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Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/27/meta-officially-launches-instagram-facebook-and-whatsapp-subscriptions-with-more-to-come-including-ai-plans/
40•tambourine_man•1h ago

Comments

canyp•50m ago
Seems absolutely unhinged. I don't know who'd pay to doomscroll AI-generated slop and fake news. $49.99 for the top plan, lol.
DANmode•47m ago
But they know who.
suddenlybananas•50m ago
It's a real shame private messaging has ended up being almost exclusively closed-source without any kind of open API.
jjordan•37m ago
How did we let this happen? We used to have open protocols, apps like Pidgin that would bring multiple chat clients together under one interface, IRC, Skype P2P, etc. etc.

Was it spammers that caused this mass migration to ever more closed platforms?

tim-projects•29m ago
They all still exist, but we don't have the collective courage to use them when it means you might miss a status update from your friends.
NegativeK•28m ago
The vast majority of people aren't aware of open versus closed protocols. If enough people they want to communicate with are using it to counterbalance how frustrating it is, they'll use it. It happened because businesses realized there's profit in lock in, and they threw resources at it.

Open protocols are still there and still used, but we're sad because the smaller userbase is frustrating. Just like how people still publish human written content to personal blogs, but they're proportionally non-existent.

regexorcist•34m ago
In the EU at least WhatsApp is being forced to interop with other messaging apps. I believe it's being rolled out at the moment.
tgv•20m ago
Yeah, there are precisely two apps that can exchange with Whatsapp: one is still in beta, the other is by invite only, and for "professional networking" or something like that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746476
rossjudson•47m ago
I think that subscribing to another person's life prevents you from living your own. Also, "Everything is Lies, I Guess".
YesBox•43m ago
Discord subscriptions seem to be working. People like to customize their profile (ie express themselves), even though profiles are not something frequently interacted with (that's the surprising part!)

I have a server (for my game) with about 1000 people. Out of the 300 people logged in, 50 of them have custom profiles.

So, it seems like a good idea for Meta.

fontain•31m ago
The main problem is that premium subscriptions don’t generate that much revenue when compared to ads alone. The users who pay are the most valuable users to advertisers and the users who don’t pay are the least valuable. Discord generates about $1 in revenue per user compared to Facebook at closer to $100. For Discord at $1 per user, any subscription that’s a few dollars or more is probably paying for the lost advertising revenue, but it wouldn’t translate for Meta so they aren’t including ad free which drastically reduces the value.

I’ll be surprised if Meta’s subscriptions are as popular as Discord’s without being advertising free. Cosmetics are liked amongst Discord’s audience of nerds, but not Meta’s audience of normal people.

Very interested to see how this works out for Meta. Since they’re not excluding ads, it’s basically free money, so they may as well offer these subscriptions.

rhines•23m ago
I wish these companies didn't need to make billions in revenue. There's no reason why a small company couldn't manage a site like Discord, make enough to pay their developers, and be successful. But instead every company needs to become a unicorn and pay investors billions.
airstrike•30m ago
tbh I mostly pay for nitro for cross-server, animated emoji
j45•42m ago
Maybe they could sell privacy/encrypted messages in the subscription after removing it.
Animats•41m ago
"It's free and always will be" - Facebook
ravenstine•39m ago
Whenever companies make statements like this and then people act surprised when they backtrack, I can't help but think of a bit of my favorite dialogue from Star Trek Enterprise.

HARRIS: We had an arrangement!

KRELL: You did what I wanted. I don't need you anymore.

HARRIS: You agreed that both our governments would benefit if the two of us worked together.

KRELL: And you believed me.

avaer•33m ago
"They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks." - Mark Zuckerberg
alex1138•31m ago
Followed by him overwriting people's email addresses and constantly fucking around with privacy settings

Ohhhh but he was young! Be easy on him

(/s)

shevy-java•28m ago
Not only that, but Spybook aka Facebook, also connected offline information, e. g. I think if I recall it was dental care or something like that. I don't remember the year (edit: a google search led me to this article from 2018, but I could swear this was several years before that - see https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43668607), but it was scary that they go and sniff for ALL data they can find about people. This brings mega-corporation to a new level of Evil. And I haven't even gotten to talk about Google here, yet ...
meta_ai_x•40m ago
Friendly reminder: HN opinion about this will be completely-out-of-touch with reality
alex1138•33m ago
What reality? The reality is almost nobody likes using Facebook (and many people can't anyway because they get banned while the racist thing or whatever they report never gets taken down) because it doesn't work, messages are hit and miss, nobody sees any status updates, and it's 20 ads per post
pj_mukh•40m ago
I would pay $49.99/mo for an unlimited plan that brings me only my friends' status updates (not their hyper-political likes and comments), just their life updates. Daily stories are great too. But JUST that, no influencers, no ads.

