Everybody is fed up with adverts because there are now more adverts than content, so introduce paid version which costs more than the company would earn on ad impressions even for a heavy user, to remove ads
Next step might be to add some ads to paid version?
Did some more research and Netflix did remove their “Basic” plan when they added the cheaper ad-supported tier. They also raised the prices of their other plans, but those increases were consistent historically, so I’m not convinced the addition of an ad-supported tier caused them. Graph of Netflix prices from 2011-2023
we've been using prime video quite a bit here with our latest 'trial'. the ux has degraded a lot since the last one we had. they're pushing the paid shit (third-party subs, rentals, 'purchases') way too much on the 'related' and other lists and links. it's gotten so bad, you need to use a third-party site just to find the 'free with prime' content, because amazon sure af ain't gonna list it so you can find it easily.
I stopped using Facebook years and years ago when adblockers failed to stop FB ads. I have yet to find one that actually works.
When I took a look to see if it had improved, the feed wasn't even chronological. I get posts from days ago on top and posts from hours ago buried pages in. The posts at the top of the feed are even ones I've seen before. FB has become entirely useless and only bother for the few groups that insist on using it.
traditional rules-based blockers like ublock origin fail because facebook randomizes tags and code on their pages specifically to prevent them from working well, or even at all.
Ads don’t particularly bother me but they do get tiresome when every other post is an ad. I don’t use FB though. YouTube ads are getting increasingly irritating - it seems that every two minutes during a video there will be an ad break, but I refuse to pay for a subscription for the small amount I use YouTube. I think there are some alternative interfaces which stop the ads but I keep forgetting to use/try them.
Try YouTube Revanced (requires modding APK) or LibreTube (available on F-Droid) if you’re on Android. Go with SmartTube on Android TV. Just use Firefox + uBlock Origin if watching YouTube on a computer.
So basically decline to use Facebook? I’m skeptical. People will just opt in to the tracking, most people don’t care. Or maybe they’ll post on Facebook about how they don’t like it.
Even if they did and chose to go to some other platform, they’ll eventually run up against the same business model decisions.
The question is how it affects their numbers. When a company like Facebook misses growth (or, god forbid, actually shrinks) the market punishes them for it.
That said, Zuck is not Elon. I’m more confident FB has a plan and isn’t just shooting from the hip. They likely have a model for some shrinkage and decided on $14 because X% of users are expected to accept targeting, Y% will abandon the platform (or decrease engagement), and Z% will pay. I bet they picked a number that would make Z small but not non-existent.
Well yeah I guess I am just highly skeptical that it will meaningfully affect their numbers. By and large anyone who is still on Facebook either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about this (or some combo of both).
I’m just trying to imagine the person who didn’t know Facebook was tracking them, but now with this opt in will understand the ramifications of that and abandon the Facebook platform. It’s hard for me to see this being anything more than a rounding error on their numbers.
I loath them with a passion. That said, I find the groups feature extremely valuable. THAT said, I will only access it through a browser, with numerous privacy protections.
The only reason I use YouTube Music is because it’s part of YouTube Premium. They just discontinued YouTube Premium Lite which allowed you to get ad free YouTube without YouTube Music. The only way they can make YouTube Music succeed and take away revenue from Spotify is if they bundle it in with ad free YouTube.
For now, sure. But corporations only bundle services to build their userbase. Once their service hits a critical mass (read: they think they can get away with it) they will break the bundle up and charge for each service individually. It’s an inherent feature of capitalism- corporations can’t leave any perceived money on the table. Why charge one price for two services, when you can charge two prices for two services? And they’ll couch it as “giving users more choice!” by noting you can only pay for one service without the other if you want- while conveniently ignoring the users who utilized both features would be paying more. Mark my words: YouTube Premium will not stay bundled with YouTube Music. At some point in the future, Google will charge for each service separately.
Well, assuming Google doesn’t randomly kill one of them off outright, that is.
The only reason I have YouTube Music and YouTube Premium is because I had Google Play Music ages ago, then they added YouTube Premium to it, and eventually closed down GPM in favour of YouTube Music. I’m still only paying $9 a month for it, so that’s something I guess. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I’d pay a few bucks a month to get rid of ads—easily more than they make by showing me ads—but $14 is just absurd. It’s like they want this new program to fail.
it will still be, but with more ads and 'suggested' content, less vetting (do they even do that now?) of those paid placements (that costs money ya know), more data harvesting and selling, and continued randomization of tags and code that make traditional adblocking difficult.
For that price you could have your own ad-free Mastodon instance for whole family from masto.host for 9$/month, 1TB of Nextcloud cloud storage with up to 100 accounts from Hetzner for 4$/month and one premium Bitwarden account for 1$/month.
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