The New York Times learned that the company that runs the two social networking sites is considering localizing the subscription version in Europe. the Bound Three scholars spoke about this matter and said:
Meta may be taking this step in response to the European Union’s recent tightening and restrictions on data collection on Facebook.
Those who will pay for the two applications will not see any ads on the interfaces at all. According to New York Times sources, this would also indirectly make Meta’s job easier, as the company collects data on users to improve ads, and for this reason, it is facing more and more problems with the union. They believe that introducing a subscription could help even if only a small number of people use the service, and they also believe that the “concerns” of data protection authorities could be somewhat reduced by having this alternative.
Meta didn’t respond
As the newspaper’s sources reported:
The free, ad-supported versions of Facebook and Instagram will still be available in Europe.
According to them, even Meta doesn’t know how much the subscription will cost, or when they will release the paid version. The New York Times also sent Meta questions about all this, but she didn’t want to respond.
The newspaper noted that the focus of Meta/Facebook’s business model from the beginning was that users could use the program for free, and that the company would generate revenue from advertisers it wanted to reach. If they come up with a subscription version now, it could be an interesting example of how big tech companies are forced to change their business policies due to data protection restrictions.
The background to all this is that in July, the EU Supreme Court restricted how Meta could collect data from its users (and Meta had restricted EU users’ access to certain functions). Before that, the company received hefty fines amounting to several hundred million euros (and a record fine in May) in the European Union for unauthorized data collection.
In addition, Instagram already has a paid function in Hungary, but it is not related to advertising/data protection, but serves completely different purposes.
