Meta, the social media giant, now offers paid subscription plans to provide ad-free access. You’ll have to checkout to use Instagram and Facebook without being inundated with ads…
Social media fans, get ready for a huge change! After implementing paid certification through Meta Verified, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram announced this Monday, October 30, the upcoming arrival of a new formula allowing you to use its services without being inundated with advertising. , as reported BFMTV. Rumors have been going in this direction since the beginning of the month, but this time it’s official! An offer specially aimed at European users in order to comply with the legislation of the Old Continent. And suffice to say that the bill looks rather hefty…
Paid social networks: a solution to comply with the DSA
You know this, except for X (formerly Twitter), which already offers a paid premium plan, and Snapchat, with its subscription Snapchat+, social networks are currently completely free. Quite relative free insofar as, as the famous saying goes: “If it’s free, then you’re the product”! More precisely, like many digital giants – starting with Google – most companies offering free services exploit the personal data of their users for commercial purposes, in particular by profiling them to display targeted advertisements. And it is precisely to put an end to personalized ads that some companies are considering changing their economic model by offering paid access, but without advertising – when they have not yet taken the plunge.
To comply with European Union requirements regarding the use of personal data – and more particularly the famous Digital Services Act which has just come into force – Mark Zuckerberg’s company now offers paid subscriptions without advertising – it has until March 6, 2024 to comply with DSA. New formulas, in total break with the company’s economic models since its beginnings, which are specially intended for European users – more precisely from the EU, Switzerland and the rest of the European Economic Area (Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein). And which will not be financially painless.
Instagram, Facebook: between 10 and 13 euros per month to escape advertising
From November, European users will be able to pay €9.99/month to not be “tracked” on the web version of Meta’s social networks, or €12.99/month on the Android and iOS mobile applications – a bit like this that Elon Musk offers on What’s morefrom March 1, 2024, “additional fees of €6 to €8/month will apply for each account added in a user’s account center”. At this price, it’s a safe bet that the majority of users will prefer to stay on the free version of these platforms…
Indeed, it will still be possible to continue to use the classic versions of Facebook and Instagram for free in Europe, by simply accepting targeted advertising and tracking, as until now. We do not change a formula that wins ! Please note that subscription plans will only be accessible to users over the age of eighteen. For adolescents below this age, “we continue to explore ways to provide (them) a useful and responsible advertising experience given the evolving regulatory landscape”concludes Meta.
But Meta isn’t the only company looking at the issue. TikTok also seems to be well advanced in this direction. Like our colleagues fromAndroid Authority were able to see it at the beginning of October by dissecting the application code, the choice would be left to the user when creating an account between the standard formula, free but with targeted advertising and the tracking that goes with it, and the formula without paid advertising. As shown in the screenshot revealed by these sleuths, the price would be relatively reasonable: $4.99 per month. A price adapted to the United States, a country where the subscription would be tested before being deployed worldwide. ByteDance had not commented on the information, but everything indicates that it is perfectly credible and that it is a matter of time before the paid plan officially appears.