META subscription is here; and it leaves the users no evident choice.

If you are using Facebook or Instagram, you may already have seen the below message.

I manage a number of Meta products, for professional and personal reasons. One of my Instagram accounts has almost 20K followers, and is the one that got that message. Not sure if this was random or if they pick the biggest account that someone owns/manages.

So what happened is that when I tried to use the app, I was locked. In my mobile, I could only see this message.

It does sound like Blackmail, right?

A. "You, the users, can continue to use Meta products for free - BUT this means that you allow us to use your info and sell them to the companies so that we can profit from all these data and serve you personalized ads."
B. "You, the users, can pay us, so that we do not use your data for as long as you continue paying us. Of course, your $$ will add up to our already increased profits!

It does sound like a win-win situation right. But for META, only and not for its users.

Let's see what we are asked to do next.

And now comes the real news.
You are required to pay 12.99€ per month or 155,88€ a year! (No discounts here) to have your info removed from ads - just as long as you pay.

What do you think about this?

This made me dislike META even more. X (former Twitter) did a subscription model, but they also said that specific users will be able to earn a share of the ad revenue. This looks much more fair to me than the one META suggests.

(Of course I clicked 'use for free', which led me to this image)

We see that 'the use for free with ads' is our current experience. So nothing really changes. Meta was using our data before asking for our permission in a more straight-forward way.

So, I agreed and moved forward.
Did something change?

I started using Instagram even less. And I may use it even less in the future.

With all these happening around us, big and profitable companies requesting subscription so that they can earn even more from us while offering nothing to us, I really feel that web3 is the solution. The world needs to know that there are applications they can use for socializing online, and at the same time keeping their data private and immutably stored.

I believe that in the future a form of 'users' revolution will take place gradually, and hopefully soon. But as long as the users dont care, they will continue to provide even more wealth to those companies and simply spend their time - without any compensation or reward.

Perhaps the web3 applications should investigate more how 'brands' and 'companies' could be invited to create accounts. Maybe that will bring lots of groups of people massively. This will be a whole new chapter.

What about you?
Did you get those messages by META?
What did you do? Did this affect your use of the META apps?

Posted Using InLeo Alpha