadsa 1y ago
- herbturbo 1y agoI went ad-free on IG by no longer using it. FB ruined that product.
- cryptonym 1y agoI know two people who have been scammed by ads pushed on Instagram. One for a fake sell of clothes and another for fake reselling of concert ticket. In both instances, price of that scam was worth multiple years of subscription.
- tomashubelbauer 1y agoFacebook's logged out landing page used to say "Free forever". Guess there was a corner of the ToS that said "unless we decide otherwise". :) Edit: OK the wording was "Sign up. It's free (and always will be)" so I guess that remains true.
- infecto 1y agoWouldn’t Free forever also still be true? If I understood correctly this is just taking the existing experience and removing ads? Lots to complain about with Meta but this is not one of the reasons.
- buggeryorkshire 1y agoAd-free, but is it tracking free? I think we know the answer to that one.
- Havoc 1y agoThe algorithmic feeds in these are by definition tracking
- phantom784 1y agoThe problem with Facebook, beyond just ads, is that its algorithm pushes so many posts from groups that I'm not in and don't want to see. I want an option to only see posts from people I'm friends with and groups that I'm in.
- lukeschlather 1y agoIt's under "feeds" on the menu. The URL is https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr on desktop.
- RandomBacon 1y ago> only see posts from people I'm friends with and groups that I'm in. If you're on the website (not app): https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr If you just want to see friends and not groups: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr (I am "Meta Verified", but they still locked my account over my name even though I sent them my ID. They have been "reviewing" my ID for the past two months. If anyone can help, my email is in my HN profile. Thank you.)
- giarc 1y agoThanks for those links (really). However, having now used them, it turns out I still don't like Facebook. It's basically the same 3-4 users posting things I utterly do not care about. I guess the people I do care about are not on FB (or don't post there).
- m000 1y agoBasically, people stopped posting as the algorithm started taking control of your feed. I discovered FB purity [1] recently, which does cut down on the algorithm's spam in your feed. But it turns out people have already moved on. £2/month would have been a tempting proposition 7-8 years ago. But £4/month in 2025 makes no sense. It is only offered to make the regulators happy. [1] https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/
- chuckadams 1y ago£3.99/mo to not display ads anyway. How much to not have all my usage and content collected, tracked, and sold regardless?
- mrtksn 1y agoI wonder how would the world would have been if these services were paid by their users only, so algorithms optimized for user satisfaction instead of engagement.
- hliyan 1y agoTen years ago, I wrote something [1] arguing that it is impossible to escape ads by paying, as long as the product is content: > Here’s why I believe you will not escape ads by paying for your content: people who can afford to pay for content are people with money, or people with buying power, in other words, the exact same people advertisers look to target. The more buying power you demonstrate, the more advertisers will target you. So the more you pay to keep ads away, the more advertisers will pay to put them back in. With the way the world currently works, selling ads, it seems, will always be more profitable than selling content. [1] https://hliyan.github.io/2015/07/19/Why-you-will-never-escape-ads-by-paying-for-content/ https://hliyan.github.io/2015/07/19/Why-you-will-never-escap...
- jasonsb 1y agoEverything on these platforms feels like an ad. On Facebook, I hardly see posts from my friends anymore, just a relentless stream of ads and algorithm-driven 'recommendations' (which are just ads in disguise). Who in their right mind would pay for that?
- jmorenoamor 1y agoWith a substantial amount of creators relying on paid promotions tu survive, I doubt ad-free is the correct term to be used.
- grishka 1y agoThese paid offerings should include not only an ad-free experience, but also getting rid of all the dark patterns and other manipulative crap Meta loves doing in their apps and services. You know, preferences that actually stick forever, notifications that only notify you of things that actually happened, feeds that only contain content from accounts you follow and don't force-feed you recommendations, all that.
- parpfish 1y agoin theory switch to a user-pays model should align the incentives of the company with user satisfaction rather than the ads-pay model where the incentives is aligned to maximize engagement. i'm not optimistic that'll happen.
- notyourwork 1y agoIt depends on how you define satisfaction. If company measures it as usage, that aligns with algorithms that encourage doom scrolling.
- chaostheory 1y agoIronically, this is why I stopped using meta social offerings as much as I used to and why I turned off notifications for those apps. I’m sure many people can say the same.
- lm28469 1y agoThe day instagram "proposed" me this deal is the day I uninstalled the app from my phone, it's been a few months now, 0 regret. I can take ads, but for some reason this was the final straw
- firefax 1y agoI am not a Facenbook fan -- I deleted my account in 2016 and when I tried to come back recently and give Zuck a second chance, my account was summarily banned for being "inauthentic" (completely with a link to the policy, which 404'd). I'd been prepared to have to upload a DL to prove I was me, but never got that chance. Anyway, I think this is fine. A lot of rhetoric about social networks is swayed by teenagers and young adults with either zero ability to make online purchases or limited means. But many of the harms around social media are things like being served beauty ads when you have body dysmorphia -- dastardly stuff preying on people's weaknesses to serve ads. Remove that perverse incentive, and maybe Mark will make better decisions. Some of remember the early Facebook, with robust granular privacy controls. Then the wall came and it all came tumbling down... that could change.
- josefritzishere 1y agoEnshittification at it's best.
- busymom0 1y agoThe people who are willing and capable of affording such subscription prices are likely also the same people who have the purchasing power to click on ads and buy things. So I don't understand the logic behind this.
- rich_sasha 1y agoI would happily pay 10x this money to have all Meta products, websites and trackers excluded entirely from my life. Here's a revenue stream for you, Luck!