Mastodawn

Meta payment message

https://iusearchlinux.fyi/post/2115408

Meta payment message - iusearchlinux.fyi

So I got the message from instagram about either paying or using it free (at the cost personalised ads) just now. 1000010454 [https://iusearchlinux.fyi/pictrs/image/88f07573-f1ed-4d7d-8c72-225b22e19ca5.jpeg] Doesn’t this go against the GDPR? Either way, is there a FOSS alternative for instagram like piped is to youtube? It seems like a good opportunity to stop using the official app, even though it would be better to not use instagram at all (sadly not an option for me right now). Any suggestions, and if so, are there any that provide functionality for: stories, posts, dms? Those are the 3 things I use instagram for. Many thanks!

chr Nov 9, 2023

Maybe Barinsta? f-droid.org/…/me.austinhuang.instagrabber/

…but from my experience it’s not very useful, because Instagram is making everything in their power to make life of Barinsta users misarable, like logging you out and forcing to provide credentials every couple days, locking accounts, confirming with SMS, etc.

Alternative cache/browser for public profiles: www.picuki.com imginn.com

Best choice… don’t use Instagram ;) Pixelfed is much better: pixelfed.org

Barinsta | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Simple yet advanced Instagram client

nfsu2 Nov 9, 2023

I used it and a think its not maintained anymore, but while I ised it had many bugs, its core features where very good though.

loo Nov 9, 2023

AFAIK nothing changes. You can still turn off personalized ads in the privacy settings. I believe that nothing changed.

Avincentor Nov 9, 2023

“Your info won’t be used for ads”. Does that also mean that they won’t collect any info about you? Theoretically, they don’t have any reason to collect data anymore because you pay them.

miss_brainfart Nov 9, 2023

Your info won’t be used for ads means exactly that, nothing more, nothing less.

They will still collect this info, they will continue building a profile of you, and they will continue selling this data.

magnetosphere Nov 9, 2023

But others will pay for your data. They’ll collect it all anyway. Even if anonymized, it’s still valuable.

davel Nov 9, 2023

€12.99/mo. sounds wildly overpriced to me in comparison to 1) cost to serve and 2) ad revenue. I’m not an ad revenue expert, but I have a hard time believing they make anywhere near €13/user/mo. from advertisers.

Cost to serve - Wikipedia

no banana Nov 9, 2023

I guess the information they gather is worth enough that overpricing the subscription makes them more likely to retain free users.

Otter Nov 9, 2023

The wording and the dark pattern on this screen should be violating the rules already. They very clearly want people to stay on the free plan, and likely aren’t even going to stop tracking users?

Maybe they just want to show how it “failed” and make a case that people don’t care

magnetosphere Nov 9, 2023

My god I just glanced quickly and thought it was 2.99. Asking 12.99 is an absolute joke.

GissaMittJobb Nov 9, 2023

Meta makes their ARPU readily available to the public, so you really don’t have to guess in this regard: statista.com/…/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user…

Last quarter posted there, it was $19.04 for European users, or €17.84 with today’s exchange rate.

Facebook: average revenue per user region 2023 | Statista

Facebook’s efforts to monetize its users have vastly differing results across global regions.

Statista

davel Nov 9, 2023

Those appear to be per-quarter numbers, and if so that would mean ~€5.95/month.

GissaMittJobb Nov 9, 2023

Looks like they report ARPU on a quarterly basis, yes.

coughrelief Nov 9, 2023

No but try MyInsta

nfsu2 Nov 9, 2023

Pixelfed it is then

promitheas Nov 9, 2023

Is pixelfed an entirely different platform? Sadly i have many good friends on insta who i talk with, and they wouldnt ever switch to anything else, so because of that im stuck with meta. Otherwise i would 100% leave it

nfsu2 Nov 9, 2023

It is Instagram but federated in a nutshell. Just like Lemmy is similar to Reddit but federated.

promitheas Nov 9, 2023

Ahh i see. Im going to edit my post now to specify that Im looking for an alternative frontend to instagram, such as piped is for youtube. Sadly i have friends on insta that I cant stop using it for now because of

nfsu2 Nov 9, 2023

XD, I mean that you look like you would now a lot of this stuff, just that. Take it as a compliment.

promitheas Nov 9, 2023

Actually lemmy was my first introduction to federated platforms. Im still a newbie :D

cooopsspace Nov 9, 2023

Doesn’t exist.

