To be clear: I prefer to pay for things instead of having to see ads but 13€ / month!? For a meta product that has inherently user-hostile design patterns even without ads?
Who does this appeal to?
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Just stop using Instagram. I quit mainstream social media (Facebook, Instagram, Reddit,…) and the experience has been quite cathartic.
I’ve been off of all social media for about a decade, but just yesterday i got a dm from someone from my past so i went and checked it out and then I checked a bunch of other stuff there too and my mental state instantly spiraled into a terrible place. Man that shit is toxic like nuclear waste.
Especially in Australia atm facebook is full of shit.
I did too and, while the benefit are higher than the loss, I usually feel really left out from one kind of partecipation to society and it’s a bit sad.
They don’t want you to pay. They set the price artificially high to discourage you so they continue business as usual while complying to the laws. The price is a PITA charge to make it worth their while and to still profit from the ads they would have shown you.
I’ve never used IG but I feel like it would be a $3.99/month type of service. This price just tells us they are making way more than that serving ads or that your ad data alone is worth a decent bit of cash.
It’s a $0 per month type of service, even without ads.
It’s a -$10/month type of service, they’d have to pay me in order to use it… and they’d still be making money on the data and ads.
It’s weird in that most users would value it at $3.99 a month, but the average user also scrolls for several hours a month, with each one of those hours packed with ads.
This equates to way more than $4 in revenue a month.
They set the price artificially high
Actually… it’s likely only slightly higher than what they get from ads per user, and still lower than what they get from compiling and selling all the information you agree to give them.
Users tend to severely underestimate how much their cumulative data can be sold for.
YouTube premium costs less than that, and that includes a Music streaming service
Thanks for the suggestion, YouTube.
Products!? I thought they were services…
Anyway I don’t see myself ever paying for social media LMAO, and even less now that I know about the Fediverse… Seems like a VIP lounge for us if you ask me, and I’m okay with that.
Now we know how much they’re making with tracking and ads per user.
They are still going to be tracking you. That isn’t going away.
They just won’t use the tracking for the explicit reason of creating ads for you. But that’s only because you are paying for no ads.
I guarantee the data is logged for all other purposes, and that the data is logged for future ad usage if you ever unsubscribe.
Secondly this doesn’t necessarily equate the profit from your specific ads. This is the result of a legal battle within the EU. That’s the only reason it exists. The price is determined as ‘high enough to not get into more legal trouble’.
Meta already demonstrably does this. I deleted my real Facebook in like 2016. Around 2019-2020, I created a new burner account to browse Marketplace with nearly all fake info expect my name, phone, and email. And lo and behold all of my friend suggestions are people I know and mostly were on the old account. The most charitable I can imagine is that those suggestion had me in their contacts which they agree to share with Facebook (which is problematic af imo) but it is extremely likely they just retain all of data especially since many of the people I was suggested have never had my current number/email.
Oh the data will absolutely be used for ads elsewhere. It’s just how the ad game works. It’s all interconnected. I also don’t think it’s inherently bad, it’s just what it is. It’s how targeted ads work. They will be stopping that. They just also won’t have to buy data themselves about you because they’re not showing you ads anymore.
Phone got stolen last year. New phone, installed instagram, tried to log into account, but locked out.
Instagram tech support told me I either had to: 1) take a photo of myself, they’d check if it matched any selfies in my account, or; 2) I had to associate my Facebook profile.
I’m security conscious enough to not post selfies online, nor use Facebook. Goodbye instagram.
They are trying to steal more info from us, thats it
They forgot the third option: don’t use it.
13 euros a month… hahahahahaaaa
A number thought up by some yank that doesn’t realise that’s what our whole fuckin internet connection costs each month 😂
Aussie here: I pay 10 bucks a month for my entire phone plan lmaoooo
It’s disappointing that they only exclude the information use regarding ads.
So they will still track everything users do and profile them, just like any other free user. And they can sell to everyone else who pays for user data (e.g. AI learning, market research etc.). With that wording, they could even sell to ad companies, if they e.g. use the data for some algorithm optimisation in their tech department. So they leave the door open to keep selling the data to 3rd parties, while already charging the user ‘starting at’ 12.99€.
No ads on Mastodon
No friends there either.
Well to be fair I’m still enjoying Mastodon a lot and Pixelfed too (which is the better Instagram replacement) but pretty much everyone I follow is somebody I don’t know in real life. Instagram is great to see what your extended circle of friends is doing.
An easy solution for this.
I would normally be ok with paying for a service that offered something I valued if it meant they weren’t also going to make money from me as a product. This pretty much just says it won’t use your data for displaying ads. That’s the least important thing to me. I am more concerned with them selling my data or giving my data to organization that are planning to harm me with it. If an app was actually useful and being updated with new user centered features rather than only new monetization features and additionally would agree not to sell my data, ever, and to let me actually delete that data on request, I’d be happy to pay that much.
It’s Meta’s nonsense reply to being forced by the European data protection authorities (EDPB) to get consent before processing users data, which they should have from the beginning: https://edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/edpb-urgent-binding-decision-processing-personal-data-behavioural-advertising-meta_en
Just quit, these platform thrive on user generated content while selling your data and now they want money from you so you continue to create content for them.
All because they make you believe that you NEED them to stay in contact and up to date. In reality it’s much nicer to speak with friends personally, show a few pics and talk about your/their experience.
Too often when i still used that social media crap people would just cut me off with “yeah i’ve seen that already on fb,insta etc.” and no experience shared.
Being off social media, as weird as that sounds, made me feel more social and it’s more fun to interact with ppl again.
I’ve just taken the app off my phone and use adblock when I’m on the desktop browser version. I still need social media to post my work out there (I get clients that way), but I don’t need to look at it 100 times a day.
It’s honestly been a big quality of life improvement to take all my social media off my phone. Been a month or two now and I really miss it a lot less than I thought I would and who knows how much time I’m saving.
