In short: A subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, for $11.99/month/web or $14.99/month on iOS. Support included.
If this removed ads, added more controls on what you see and what is shared/sold to 3rd party, I'd actually consider it!
But ads are not mentioned and ads are probably worth more than 12$/user/mo and.. this would probably help them track you "better".
Even if it was 20$/mo (higher than top yearly average), I'd consider it if it became a privacy service and focus shifted from the users to the product.
The problem is that people who are willing to pay $20/mo for privacy are much more valuable to advertisers than those who can't.
If those users go away, the average $/user from ads goes down, because the only people seeing ads are those who are too poor to avoid it.
To an advertiser, poor people who direct their attention towards whatever is put in front of them are worth a lot less than rich people who carefully curate what their attention is directed towards. It's grody, but that's the advertising industry for you.
Counterpoint, the main demographic for this already uses ad/tracker blockers. I'm sure Meta has some ways around that but getting that $20/month is much easier from a willing participant.
That is definitely not true. Tech workers and people who are tech savvy use ad/tracker blockers, regardless of how good of an ad target they are. They are a very small slice of consumers with excess income.
In other words, a lot of people who use ad blockers are good ad targets, but the converse is not true.
The lack of ad blockers on mobile is the real sweet spot. I pay for Youtube 100% to use it on mobile/ipad without ads. So even ad-blocking privacy people still see lots of ads if they use these apps.
Firefox on iOS isn't really Firefox, Apple doesn't allow that. It's a thin skin around the platform-provided web view, essentially Safari. This really limits what Mozilla can support on iOS.
Firefox's usage rate on Android is tiny, among that I doubt even >10-25% know you can install an adblocker (which is generous but they are probably more technical). And I use iOS on mobile.
Right, someone willing to regularly pay $20/month is probably worth closer to $40/month to potential advertisers.
It probably scales all the way up until $10k/month, which is near the upper limit of what super-luxury brands, that would buy ads online, can earn per customer.
So the curious implication is that such services could be 'free' or $20k/month.
But with a changing advertising market and lower budgets, FB might view the alignment of incentives more beneficial.
I don't think this "subscription service" is actually for the user I think it's for the advertisers. I think the fee is just a smokescreen. I imagine FB having access to something like a driver license gives them your address, height, eye color, signature, data of birth etc. I'm sure they will monetize this in all kinda of new ways. For example maybe political adds since you can target based on voter precinct, auto insurance, neighborhood demographics and of course a premium tier of "blue checkmark verified" eyeballs to advertisers.
YouTube seems to make much less from ads per user. Not sure why, you'd think that video ads would be more lucrative. Maybe more people have ad blockers?
If this removed ads, added more controls on what you see and what is shared/sold to 3rd party, I'd actually consider it!
But ads are not mentioned and ads are probably worth more than 12$/user/mo and.. this would probably help them track you "better".