this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Probably because the lost revenue from not showings ads exceeds the monthly subscription cost.
You think they make 10€ per user in ads? I don't believe that, the ad market is very competitive and banner ads don't pay well.
Maybe, maybe not. But the UX pattern they use clearly indicates that they rather have users continue to use the adds version instead of getting 10 euros per month. And that's certainly not because of the goodness of their heart but because it is better for them as a company. And "better for the company" pretty much always means "making more money".
I don't know, I don't even believe, that they are going to stop using your data, even if you pay. So I don't really know what to think. Also im very happy, that I'm done with meta as a whole.
That pricing (or any pricing) is unsustainable, all it is there for is to give illusion of choice to try and comply with the law. Your data are useless if too many people choose to pay and Facebook dies, on the contrary the more people allows for refined monetization, the stronger Facebook's business becomes (or get back to before GDPR status).
Oh of course they will still use the data of paying costumers. I'm sure that data is more important to them then any add revenue.
Also that is just money for serving you ads, i think the real money is advertisers buying your data.
How do they target you, are you the demographic they want to sell to, when are you active online, what do you look at, what are your interests, what values are important to you, etc.
youtube only makes around 2€ per user per month by the most optimistic estimates, and they serve full tv-like video ads which are also clickable and targeted, and a lot of them. that's literally the final form of advertising and it still doesn't reach a monthly 10€/user, the addressable market is just not that big.
the dark pattern is real though. they're going for your data and they're not doing it for money. make of that what you will (i certainly have ideas and they're not pleasant)
Also those are video ads, that get you waaaay more money, opposed to the banner ads on Facebook (at least some)
They also make a great deal of money using people's user data to match them to pages that pay to promote and have their page shown to more people. It's 14 bucks to have a single post "boosted" for a page otherwise your posts will be held at the bottom of the algorithm.
If you give them access to your info, they can keep using it after you've stopped paying.
I've worked for a successful scaleup that was pouring millions into Google ads every month. I have no idea who clicks ads, but it worked for them.