Just switch to Pixelfed.

Good friends will talk to you elsewhere like Telegram or Signal.

Leraje Nov 9, 2023

“Your info won’t be used for ads”

But we’ll still be tracking everything you do and selling that on to everyone who wants it.

KairuByte Nov 9, 2023

That said “will” not “won’t” FYI.

LWD Nov 9, 2023

They get to show people the words “your info won’t be used” to make you feel safe, with the caveat that they will use it for literally everything and anything else.

Very cool of them

BroBot9000 Nov 9, 2023

Just STOP using their service.

This situation isn’t getting any better. After this they will regularly up the price and take out features that you are used to and charged you extra.

They are still gathering and selling your information. Meaning you might not get ads on instagram but your digital fingerprint is still being used literally on every other website that FB works with.

Corporate social media is a toxic parasite that’s only going to enshittify more and more while people are willing frogs boiling themselves slowly.

Join mastodon, pixelfed and peertube. That’s the future of consumer rights and clawing away from billionaire ownership.

Lexi Sneptaur Nov 9, 2023

It’s just more enshittification

PowerCrazy Nov 10, 2023

It absolutely is not. You are using enshitification as a cliche. This is the core business model of facebook since the very beginning. They don’t give a shit about people spending $13/mo. They absolutely do not want people to choose that option. This is literally about about a legal loophole they think they have found to get around GDPR and have people “opt-in” to the same kind of data collection their business is based on.

Lexi Sneptaur Nov 10, 2023

It’s linked to the same thing though. Investor pressure to produce a profit or sink. It’s the service getting worse. And Facebook wrote the book on enshittification- think 2006 Facebook.

PowerCrazy Nov 10, 2023

Eh, they do want to maximize profits, but this is more about fighting back against the EU basically making their business model illegal not making their service worse in favor of profits.

Lexi Sneptaur Nov 10, 2023

Just because the EU is involved doesn’t make it any different. This is like how Target is leaving Seattle because the city decriminalized shoplifting. The whole point is to punish the people in the place with laws they don’t like.

promitheas Nov 9, 2023

Im already on mastodon and i use piped, but sadly I cant leave insta yet because i have very dear friends on there who i chat with, and they’d never switch to something else (… And meta knows this btw)

Killercat103 Nov 9, 2023

Well someones gotta go first. Nah, I’m kidding and I get it. I tried it myself with Snapchat and Discord and it was a very slow and tedious process. But I got it done. Migrated to SMS for the people that refused to adopt a new platform and since SMS is …quite bad it does get easier to convince once you’re there. Feel somewhat guilty for bothering people but I sure don’t miss the old platforms. Good riddance.

BroBot9000 Nov 9, 2023

I had to do the same thing. If they are dear friends then they shouldn’t have a problem getting a free app to chat with you. Otherwise sms is always an option.

Someone has to be the catalyst for change. Otherwise the corporate grip is only going to get stronger and soon enough all corporate social media will be subscription only.

RickyRigatoni Nov 9, 2023

Your first mistake was making real friends >:C

PowerCrazy Nov 10, 2023

If he only follows them through Instagram it’s most likely a para-social relationship, and not a real friend at all.

otp Nov 15, 2023

Or friends who’ve decided that their “one app” for messaging is Instagram? I think something like that is a possibility.

loki Nov 10, 2023

If the only thing you do on instagram is chat. maybe try Beeper? It’s a matrix client with an instagram bridge. Instagram still gets your chat data but it won’t be scooping up anything else.

promitheas Nov 10, 2023

I already do, but i need the app for some things like when they send me posts or stories :/

Beeper is great though

rosco385 Jan 11, 2024

Corporate social media enshittens the smallest man.

MudMan Nov 9, 2023

Anecdotally, the last time I checked my dormant Facebook feed it was deserted. I wonder how many people hit that message and just decide they can just nope out and not lose much of value.

I mean, that's what I did the first time it popped up. I only ever logged into that in case somebody was trying to reach me for work stuff, and that never actually happens, so...

