After the Cambridge Analytica information scandal broke in 2018, issues received unhealthy sufficient for Meta (then Fb) that Mark Zuckerberg needed to face Congress to attempt to clarify what had occurred. The concentrate on how a lot information Fb had on everybody, together with “shadow profiles” for non-Fb customers, was sufficient to shake monetary markets and, finally, immediate a public apology tour from Mark Zuckerberg.
Now we’ve discovered from a slide offered right now at FTC v. Meta throughout former COO Sheryl Sandberg’s testimony that the corporate’s board of administrators thought of providing ad-free Fb subscriptions as a part of its response to the backlash. With customers realizing that the corporate’s “free” companies had been paid for by their very own information, possibly providing a method to pay for extra privateness may change the narrative.
The Proposed Product and Purpose bullet factors:
As an alternative of launching the subscription, the corporate outlined plans to scale back the quantity of knowledge it made out there to exterior builders. Meta finally launched an ad-free subscription choice in 2023, however solely within the European Union. The “pay or consent” mannequin has nonetheless drawn criticism from regulators over Meta’s implementation, and final November, it lower the worth of the subscription by 40 p.c.