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Facebook United Kingdom Advertising

Facebook and Instagram Offer UK Users an Ad-Stopping Subscription Fee (bbc.com) 24

Posted by EditorDavid from the ad-free-fees dept.
"Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is launching paid subscriptions for users who do not want to see adverts in the UK," reports the BBC: The company said it would start notifying users in the coming weeks to let them choose whether to subscribe to its platforms if they wish to use them without seeing ads. EU users of its platforms can already pay a fee starting from €5.99 (£5) a month to see no ads — but subscriptions will start from £2.99 a month for UK users.

"It will give people in the UK a clear choice about whether their data is used for personalised advertising, while preserving the free access and value that the ads-supported internet creates for people, businesses and platforms," Meta said. But UK users will not have an option to not pay and see "less personalised" adverts — a feature Meta added for EU users after regulators raised concerns...

Meta said its own model would see its subscription for no ads cost £2.99 a month on the web or £3.99 a month on iOS and Android apps — with the higher fee to offset cuts taken from transactions by Apple and Google... [Meta] reiterated its critical stance on the EU on Friday, saying its regulations were creating a worse experience for users and businesses unlike the UK's "more pro-growth and pro-innovation regulatory environment".
"Meta said its own model would see its subscription for no ads cost £2.99 a month on the web or £3.99 a month on iOS and Android apps," according to the BBC, "with the higher fee to offset cuts taken from transactions by Apple and Google."

Even users not paying for an ad-free experience have "tools and settings that empower people to control their ads experience," according to Meta's announcement. The include Ad Preferences which influences data used to inform ads including Activity Information from Ad Partners. "We also have tools in our products that explain 'Why am I seeing this ad?' and how people can manage their ad experience. We do not sell personal data to advertisers."
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Facebook and Instagram Offer UK Users an Ad-Stopping Subscription Fee More

Facebook and Instagram Offer UK Users an Ad-Stopping Subscription Fee

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  • That's step three (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Sunday September 28, 2025 @02:48PM (#65688616)

    Of enshitification

  • No Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sit1963nz ( 934837 ) on Sunday September 28, 2025 @02:50PM (#65688622)
    Nope, don't spend enough time on any social media platform to want to pay for it.
    As soon as ad blockers top working, I will stop using the platform.

    I prefer to deal with real humans.
  • Just curious, as I don't use either service, but how much to hide all the stuff from Russian bot farms?

  • People you know (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Malc ( 1751 ) on Sunday September 28, 2025 @02:53PM (#65688628)

    Will the fee also stop Facebook's AI slop, reels and other crap from people you don't know?

    Never mind, it still won't bring me back. I take a look once in a while and it's 99% crap. Even people I'm interested in who do post don't show up in my feed, which totally defeats the purpose of the bloody thing.

    FB is dead and it doesn't attract young people at all anymore. Insta will follow in due course.

    • Will the fee also stop Facebook's AI slop, reels and other crap from people you don't know?

      Never mind, it still won't bring me back. I take a look once in a while and it's 99% crap. Even people I'm interested in who do post don't show up in my feed, which totally defeats the purpose of the bloody thing.

      FB is dead and it doesn't attract young people at all anymore. Insta will follow in due course.

      Insta will follow when it's filled with all of the parents who have "graduated" from Facebook.

      That being said, I wonder if paying for no ads includes no tracking across the internet, and no selling of the user's data. After all, the "if it's free you're the product" mantra doesn't (heh...shouldn't) apply any more.

      • > That being said, I wonder if paying for no ads includes no tracking across the internet, and no selling of the user's data. After all, the "if it's free you're the product" mantra doesn't (heh...shouldn't) apply any more.

        Of course. Just trust the Zuckbot.

  • Pay to end the most obvious abuse (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday September 28, 2025 @03:22PM (#65688664)

    whether their data is used for personalised advertising

    If you pay, your data won't be used for advertising purposes. But rest assured it will be used some other way.

    Because crucially, the one thing Facebook isn't saying is that paying will stop the data collection.

    Of course, the best way to avoid Zuckerberg collecting your data is not patronizing any Zuckerberg site.

  • Just invest in a proper system-wide adblocker (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Cward ( 10374574 ) on Sunday September 28, 2025 @03:28PM (#65688672)
    Thereâ(TM)s FOSS and proprietary options out there which work across systems and will remove the need to pay every stupid service and website to get rid of ads. Dont pay them, just block their crap.

    • Re:Just invest in a proper system-wide adblocker (Score:5, Informative)

      by OtisSnerd ( 600854 ) on Sunday September 28, 2025 @04:57PM (#65688776)
      There's an extension for both Chrome and Firefox that is designed to filter most of the crap out, FB Purity. I've been using for a couple of years now, and it works well. It also supports adding text phrases to filter out, which helps remove the junk some of my cousins post.

      https://www.fbpurity.com/

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dskoll ( 99328 )

        FB Purity is fantastic. It made Facebook bearable for me when I was on it. And the developer is super-responsive when FB makes changes that break FB Purity.

        I've since ditched Facebook... even with FB Purity, it became far too annoying.

        • I'd ditch it, but unfortunately, it's how my large family keeps in touch. There's also several groups I belong to, including various retro computing groups, that have better content than even Reddit does. (I have an ancient SYM-1, and an RCA COSMAC VIP that I fool around with, plus the RC-Bus 2014 Z-80 system I've built.) I also follow several musicians, and have gotten music from them otherwise unavailable.
  • Content that doesn't come from vetted sources, e.g. folks I actually know, is so often scams or plain ai-clickbait... I miss having a 'latest' option where I didn't have to check dates to see if it was a recycled post or not. Just awaiting the next big thing that isn't metagoofle-microapple. But at least I can extend my surface win10 with my bing-points.

  • I don't see ads on Facebook (Score:3)

    by spywhere ( 824072 ) on Sunday September 28, 2025 @04:12PM (#65688724)
    Two things help me avoid the algorithm and sponsored posts on Facebook:
    1. I look at only my feed by adding ?filter=all&sk=h_chr at the end of Facebook's URL
    2. On the rare occasions (twice a year) that FB starts sneaking in "Sponsored" ads, I report every one as sexually inappropriate.

  • Plugins (Score:3, Informative)

    by vdc ( 3795451 ) on Sunday September 28, 2025 @04:32PM (#65688750)

    I was going to say goodbye to Facebook over a decade ago, but it proved a convenient way to stay in touch with family overseas when my father became terminally ill around that time, so I stuck around. For many years I have been using the FBPurity, Facebook Container and uBlock Origin plugins with Librewolf, and I never see ads. If you stay there for any reason, I would recommend those.

  • Are you still going to have to wade through hundreds of 'suggested' posts, much less ads posing as them that aren't declared as ads, before you can even see a single thing posted by anyone you actually give a shit about? If not, why bother?
  • I have never seem a reason to use Facebook or Instagram. When your on a dedicated marketing and advertising platform it is only right you should pay not to see ads.

  • That and blocking fuckerbook properties at the firewall are the only way to be free of these ghouls.

  • ....and it cost me nothing.

    Secret: I never use those shitty sites.

    Next up:
    linkedin
    youtube
    x.com

  • Story seems like a rich target for humor, but Slashdot couldn't find any?

    Actually wish I had seen the story when it was fresh, but now it's stale and about to disappear. My angle involved the good side of making Facebook responsive to the suckers AKA users. If you are actually paying Facebook to handle your personal data properly, there is a theoretical reason for FB to stop the raping.

    Disclaimer needed? Someone assassinated my Facebook account back in 2022. Pretty sure it was a political hit, but I'd alrea

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