> Web users will be charged £2.99 a month and mobile phone users £3.99 a month to scroll through Facebook and Instagram without targeted ads.

I wonder how much information this provides about the relative value of mobile users vs web users. It's complicated by the fact that part of the pricing strategy here is likely not maximizing revenue as much as it is…making it just too expensive for many people to want to pay, thus shaping public opinion in the right direction.

> If the accounts are linked, users only need to pay one monthly fee.

Is this because they manage to get some value from that edge existing in the graph even if they can't turn that into ad revenue?

The cost of blocking ads has been equal to zero for nearly two decades now. I see no reason to suddenly start paying for this kind of stuff.

This article is on theguardian.com , and it has started to require a paid subscription for all readers who don't want to share their data with 131 third parties. There is no privacy-respecting free option. The paid subscription is £5 per month, and it doesn't eliminate all ads. (This requirement may depend on which country you're in.)

I went ad-free on IG by no longer using it. FB ruined that product.

I know two people who have been scammed by ads pushed on Instagram. One for a fake sell of clothes and another for fake reselling of concert ticket. In both instances, price of that scam was worth multiple years of subscription.

Facebook's logged out landing page used to say "Free forever". Guess there was a corner of the ToS that said "unless we decide otherwise". :)

Edit: OK the wording was "Sign up. It's free (and always will be)" so I guess that remains true.

Ad-free, but is it tracking free?

I think we know the answer to that one.

The problem with Facebook, beyond just ads, is that its algorithm pushes so many posts from groups that I'm not in and don't want to see. I want an option to only see posts from people I'm friends with and groups that I'm in.

£3.99/mo to not display ads anyway. How much to not have all my usage and content collected, tracked, and sold regardless?

I wonder how would the world would have been if these services were paid by their users only, so algorithms optimized for user satisfaction instead of engagement.

Everything on these platforms feels like an ad. On Facebook, I hardly see posts from my friends anymore, just a relentless stream of ads and algorithm-driven 'recommendations' (which are just ads in disguise). Who in their right mind would pay for that?