I realize Meta's data shows that our user revealed preferences tells them that we like all the dopamine hijacking garbage but that's like saying "Well users like drugs, so we gave them more". Let me pay you to give me just the vitamins, and none of the sugar.

tim-projects•31m ago
Pay each of your friends $50 one per month, to switch to signal. Problem solved
freedomben•29m ago
$50 per month for unlimited, not $50 per friend, so your solution only works if you only have 1 friend, so it would work for me (self-deprecating joke) but may not for GP.
lostlogin•21m ago
> Pay each of your friends $50 one per month

It an outlay of $50 a moth. Probably better to pay 50/number of friends though.

fsflover•29m ago
Or, better, Mastodon or Matrix, which don't rely on a single, easy-to-target server.
dreamcompiler•23m ago
qweiopqweiop•39m ago
Those features sound so narcissistic to me
iLoveOncall•33m ago
It's insane that those subscriptions don't remove ads. That's the only thing I would even remotely consider paying for on any meta product.

In the current state those subscriptions will just show your friends that you're a huge loser who's willing to pay for custom backgrounds.

fontain•24m ago
Unfortunately, Meta’s ad business is so effective that they would need to charge hundreds of dollars per year for an ad free service just to keep revenue stable. I suspect anything less than $25 per month would be loss making for them.
SilverElfin•31m ago
Who is this for? Is it just a way to monetize dying platforms before they inevitably become worthless?
dreamcompiler•19m ago
The last stage of Doctorow's enshittification cycle is "Then, they die."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

princevegeta89•31m ago
Interesting. Instagram and Facebook both seem to be filled with AI-generated fake crap today. Even the so-called news items that I see there seem to be fake. I don't even know who would be subscribing. Especially to Facebook as of today.... It is filled with pretty low quality content overall. On the other side, WhatsApp has been getting filled with a lot of bloat. And even today, I find it confusing to use communities in WhatsApp. The entire navigation and experience around that feature confused me a few times. There's been more and more push towards the AI crap on WhatsApp as well.

The only good thing about WhatsApp is, it is used by everyone that I know, so I can connect with them pretty easily and make calls, etc. I hope they don't enshittify it too much to the point where I'll go and use Signal full time.

shevy-java•27m ago
> Instagram and Facebook both seem to be filled with AI-generated fake crap today.

Also youtube, unfortunately. Google does not understand that AI is slowly killing youtube.

I am an expert cat video person, so noticing AI slop is not so hard, but it takes a few seconds (e. g. a mother cat punishing the young cat for "overreach" - the way how the AI video insinuated reality was of course completely false, AI spam slop that lies to real humans). I'd rather wish Google would not waste my time (then again, why am I still using youtube ... one day I'll be degoogled for good. The sooner Google is gone from this planet, the better.)

princevegeta89•11m ago
And also, pretty much any internet-generated social media content, basically. Reddit is another classic example. If you look at many posts in subreddits containing a huge number of users, you could easily tell it is AI-generated, especially these idiotic "Am I the asshole" posts or "askreddit" posts and any other posts involving interesting situations.

Not just that. Even comments, some of those are basically AI crap, cleverly disguised as real users. It is such a waste, honestly. AI has brought upon us a low-quality world to live in, out of nowhere. This is such a pity.

shevy-java•30m ago
> In an announcement, Meta’s head of product, Naomi Gleit, noted that “more fun features” will be added in the future.

Thank you - I don't want any of that.

What exactly are "fun" features, anyway? Do they take away from my time?

yokoprime•19m ago
That's not happening
flufluflufluffy•16m ago
> There are also other features like Super Heart animated reactions for Stories, custom app icons, customizable fonts for profile bios, and access to additional pins for your profile.

Ahh, remember the days of livejournal/myspace, where we got all of those “features” for free because your profile is literally a fucking webpage

drnick1•13m ago
Just stop using Meta products. It's really not as hard as it seems. Nobody needs FB to communicate with friends and family. Send texts or emails or use your phone.
sillysaurusx•24m ago
How’d you make a game with 1,000 people? It’s impressive.
YesBox•17m ago
They're players, not devs.
sillysaurusx•11m ago
Yeah, I was asking how you got so many players.
dataflow•22m ago
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/mark-zuckerberg-there-will-a...
This works for friends and family members who are computer geeks. Signal for everybody else.
jsrozner•30m ago
This is absurd. You're just asking for reasonable control over data that ostensibly belongs to you. Moreover, this minimum functionality was resolved years ago with RSS. That you'd be willing to pay so much reflects how well every tech company is doing at using tech against its own users.
pj_mukh•25m ago
Ehhh, what I'm paying for is FB/Insta's ability to bring everyone onto one platform and encourage them to post regularly. RSS, AOL Messenger etc, never were able to do that with any decent success.

That they went past that to just kill their own golden goose is what is now reversible via a payment plan. That might be their only saving grace on this now managed decline.

bflesch•24m ago
Nah once they know you can be fleeced for $50 per month, they also know there is much more money to extract from you. Their advertisers would be mad if they remove this juicy cohort of moneybags from their audience.
uyzstvqs•3m ago
What you need is the Stories feature in Signal, then donate that $49.99/month (or however much you want) to their foundation.
CuriouslyC•3m ago
Shorts are a dumpster fire in terms of fake content. Full length videos are a lot better, as YT has been cracking down on AI generated regular videos, though there are still a fair number of AI narrated/scripted videos and deepfakes of prolific interviewees.

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