As for whether this is GDPR compliant, it seems that FB was convinced it would get them past the newer post-GDPR regulations and the EU has strongly signalled that it really won't, so it's gonna be fun to watch from the sidelines.

promitheas Nov 9, 2023

Thanks for the GDPR info (grabs popcorn to watch as well).

As for facebook, I only use it because of messenger for work, which I will delete as soon as im done with my BSc in about a year (I work at my uni). I dont have the app but rather a PWA on my phone, not that theres much difference.

However, Im interested in instagram because of good friends that use it

ferralcat Nov 10, 2023

I think they probably learned this number from the iOS tracking opt in. It’s not as large as people like to think. People don’t like being tracked, but they’ll trade it for free stuff pretty easily.

const_void Nov 9, 2023

The greed of these people is astounding

promitheas Nov 9, 2023

Its sad that most people are numb to it, and actually completely unaware/uncaring. They just click that they want to continue using it for free, which is exactly what mera wants

Doctor xNo Nov 9, 2023

Should have posted that chain-text to my Facebook wall years ago so my profile would be blue and safe…

Please forgive me,… I failed you all… 😭

Otter Nov 9, 2023

Lmao completely forgot about that

RickyRigatoni Nov 9, 2023

I swear these specific copypastas are started by grad school sociology students for their thesis research or something.

rosco385 Jan 11, 2024

Those, and the copypastas that end with “I want to see who’s brave/caring/proud enough to repost.”

Bryan Nov 9, 2023

I heard in a podcast that this is primarily to address the requirement to not target ads for under 18 and will be free to them. They probably have to offer it as a paid service for anyone 18+ and priced it so that no one actually does.

Without a doubt, everyone is still being tracked.

Wild_Mastic Nov 9, 2023

Remember that time WhatsApp (just after Facebook acquisition) introduced an annual fee you had to pay for using it, and then after everyone payed they removed it?

SomeBoyo Nov 9, 2023

Wasn’t that how they financed themselves before facebook?

Wild_Mastic Nov 10, 2023

I might remember wrong if that’s the case

Lemmchen Nov 10, 2023

Jul 16, 2013 WhatsApp changes its profit model with an annual subscription fee of $1 after a free first year. Feb 19, 2014 Facebook, Inc. announces its acquisition of WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. Facebook pays $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units granted to WhatsApp’s founders. Jan 18, 2016 Jan Koum announces that WhatsApp will no longer charge its users a $1 annual subscription fee. There is still no clear plan for monetizing WhatsApp.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp

So they started the subscription before the aquistion, but discontinued it two years after that.

WhatsApp - Wikipedia

knfrmity Nov 9, 2023

As far as I understand, this subscription “option” comes from a couple EU member state data protection agencies saying that the “choice” between give up all your personal information or don’t use the service isn’t good enough.

It remains to be seen if give up all your personal information or pay and still give up all your personal information will be accepted by those and other regulators. I can’t imagine it will be.

Also fun fact, it costs more on the mobile apps as Meta passes the Play Store/App Store fees onto the end user.

cheese_greater Nov 9, 2023

foss alternative to Instagram

Pixelfed?

aprnu Nov 9, 2023

yes indeed, you have to make a choice, the time is now, don’t _c it up

ghostdoggtv Nov 9, 2023

Just wait 5 months, they’ll add a bullshit feature like custom fonts and raise the price 83%

penquin Nov 9, 2023

I’ll just stop using it if they tell me this. You can sign up for pixelfed. It’s a part of the fediverse, too. You can transfer all of your Instagram photos to it very easily. They even have instructions on how to do it. I moved all of my 650 photos in about 20 minutes. Just in case.

promitheas Nov 9, 2023

I dont have many photos, but thats not the issue. Its that all my friends are on it, and until I leave after my bachelors and need to have contact with them often im stuck with it. After i leave to a different country once i get my degree itll be easier, but for the next year or so im stuck with instagram because i dknt want to lose contact with them. As most people, they would never leave the mainstream thing behind, so no chance of converting them as well

penquin Nov 9, 2023

Ok then, run it in a browser, instead of the actual app, to give them less of your data. I have it installed on my phone as a webapp on Firefox with ublock origin and TrackerControl app