Meta launches subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp
16d 13h ago by lemmy.world/u/cantankerous_cashew in technology from techcrunch.com
paywall removed: https://archive.ph/xGwsz
How interesting their paid tier has no mention of being ad free
ads make them up to $20 a day, they would have to charge $600 a month to equals profits
I didn't realize it was that high- im seeing that the average is around $15 a month, but I'm sure there are whales that hit that $600/mo
The problem is that only your heaviest users are going to pay to remove the ads, so it doesn't make sense to price the subscription at any sort of average user. You need to slide the price point way up the distribution just to break even.
"subscribing to Instagram Plus ($3.99/mo), Facebook Plus ($3.99/mo), or WhatsApp Plus ($2.99/mo) will gain access to extra features, like profile customization, super reactions, and story insights, among other things."
I'll pass on that.
I passed on it a decade ago. Got out when shit was getting bad with ads, memes, and other stuff not actually "social".
It's the opposite of social. Especially facebook. There are only companies there, no actual people left (except some boomers maybe)
My parents are on Facebook every day and so are their friends. I’m pretty sure Facebook is what happened to all the Gen Xers.
How very dare you? Gen X is long off Facebook - it's our parents on there, being radicalised by Russian bots
ikr?
Gen X is most of the fediverse!
You didn't mention a lack of ads. They remove all the ads when you subscribe, right?
Notice almost all of this is outward facing. It doesn't improve your experience, but it gives you a thing that others see. The goal is the same thing as children bullying other children to buy iPhones. They don't know what the product is. They just built in features that tell you if other people aren't using it, so you can make fun of them.
profile customizations
So we bringing back MySpace?
Welp, time to do the "previously free and basic feature is now moved into paid plan" dance every few months.
Good. Kill off this shit sooner
For a few dollars per month, consumers subscribing to Instagram Plus ($3.99/mo), Facebook Plus ($3.99/mo), or WhatsApp Plus ($2.99/mo) will gain access to extra features, like profile customization, super reactions, and story insights, among other things.
Ah, they're doing the Discord Nitro thing?
Does anyone actually use Discord Nitro?
I see surprisingly many on the servers I frequent. It's included in Xbox GamePass now, so I guess that has caused a massive boost to the userbase, too
I know a few people who did before the whole discord thing happened and they all canceled.
Yeah I cancelled after that nonsense. I wanted to leave discord entirely for stoat/fluxer but none of my groups would budge unfortunately.
Pay today to get what MySpace gave for free 15 years ago.
Genuienly hilarious.
You would have to pay me to have an account on any of those apps.
Oh, man, attention/validation addicts are really something.
They monetized human insecurity. Amazing.
Fuck all the way off with all this subscriptions to finally make this AI shit profitable. It won't work and people don't need all this datacenters. I really hate this timeline and all this billionaire bullshit.
People that still use meta
What a bunch of losers
network effect is strong
Considering that's how most cities get info out kinda makes sense people still use it. Not to mention good luck getting little ol' grandma to switch to signal or Lemmy
Public institutions would be better using something like Mastodon for announcements. They'd have the option to retain full control over their instance and citizens wouldn't need an account to access it.
Definitely. The problem is the worlds run by corpo fascists and they will do everything they can to maintain their control through tech.
If the right people are in the right positions though it becomes alot simpler to make happen.
No one needs Lemmy. For Signal, just install it on her phone and text her. That's all it takes.
Getting grandma on signal isn't to hard, Lemmy might be harder
For some types of businesses, particularly smaller ones, IG is literally a critical part of marketing. SEO alone often doesn't cut it, if Google also takes into account activity on other platforms, and even then a majority of website activity comes from people seeing posts on Instagram.
No clue how the most recent enshittification affects that, but I doubt the core recommendation logic will have changed radically.
It's fucked, but the tech corps sucking off each other makes self-employment hard if you don't play their games.
Yes! Amazing!
The downfall is finally happening. It is one thing about scraping data from people for free, but most will never pay a cent for it.
They're charging for premium features, not for basic access to the service.
People on Facebook after a certain point willingly gave up their name and address to sign up for it; I kinda doubt they know or care about their data being scraped.
I was truly shocked when this happened. I read about it and was like: haha, no one is giving out their real adress and or phone number on the internet. How dumb do they think people are? Oh...
LOLLLLLLLLL SUCK A DICK!!!!!!!!!!!!
lol
I believe the full phrase is "SUCK A DICK, DUMBSHIIIIIIIIITS!"
Are you a shaaaaaaark?
Ah, enshittification, my old friend. Here we go again.
And people will buy it because they're addicted, and will feel the need to get more dopamine by getting what others can't. Feeling unique or exclusive until everybody has it. Then instead of getting rid of it, it'll just have price creep like all other subscriptions until it's $30/mo. You'll only hear complaints about how expensive it got, not the fact they're paying for something retarded in the first place!
I mean, it's terrible they're offering it at all, but there are those dumb enough to pay for it, too. Companies just take advantage of it, and there's nothing to regulate it.
Would anyone seriously pay a subscription for a messaging app? As long as I can send and receive messages that's all the functionality I need and the second they try to charge for that, everyone will jump ship anyway.
I guess Discord Nitro has existed for a while but I don't know a single person who's even considered it, never mind actually subscribe.
Well, I paid 1 euro for Whatsapp back in the day because it was the only option besides SMS and so that 1 euro was way cheaper.
These days I gladly pay a couple bucks for a chat app that everybody uses so that they can pay the bills without selling my data or being funded by a corrupt government.
