Facebook considered offering an ad-free subscription after the Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook

After the Cambridge Analytica information scandal broke successful 2018, things got atrocious capable for Meta (then Facebook) that Mark Zuckerberg had to look Congress to effort to explicate what had happened. The absorption connected however overmuch information Facebook had connected everyone, including “shadow profiles” for non-Facebook users, was capable to shingle fiscal markets and, eventually, punctual a nationalist apology circuit from Mark Zuckerberg.

Now we’ve learned from a descent presented contiguous at FTC v. Meta during erstwhile COO Sheryl Sandberg’s grounds that the company’s committee of directors considered offering ad-free Facebook subscriptions arsenic portion of its effect to the backlash. With users realizing that the company’s “free” services were paid for by their ain data, possibly offering a mode to wage for much privateness could alteration the narrative.

The Proposed Product and Goal slug points:

• Paid monthly subscription offering that allows users to acquisition Facebook (and perchance our different apps) without ads.
• Goal: Provide an advertizing ‘opt out’ and code the meme: ‘if you are not paying for a service, you are the product.’

Instead of launching the subscription, the institution outlined plans to trim the magnitude of information it made disposable to extracurricular developers. Meta yet launched an ad-free subscription enactment successful 2023, but lone successful the European Union. The “pay oregon consent” exemplary has still drawn criticism from regulators implicit Meta’s implementation, and past November, it chopped the terms of the subscription by 40 percent.