To be clear: I prefer to pay for things instead of having to see ads but 13€ / month!? For a meta product that has inherently user-hostile design patterns even without ads?
I've been off of all social media for about a decade, but just yesterday i got a dm from someone from my past so i went and checked it out and then I checked a bunch of other stuff there too and my mental state instantly spiraled into a terrible place. Man that shit is toxic like nuclear waste.
It’s not talking to people that’s damaging. Being able to socialize and discuss via media is healthy.
The damaging component is when an algorithm pushes unhealthy content because it drives engagement.
No one set out to create a rage/depression/anxiety algorithm, but those emotions tend to drive engagement better than more positive experiences. So if engagement is the goal, you get destructive systems.
Removing the algorithm does a lot for helping people engage with their peers and society at large in a more constructive context.
Most definitions of social media are some form of “sharing content for the purpose of socializing in a public manner”. I wouldn’t think having a real life identity linked to your account would be a requirement for a social network. Why wouldn’t reddit, lemmy, or even an old school forum be considered social media? You’re sharing and discussing content on a community platform. I dunno, just something I’ve been thinking about recently as I’m using lemmy more.
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of content, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of social media arise due to the variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available, there are some common features:
Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.
User-generated content—such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions—is the lifeblood of social media.
Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user’s profile with those of other individuals or groups.
Lemmy fits those criteria very well, and there’s nothing regarding anonymous profiles vs identified profiles. It may not be the only definition of social media, but it’s comprehensive and sensible.
Then email is also social media, Google docs is social media, phpBB is social media, Amazon review sections are social media, even Pornhub comment sections are social media, and so on…
If Lemmy fits the criteria, then so does 95% of the internet. Not a very useful definition, in that case.
Yeah, I guess under that definition any web-based application that allows for a person to create an account/profile and generate and post content is a form of social media. That makes sense when you consider that they’re media that allow for social interaction.
What’s your definition of social media? Genuinely interested because I’m not sure that there even is a single definition that can be agreed upon.
I think the whole public vs anonymous profiles thing doesn’t really stack up, as I can create profiles on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok etc and provide no identifying information about myself, much as I do on Lemmy. I can also choose to add a profile picture and info about myself to identify myself on Lemmy if I choose, much as people do on other social media.
If your definition only includes those platforms that force you fully identify yourself in order to maintain a profile, that list will be pretty small and exclude a lot of sites that the vast majority would consider to be social media, including the ones I’ve named above.
You might be able to create profiles anonymously, but you can’t use those services anonymously. They only work if you have other people added as friends or whatever, unlike content aggregators like lemmy or reddit, where you can be as anonymous as you want and still interact with all features of the site.
I think that narrows it down enough. If you can use all features of the platform without personally knowing anyone on it, it’s not social media.
I did too and, while the benefit are higher than the loss, I usually feel really left out from one kind of partecipation to society and it’s a bit sad.
They don’t want you to pay. They set the price artificially high to discourage you so they continue business as usual while complying to the laws. The price is a PITA charge to make it worth their while and to still profit from the ads they would have shown you.
I’ve never used IG but I feel like it would be a $3.99/month type of service. This price just tells us they are making way more than that serving ads or that your ad data alone is worth a decent bit of cash.
It’s weird in that most users would value it at $3.99 a month, but the average user also scrolls for several hours a month, with each one of those hours packed with ads.
This equates to way more than $4 in revenue a month.
Actually… it’s likely only slightly higher than what they get from ads per user, and still lower than what they get from compiling and selling all the information you agree to give them.
Users tend to severely underestimate how much their cumulative data can be sold for.
I have seen SO many acounts praising youtube premium its bonkers, I refuse to believe that many people are paying for it. ItS gOt GrEaT mUsIC AnD I cAn SuPpOrT mY fAvOuRiTe CrEaTorS. same script every time.
I’ve had it for years and one of the biggest features that I find worthwhile is being able to easily download videos to watch on the plane or play like podcasts when I’m driving. When I first got it, I had a really long commute, so being able to download stuff and play it with my phone screen off is helpful.
ya thats true. I’ve been screen mirroring on my laptop for that but I get it if its a convenience thing. I used to pay for a bunch of streaming services until they jacked the price, I dropped almost everything after the last round of price hikes. again, mostly a convenience thing.
I self-host a ton of stuff, and have sailed the high seas for decades to grow my personal collection.
BUT
I pay for YT premium, netflix, and steam, so that my nephews can be on my family plans. Their life can be pretty shitty a lot of the time, and good music, games, and simple distractions help.
You can believe whatever you want. Google Music sent me a free Nest Mini back in the day, and paying for YouTube Pro is right now the cheapest way of having voice activated ad-free playlists on it.
But feel free to give me an alternative “script” that gets similar functionality for cheaper.
Just quit, these platform thrive on user generated content while selling your data and now they want money from you so you continue to create content for them.
All because they make you believe that you NEED them to stay in contact and up to date. In reality it’s much nicer to speak with friends personally, show a few pics and talk about your/their experience.
Too often when i still used that social media crap people would just cut me off with “yeah i’ve seen that already on fb,insta etc.” and no experience shared.
Being off social media, as weird as that sounds, made me feel more social and it’s more fun to interact with ppl again.
They are still going to be tracking you. That isn’t going away.
They just won’t use the tracking for the explicit reason of creating ads for you. But that’s only because you are paying for no ads.
I guarantee the data is logged for all other purposes, and that the data is logged for future ad usage if you ever unsubscribe.
Secondly this doesn’t necessarily equate the profit from your specific ads. This is the result of a legal battle within the EU. That’s the only reason it exists. The price is determined as ‘high enough to not get into more legal trouble’.
