Instagram's monthly subscription
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.
Lemmy is social media too, don't forget that.
It's not talking to people that's damaging. Being able to socialize and discuss via media is healthy.
The damaging component is when an algorithm pushes unhealthy content because it drives engagement.
No one set out to create a rage/depression/anxiety algorithm, but those emotions tend to drive engagement better than more positive experiences. So if engagement is the goal, you get destructive systems.
Removing the algorithm does a lot for helping people engage with their peers and society at large in a more constructive context.
Same same, but different
No it's not. Social media is where you know who the other person is and/or they know who you are. This is an anonymous forum, not social media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
Lemmy fits those criteria very well, and there’s nothing regarding anonymous profiles vs identified profiles. It may not be the only definition of social media, but it’s comprehensive and sensible.
Then email is also social media, Google docs is social media, phpBB is social media, Amazon review sections are social media, even Pornhub comment sections are social media, and so on...
If Lemmy fits the criteria, then so does 95% of the internet. Not a very useful definition, in that case.
Yeah, I guess under that definition any web-based application that allows for a person to create an account/profile and generate and post content is a form of social media. That makes sense when you consider that they’re media that allow for social interaction.
What’s your definition of social media? Genuinely interested because I’m not sure that there even is a single definition that can be agreed upon.
I think the whole public vs anonymous profiles thing doesn’t really stack up, as I can create profiles on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok etc and provide no identifying information about myself, much as I do on Lemmy. I can also choose to add a profile picture and info about myself to identify myself on Lemmy if I choose, much as people do on other social media.
If your definition only includes those platforms that force you fully identify yourself in order to maintain a profile, that list will be pretty small and exclude a lot of sites that the vast majority would consider to be social media, including the ones I’ve named above.
You might be able to create profiles anonymously, but you can't use those services anonymously. They only work if you have other people added as friends or whatever, unlike content aggregators like lemmy or reddit, where you can be as anonymous as you want and still interact with all features of the site.
I think that narrows it down enough. If you can use all features of the platform without personally knowing anyone on it, it's not social media.
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.
As much as I'd love to, it's not exactly easy when you rely on it for business :(
How many followers did you have and how many friends of yours were using the app, if you don't mind sharing?
I had about 150 friends on Facebook when I quit. I'm quite recluse say so I didn't really interact with them much.
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.
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.
I have seen SO many acounts praising youtube premium its bonkers, I refuse to believe that many people are paying for it. ItS gOt GrEaT mUsIC AnD I cAn SuPpOrT mY fAvOuRiTe CrEaTorS. same script every time.
Fuck the music. I pay for it just so I don’t have to see any ads when I’m trying to see a 2 minute movie trailer or an hour long tutorial. Worth it.
see thats what I don't get, ublock origin just works, its free. you don't have to give google money.
Oh I use uBlock origin too. But on desktop. I very often consume YouTube on my tv and mobile. Too much work getting ad blocking to work on those.
ya thats true. I've been screen mirroring on my laptop for that but I get it if its a convenience thing. I used to pay for a bunch of streaming services until they jacked the price, I dropped almost everything after the last round of price hikes. again, mostly a convenience thing.
I’m close to dropping all streaming services thanks to IPTV.
If on Android, revanced works wonderfully. On iOS you can just use adguard and safari instead of the app. At least that's what I use and I only get ads when I use the default yt app in my oldish Hisense TV instead of casting or just my PC.
I self-host a ton of stuff, and have sailed the high seas for decades to grow my personal collection.
BUT
I pay for YT premium, netflix, and steam, so that my nephews can be on my family plans. Their life can be pretty shitty a lot of the time, and good music, games, and simple distractions help.
I've had it for years and one of the biggest features that I find worthwhile is being able to easily download videos to watch on the plane or play like podcasts when I'm driving. When I first got it, I had a really long commute, so being able to download stuff and play it with my phone screen off is helpful.
Yeah, quite frankly I watch so much that it’s just worth it. I don’t use other streaming services, so it’s fine for me.
Shrug, I spend $22 for family. It is a fantastic value when you get music+yt for the whole family.
You can believe whatever you want. Google Music sent me a free Nest Mini back in the day, and paying for YouTube Pro is right now the cheapest way of having voice activated ad-free playlists on it.