Which is went to Matrix, but it is hard to get people on the server I host myself.
WhatsApp used to not be free, I'm talking about before meta bought them, and totally worth paying the subscription for as they were the one of the kind multi-platform messenger working with all the non-smart phones that have internet connectivity and ability to install 3rd party apps.
And back when they charged for service they do not collect all your data.
I remember WhatsApp telling me I only got a year free when I first started using it but they never asked for payment after that. Maybe that fell in line with Meta buying them.
I have a monthly dono to signal & i know a shitload of people who have nitro or at least nitro basic -- that's EXTREMELY common for all the profile customizations
Facebook probably isn't the one to do it. But paid social media, if it worked like social media from 1999, would probably be worth a few bucks a month.
It used to be that your ISP included subscription for newsgroups, etc in the connection costs.
Still just a couple bucks if newsgroups float your boat!
I'm voluntarily paying for my LW account but the admins don't know whose money transfer belongs to which account.
Honestly, if they did this instead of being the data collection, forced fed ads and manipulation machine that they are id think its great. But they're going to be just as evil and now youre paying them which is stupid.
Honey! New idiot tax just dropped!
Absolute genius billionaire move
There are an estimated 3 billion MAUs (monthly active users) on FB. Even with a 1% take rate that is still that is still $120M per month or $1.4B/yr.
Just like spam, they only need a small amount to rake in a large amount of revenue.
You'd have to pay me to use that crap
I been discovering lately that many people in my circles are using Signal. I fucking hate whatsapp and would love to switch to Signal. But this dumb fuck app is too common around here. That is such a relief that these people do have it. Baby steps.
I‘d happily pay a messenger that respects me as a user, even if that only meant not collecting my metadata. I‘d even pay a higher price like 5 bucks a month.
But instead they‘re trying to sell me STICKERS which I can already create myself from any image and care about maybe 2 times a year 😂
Use open source and donate requesting features. We can already do this. Or find a developer to sub to somewhere.
Is it like.. they'll offer to pay me a subscription fee to use them oooor..?
If there were any competency in this world, THE BEST CASE SCENARIO for Meta and the rest would be fucking dividend checks to everyone that uses the platform. The amount of data harvested from an average american house with a modern car, smart appliances and every kind of surveillance tool you could ask for, should yield enough that you shouldn't have to work another day in your fucking life.
I wonder when they'll start to charge "influencers" more to use the platform with extra "tools"and "features" to lure people in.
If you're that addicted to social media..
How to migrate away from all of them:
Step 1. sign up for free to Monett or Pixelfed instead of Instagram.
Step 2. Share with all of your friends and tell them to do the same.
Step 3. No need to start using it until you have a decent amount of people on the other platform to converse with and share dinner photos.
Step 4. Then once migrated, delete all remnants of your Instagram account.
rinse and repeat with:
- X (twitter) -> Mastodon
- Linkedin -> Xing
- Snapchat -> BeReal
- YouTube -> Peertube
- Facebook -> Friendica/MeWe/Diaspora
- Hubzilla
Step 3. No need to start using it until you have a decent amount of people on the other platform to converse with and share dinner photos.
"No one is on this platform, so no need to post..."
"No one posts in this platform, why should I join?"
That's why (if addicted to SM) you only need sign up for free (hardly a task) - and then just share with friends that you have. Check back in a few weeks and see if others have signed up. When enough have, then start using it, until it is good enough to dump the other.
I don't use SM apart from this and a few dedicated forums, but I don't get why anyone would be on any of them to begin with, regardless if my friends are on it or not.
Oooooh, then you can not post to a bunch of zombie accounts that no one uses cuz the platform is empty cuz no one uses it.
Anyway, you were so close to actually getting the point that you need to just
start using it, until it is good enough to dump the other.
Be the change, ya know?
The alternative is doing nothing and stay on the creepy data hoarding platforms. Again - for the zombies that need their fix, not for those that don't use any of them.
Anyway, you were so close to actually getting the point that you need to just
start using it, until it is good enough to dump the other.
Be the change, ya know?
The alternative is doing nothing and stay on the creepy data hoarding platforms.
Yes, the alternative to making an account and posting shit to make a new platform more appealing to potential new users is staying and doing nothing 🙄
I'm done with this conversation, since this is not going to be a productive use of time. Good day.
And talk shit somewhere else. A point was made, didn't need your input, especially without any other point or alternative... Just "Do nothing" mulch.
Thing is, do people even really need to migrate all of those things? The only reason they’re on there is because “that’s where everybody is”. I’d argue that the best alternative is just… not using them.
Without a shadow of a doubt the best option would be not use them at all. The reason for migrating would be for those that care about privacy and are addicted to the most well known ones. Many of the alternatives are a more private and ad-free option.
Signing up shouldn't be that much of a task, and then share that you have with others, in the hope that they will too.
Dont they already charge influences for extra tools? I think the business accounts pay and get more features.
Yes, they artificially limit the reach of your posts, and then you pay them to get more exposure. You can also pay to have your posts more visible to particular demographics.
And of course that payment is on a sliding scale, and no amount of money is enough to reach all of your target audience, and it's also for a limited time window.
MOAR! (I didn't know that they already did charge them. But more is always an option in their vocabulary).
Surprised fElonia dickMusk hasn't increased the price of his dumbass blue (balls) checkmark system.
Also surprised Jay Graberbythepussy hasn't introduced this shit on BlueSky.