Meta already demonstrably does this. I deleted my real Facebook in like 2016. Around 2019-2020, I created a new burner account to browse Marketplace with nearly all fake info expect my name, phone, and email. And lo and behold all of my friend suggestions are people I know and mostly were on the old account. The most charitable I can imagine is that those suggestion had me in their contacts which they agree to share with Facebook (which is problematic af imo) but it is extremely likely they just retain all of data especially since many of the people I was suggested have never had my current number/email.
You deleted your real Facebook account… but did you delete the anonymous shadow account…?
It’s not that Facebook hasn’t deleted the data from your real account, it’s that they keep tons of “anonymous” shadow accounts, each one of us probably has a dozen of them from different interactions with Facebook, and your new account most likely got suggestions from getting paired with those.
From me? Of course not. Unfortunately, I do live in society and do have to share my contact info with others, and I’m guessing the vast majority of people just spam the “okay” button as Facebook asks for contact access, mic access, camera access, access to your colon, etc.
There is this neat horrifying thing the Facebook app does by tracking your location and figuring out where you work in order to suggest colleagues you can add as well as I have noticed just tracking if you happen to be near another device with a unique account on it.
The huge swath of very intimate data they are collecting on us is so not ok and they have all kinds of creepy stuff they don’t even admit too.
Oh the data will absolutely be used for ads elsewhere. It’s just how the ad game works. It’s all interconnected. I also don’t think it’s inherently bad, it’s just what it is. It’s how targeted ads work. They will be stopping that. They just also won’t have to buy data themselves about you because they’re not showing you ads anymore.
I also think this subscription model has run into criticism from EU legislators/regulators as well, which will have to be decided upon. Basically Meta isn’t out of the doghouse yet.
Really, I’d say strip Meta of all its assets and dissolve the whole thing, maybe try some of the heads for all the shit they’ve pulled in the ICC? Like failing to act on genocides or actively working to incite mass violence, political unrest, etcetera.
I think this is much more likely what they think people will pay. And/or what they think a percentage of people will pay that will cover costs/lost revenue from other users leaving. They have basically zero incentive to make it a 1-to-1 replacement.
It’s Meta’s nonsense reply to being forced by the European data protection authorities (EDPB) to get consent before processing users data, which they should have from the beginning: edpb.europa.eu/…/edpb-urgent-binding-decision-pro…
Yup just wanted to comment that it’s basically the “Yes you can track me” button vs the “I will pay” button. A lot of news sites already do the same thing. Not a paywall with content you can only see when payed but a pay or give consent to ads (which means tracking)
I have absolutely zero faith in Instagram’s ability to manage this. They can’t even handle account access right. I use IG for business (I’m a performer) and have been locked out for a month with full access to my Facebook, email, authenticator app, phone, other accounts - you name it. Their shit is just straight up broken and throws error messages when trying to log in.
Meta is absolute shit when it comes to supporting their users. I “deleted” my original Facebook account that I started in 2005 (you can’t actually delete an account, only deactivate it, which is bullshit) around 2008 or 2009, and created a new one. Somehow someone started posting diet ads from that account about 13 years later (about 6 months back).
I emailed support and said someone had hacked my old account and was posting diet ads as me, but I no longer had access to the account because it was supposed to be removed over a decade ago. The profile pictures of both accounts were clearly the same person (me), the email addresses were the same, and so were the displayed account names. Support said they couldn’t do anything about it because they couldn’t verify that I owned the account that was posting ads! 🤦♂️🤬
I sent them a response that pretty much said “are you fucking joking right now?!” and didnt get a response back, but the ads apparently stopped.
At least home wifi isn’t as insane as cellular here I guess. We get American ads on the break room TV at work, their cellular plans are pennies compared to what we have to pay north of the border
They profit from user-generated content and monetize your data, and now they’re asking for your money to keep creating content for them.
You should walk away from these toxic platforms. In reality, there are tons of excellent software options that do not collect and sell your data while allowing you to use their services and protecting your privacy at the same time. Mastodon (I guess most of you have already heard of it), Element, SimpleX Chat, WireMin, Session, etc. I can keep listing them all day.
Anyway I don’t see myself ever paying for social media LMAO, and even less now that I know about the Fediverse… Seems like a VIP lounge for us if you ask me, and I’m okay with that.
On Meta, you pay so they don’t use some of your data for showing you ads, while they collect tons more of data on you and sell it to the highest bidder.
On the Fediverse, you only give everyone access to all your published data for free to run whatever analysis they want on it… but at least you can choose from 1000+ different instances to pick the one that will be able to track your behavioral data.
Phone got stolen last year. New phone, installed instagram, tried to log into account, but locked out.
Instagram tech support told me I either had to: 1) take a photo of myself, they’d check if it matched any selfies in my account, or; 2) I had to associate my Facebook profile.
I’m security conscious enough to not post selfies online, nor use Facebook. Goodbye instagram.
Twice I’ve been blocked out of my account, the first time it was because I was accessing from too many different IP address (VPN). The second time.I didn’t even bother to contact support and was willing to loose my account.
Also, I recall many years ago in the early days of the app there was an app update that would straight up not work on my phone and had to sideload an old apk in order to keep using it. And according to google I wasn’t the only one.
Took me a few months of manually testing new updates until a newer version worked for me. Not to defend Facebook or Twitter, but a fuck up like that one would never make it past their QA teams.
It’s disappointing that they only exclude the information use regarding ads.
So they will still track everything users do and profile them, just like any other free user. And they can sell to everyone else who pays for user data (e.g. AI learning, market research etc.). With that wording, they could even sell to ad companies, if they e.g. use the data for some algorithm optimisation in their tech department. So they leave the door open to keep selling the data to 3rd parties, while already charging the user ‘starting at’ 12.99€.
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