But feel free to give me an alternative "script" that gets similar functionality for cheaper.
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'.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/10/30/ad-free-subscription-versions-of-facebook-and-instagram-to-start-in-the-eu#:~:text=The%20US%20tech%20giant%20is,before%20showing%20ads%20to%20users.
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.
You deleted your real Facebook account... but did you delete the anonymous shadow account...?
It's not that Facebook hasn't deleted the data from your real account, it's that they keep tons of "anonymous" shadow accounts, each one of us probably has a dozen of them from different interactions with Facebook, and your new account most likely got suggestions from getting paired with those.
There is this neat horrifying thing the Facebook app does by tracking your location and figuring out where you work in order to suggest colleagues you can add as well as I have noticed just tracking if you happen to be near another device with a unique account on it.
The huge swath of very intimate data they are collecting on us is so not ok and they have all kinds of creepy stuff they don't even admit too.
Did Facebook have contacts acess?
From me? Of course not. Unfortunately, I do live in society and do have to share my contact info with others, and I'm guessing the vast majority of people just spam the "okay" button as Facebook asks for contact access, mic access, camera access, access to your colon, etc.
I also think this subscription model has run into criticism from EU legislators/regulators as well, which will have to be decided upon. Basically Meta isn't out of the doghouse yet.
Really, I'd say strip Meta of all its assets and dissolve the whole thing, maybe try some of the heads for all the shit they've pulled in the ICC? Like failing to act on genocides or actively working to incite mass violence, political unrest, etcetera.
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.
I think this is much more likely what they think people will pay. And/or what they think a percentage of people will pay that will cover costs/lost revenue from other users leaving. They have basically zero incentive to make it a 1-to-1 replacement.
If capitalism has taught us anything.
The cost of goods to produce is almost never equal to, or related to, to the sale price.
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
Yup just wanted to comment that it's basically the "Yes you can track me" button vs the "I will pay" button. A lot of news sites already do the same thing. Not a paywall with content you can only see when payed but a pay or give consent to ads (which means tracking)
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 have absolutely zero faith in Instagram's ability to manage this. They can't even handle account access right. I use IG for business (I'm a performer) and have been locked out for a month with full access to my Facebook, email, authenticator app, phone, other accounts - you name it. Their shit is just straight up broken and throws error messages when trying to log in.
Meta is absolute shit when it comes to supporting their users. I "deleted" my original Facebook account that I started in 2005 (you can't actually delete an account, only deactivate it, which is bullshit) around 2008 or 2009, and created a new one. Somehow someone started posting diet ads from that account about 13 years later (about 6 months back).
I emailed support and said someone had hacked my old account and was posting diet ads as me, but I no longer had access to the account because it was supposed to be removed over a decade ago. The profile pictures of both accounts were clearly the same person (me), the email addresses were the same, and so were the displayed account names. Support said they couldn't do anything about it because they couldn't verify that I owned the account that was posting ads! 🤦♂️🤬
I sent them a response that pretty much said "are you fucking joking right now?!" and didnt get a response back, but the ads apparently stopped.
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 😂
Wait you guys get internet for €13/month? cries in Canadian
Indian here. I pay approximately ₹2000 = 23 Euros for 200 Mbps... WiFi.
I get half and pay double, and thought that was quite reasonable
What are your cellular plans like?
I see...
I have two SIMs, both have a plan for ₹666 = 7.5 Euros, 1.5GB per day, for 84 days...
There's also a ₹1699 = 20 Euros plan for a year, 2.5GB per day.
€20 per year? That’s crazy. My girlfriend and I share a plan and combined pay almost $150 (about €100) per month (so $75 = €50 per month each)
To be fair... It's not always at great speeds... But the coverage is great.
India has so many users that it's spread thin amongst the billion+ people we have here.
At least in Germany you can't. I feel your pain, my canadian friend.
At least home wifi isn’t as insane as cellular here I guess. We get American ads on the break room TV at work, their cellular plans are pennies compared to what we have to pay north of the border
How much are you paying, Canadian?
About $40/mo. for 100mbps for wifi. Cellular, I share with my girlfriend who gets a discount through work, we share 200GB for about $150/mo.
