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Meta wants to charge EU users $14 a month if they don't agree to personalized ads on Facebook and Instagram
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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I find it a tough one, because they offer a product/service that costs a fortune to maintain and operate, and if they can't make money from your data then what do they do? Not having your data harvested is just a side-benefit of paying for the thing you use a dozen times per day.
If they couldn't use your data or charge then it would shut down.
You wouldn't run a business at a 100% loss.
I don't understand why people think digital things should all be free.
You can serve ads without any of the invasive tracking, and you can have paid access without any of the invasive tracking...
I don't think most people actually think digital things should be free, just that they're not invasive data-hoarding piles of crap.
You can serve generic ads, which pay less, requiring more ads, reducing the quality of the product.
Like me, a man, getting tampon ads, for example. The tampon company doesn't want to pay to target me, but if the ads are generic then they have no choice, so they pay less per ad placement, which means Meta earns less, so they need more ads.
None of that is an argument as to why they should track people. You even mention why its not a problem not having tracking, since they can just increase amount of ads to compensate for lower earnings per ad. The ad-supported free teir is probably going to be even worse dogshit than it already is, but the paid tier would be better than it is now because it wouldn't have ads. And neither would have privacy invading tracking, it's a win-win since they get to earn money on their product and we won't be tracked.
...Of course this under the assumption that their business is actually providing a service to their users and not just using it as a fly-trap for data-farming and profiling of their users. In case of the latter, yeah fuck 'em and let them earn no money if that's the case. i hope legislation removes that business model from existence.