Aussie here: I pay 10 bucks a month for my entire phone plan lmaoooo
I’m paying €44 a month for mobile broadband in Ireland 🥲
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.
On Meta, you pay so they don't use some of your data for showing you ads, while they collect tons more of data on you and sell it to the highest bidder.
On the Fediverse, you only give everyone access to all your published data for free to run whatever analysis they want on it... but at least you can choose from 1000+ different instances to pick the one that will be able to track your behavioral data.
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
Twice I've been blocked out of my account, the first time it was because I was accessing from too many different IP address (VPN). The second time.I didn't even bother to contact support and was willing to loose my account.
Also, I recall many years ago in the early days of the app there was an app update that would straight up not work on my phone and had to sideload an old apk in order to keep using it. And according to google I wasn't the only one.
Took me a few months of manually testing new updates until a newer version worked for me. Not to defend Facebook or Twitter, but a fuck up like that one would never make it past their QA teams.
They forgot the third option: don't use it.
That is the best option
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€.
I want to make the, "free", moniker illegal. Advertisers have to pay money for ads and they get that money from us when we buy their products. In addition to having to look at ads, we also have to pay money for the privilege of looking at them. Any ad supported service is objectively not free. No thanks.
Well of course not, why should it be free? Neither Meta nor Google, TikTok etc. are charitable Organizations, they are businesses with the intent to make money. Either you pay or you see Ads, or don't use the service, it's that simple.
So you aggressively agree with the person you respond to or what is this?
Lol people actually pay for shit like this ?
Not to mention $13? Looool
13 bucks to allow meta to use your the photos you upload (that creates all the content on the site) to however the fuck they want as well as collect all your data to sell things back to you better and sell your profile to other sites.
Megacorps need to die.
People are dumb. Get rid of these dumb mofos and megacorps will die overnight.
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.
Even if they say they won't do it, all trust is gone.
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.
That's how it is during the first few years of social media. When left Twitter I had 75K followers but only knew about 20.
Technically, no reason why there couldn't be. You could even have ad bots follow you to send you targeted ads.
You'll still see ads through. If not targeted and even not served by meta, a lot of the content shared by users on the platform is actually ads.
But I agree, the price is ridiculous
wE oFfEr ChOiCe.
An easy solution for this.
They definitely coordinated this and did it with all the other social media. Is nobody buying their data anymore? Brave of them to straight up admit they're using your data for ads though, and they're implying it's a bad thing.
This is happening because of some issue meta was facing in the EU regarding ads, privacy, et al
Even this approach is about to be declared illegal by the EU, then what?
Use fediverse instead. ditch instagram
Tell that to my uni
I'm pretty sure he means other people at his uni use instagram and the likes. Signal/Simplex/etc. is great, but at the end of the day, sometimes you don't have a choice and must use what everybody else is using.
It's not because everybody should be using these apps that they will. If you have a group project and people want to communicate on messenger, that's what you are gonna do. Not doing so would make you insufferable and no one would want to work with someone that imposes his choices on the group.
Okay, is my favourite memepage on whatever the fuck the fediverse has? Or is it just full of tankie spam?
the memes I see on instagram usually came from here
I'm willing to bet it's either the other way around or they're both from Reddit
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.
FB the same. Fine, I don't want to pay for your dumb content (even when you successfully trained my brain to enjoy that content) so show me ads...
But then they "forced" me to accept tracking cookies which makes me angry... Still I'm not ready to leave, but I'm a big step nearer than before.
Also, isn't that against EU laws?
Very likely, but the final verdict is still out on that one, as far as I know. There are several other services and sites that offer similar opt-out of tracking and ads for money schemes (albeit not as ludicrously expensive).
I believe that's both against the spirit and any reasonable interpretation of the law, but I don't think it has been fully tested in court.
But they are not even offering to stop tracking me. They only offer add free experience and force targeted ads. I'd be ok with regular ads but not the targeted ads
So that's how much my data is worth to Meta?
I doubt it. But I believe that they have figured out exactly what ammount people will be less willing to pay .
Besides that, they won't stop tracking and storing your data. They simply won't use it show targeted ads.
this doesn't seem legal. at least - it god damn shouldn't be
I don't think the European GDPR allows this (forcing ppl to pay for privacy).
It does. As long as there is an alternative in the form of a subscription, they can offer a "free" tier like that
It's not as clear cut as either of us thinks... To my surprise the Dutch seem to agree with you. But case law is being made as we speak https://consent.guide/cookie-or-pay-walls/
Nobody is forcing anyone, you are free to not use the service at any time.
What they're doing is turning it into an explicitly paid sevice, and letting you choose whether you'd rather pay in money, or in personal data.
In an ideal world, everyone would have the option to decide getting their personal data gathered, or not, in exchange for some money/crypto, with competing data gatherers offering different packages and rewards, and they could use it to subscribe to whatever services they wished.
In case Lemmy didn't show my other reply https://mander.xyz/comment/4939010
It's not as clear cut as either of us thinks... To my surprise the Dutch seem to agree with you. But case law is being made as we speak https://consent.guide/cookie-or-pay-walls/
As far as my interpretation of the law goes... You can either block your website to all non paying visitors OR you also allow non paying visitors but you are not allowed to blackmail the free visitors to give up their privacy. Either everyone pays, or you have the right to privacy. Otherwise, long term, the internet will become divided and inaccessible to low income households. And that's something the EU definitely doesn't want to happen (net neutrality). I think the Dutch verdicts will be overruled by Europe one of these days... Or years :)
IANAL, but... I don't think the law says that? My understanding is that the points are not related to each other:
That would mean all these combinations would be allowed:
If a site decides to only implement numbers 2 and 3... there wouldn't be any conflict.
Net neutrality doesn't apply to services, only to carriers, who are considered more like utilities, but still aren't required to offer a "free" tier. Services don't need to offer an option accessible to everyone at all, they can specify whatever requirements they want (with only a few exceptions related to discrimination).
Large social media platforms... is where current legislative efforts are in. Above a certain number of users, they're getting defined more as utilities, and subject to more requirements, but still no "free" tier.
The internet divide exists already: some households can afford 1Gbps unmetered symmetric fiber with Netflix, HBO and Disney+ and a few mobile lines with unlimited calls and 50GB/month data for 100€/month... while others can barely affford a prepaid 100MB/month mobile connection for 1€/month... but it's fine as long as it's a divide based on service pricing, not carrier traffic discrimination.
Sorry for the downvote, especially seen that case law hasn't been settled yet nor if your, or my, reasoning is the correct one. I just hate your arguments though it looks like you work as a part-time Dutch judge :))
Don't be sorry, just don't use downvotes to express your opinion... use your words.
If you don't like my arguments, go ahead and propose others.
For starters, I see you referring to "case law", which sounds like a US thing. In the EU, case decisions generally don't shape the law, except Supreme Court decisions, and even then lawmakers can inform or reform those decisions. It's usually more accurate to define a logical reasoning from the bare law, rather than expect decisions in one case to influence others.
What do you base your reasoning on?
I'm not an English native speaker nor a Lawyer. I base it on how I understood the law through articles in the years since it was introduced. We can go back and forth, but there's nothing I can add that isn't in the article I also linked in the replies. Thanks :)
If you want ad-free use Instander on android
@hellequin67 With added bonus being able to download pics & vids.
@Pechente
You can also just use the "Following" feed instead of the default "For you" feed, it's sorted chronologically and doesn't have ads
Maybe 13 cents
Don't sell yourself short, you're worth more than that, I believe in you... being able to generate tracking data worth more than that.
imagine paying for social media like facebook and youtube? lol
I'd pay a reasonable price. I'd even use it for not personalised ads.
Instead I uninstalled all platforms from meta and will only be using it on my PC periodically and in a private tab.
Eh, I‘d do it if it meant the services respected privacy and actually put the users first.
Paying for what these big services currently are? Hell no.
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Not going back.
Since when they have the right to manage our personal info? When you click 'term of service'
$13 is rough. I'd pay $5 or $6 for adfree though.
I'd pay about $1 a month. That's $1 more than they're getting from me now.
To people that use meta and pay to have no ads... Which seems that you were already looking into paying...
I wasn’t looking into paying for it. This popped up upon opening the app.
It is actually a hard paywall. They won't let you use the app unless you make a choice between the two. I chose to uninstall
Best choice