Meta may add a paid subscription option to Instagram and Facebook in Europe, according toThe New York Times. The ad-free tier is meant to address European Union (EU) regulations that have diminished some of Meta’s most lucrative data-collection methods. The company said in April that advertising in the EU made up 10 percent of the company’s total revenue.
The move would be the first time Meta has deviated from its standard model of a single free platform supported by advertising (and associated data collection). The NYT says the company would continue offering free ad-supported versions of Facebook and Instagram in the EU. It’s unknown exactly when the company would launch the ad-free tiers or how much they would cost.
Company “insiders” cited by the NYT believe offering a paid ad-free variant could help “alleviate some European regulators’ concerns,” even if few people use it. The optional tier “could serve Meta’s interests in the region,” they added.
An ad-free option for European users would mark one of the most significant splits between consumer tech in the EU and the US. Meta and other social platforms have been forced to adapt as the GDPR and other regulations take hold. The EU fined Meta €1.2 billion in May for moving EU citizen’s data to US-based servers. In addition, the company was fined €265 million in 2022 for failing to prevent millions of Facebook users’ mobile numbers (and other data) from being scraped and posted online.
“This shows that tech companies are complying with the E.U.’s digital regulations, suggesting that they remain beholden to governments and not the other way around,” Columbia University law professor Anu Bradford told The New York Times.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/facebook-and-instagram-may-offer-paid-ad-free-plans-in-europe-to-sate-eu-privacy-concerns-190926273.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Facebook and Apple have been at odds for several years now; Apple announced back at WWDC 2020 that iOS would require apps to ask users to opt-in to cross-app advertising tracking. Facebook spent much of the next months speaking out against Apple's plans and predicting revenue instability due to the upcoming changes, but the feature was released in iOS 14.5 back in April of 2021. Somewhat surprisingly, though, a new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that before this all went down, Facebook and Apple were working on a partnership and revenue-sharing agreement.
According to the Journal, Apple and Facebook were considering a a subscription service that would offer an ad-free version of the platform. And since Apple takes a cut of in-app purchases, including subscriptions, it could have been a very lucrative arrangement indeed.
Another arrangement that was discussed and ended up being a point of contention was Apple taking a cut of "boosted posts," which essentially amounts to paying to put a post in front of a larger audience. Facebook has long considered boosted posts part of its advertising portfolio; as the Journal notes, small businesses often use boosted posts to reach more people. The issue came down to Apple saying boosts should be considered in-app purchases, which would be subject to the 30 percent revenue cut that the company takes. Facebook, on the other hand, maintained that those were advertising products which aren't subject to Apple's cut.
Since rolling out its user-tracking changes in 2021, research firm Insider Intelligence claims that 37 percent of iPhone users have opted in to letting companies track their activity across apps. Since the change went into effect, Facebook (now Meta) has seen its revenue growth shrink significantly — and last quarter, Meta reported the first revenue decline in the company's history.
As these discussions reportedly took place between 2016 and 2018, we're a long way off from these talks. Apple is doing its best to position itself as a defender of privacy, and Meta… well, Meta is busy trying to make the Metaverse a thing. But for now at least, advertising is the only notable way Meta makes revenue, so the company will have to continue to adjust to a world in which iOS app tracking protection is a thing that most users take advantage of.
Facebook is changing a rule that prohibits users from calling for violence in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The change, which was first reported byReuters, allows people in Ukraine and a handful of other countries “to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion.” People in Ukraine, Poland and Russia are also permitted to “call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.”
Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement that the company was "temporarily” allowing some posts that in the past would have been taken down under the company’s rules prohibiting inciting violence. He added that the company won’t allow “credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.” The company will also take down specific credible threats against Putin and Lukashenko, according to a memo reported by Reuters.
“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders,’” Stone said. “We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”
The change underscores just how much social media platforms are rushing to adapt their content policies amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Facebook has already taken several steps to limit the influence of Russian state media outlets and took down a network of fake accounts boosting pro-Russia propaganda. The Russian government has responded by banning Facebook.
Advertisers within Russia can no longer create or run ads on Facebook "anywhere in the world," including their home country, the social network told Business Insider. The website has also suspended all ads targeting people in Russia, "due to the difficulties of operating in [the country] at this time."
This is just the latest step Facebook has taken following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Shortly after the attacks started, it blocked Russian state media from running ads on its platform before restricting access to RT and Sputnik in Ukraine and across the European Union. A few days after that, Facebook started demoting the outlets' pages and any post linking to them on its main website and on Instagram.
As a response to the social network restricting access to state-run media, Russian telecom regulator Roskomnadzor blocked Facebook in the country, though Instagram and WhatsApp remain available. The agency throttled access to the website before that when Facebook officials refused to stop fact-checking state media outlets upon its request. In a statement issued after Roskomnadzor blocked Facebook completely, Meta's president of global affairs Nick Clegg said the company "will continue to do everything [it] can to restore [its] services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action."
According to a report by independent Russian news agency Interfax, Russia also recently blocked Twitter in the country. Roskomnadzor previously limited the country's access to Twitter, as well, after the social network paused ads and recommendations and started labeling tweets from Russian state media outlets. The social network said, however, that it's only seeing the effects of throttling within the region and not of an outright ban.
Meta's in-house staff won't have to return to the office for months, but some of its contracted workers are only now getting a similar reprieve. BuzzFeed News has learned subcontractor Accenture has scrapped a requirement that hundreds of Facebook moderators return to in-person work in Mountain View, California on January 24th. The original plan, provided to moderators in late December, would have forced roughly 400 people to work in close proximity while COVID-19's highly infectious Omicron variant is likely to still be rampant.
The announcement led to public and private protests over the decision, including "nearly a dozen" threats to resign, BuzzFeed said. The moderators said it was impossible to maintain Accenture's social distancing requirements given tightly packed offices, closed stairwells, and poor enforcement, and that the company didn't provide exemptions for immunocompromised workers or vulnerable family members.
An Accenture spokesperson confirmed that moderators working from home "should continue to do so" based on COVID-19 health data, and claimed the company worked "collaboratively" to accommodate individuals in compliance with the law. Meta, meanwhile, said it would "continue to prioritize" the health and safety of all workers. Meta's own employees can defer returns to the office to as late as June.
These concerns aren't strictly new. Moderators accused Meta (then Facebook) in 2020 of putting lives at risk by asking some contractors to work from the office even when family members were highly vulnerable. Meta disputed some of the claims at the time, but not all. This also comes after a $ 52 million settlement with moderators who said they developed PTSD and other mental health issues while screening harmful material. However, this latest incident suggests Meta still hasn't shaken concerns about the welfare of its moderation teams.
Facebook services are slowly coming back online after one of the biggest outages in recent memory. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger’s apps appear to be working again, though some of the websites are loading more slowly than usual.
As of 6:05pm ET Monday, the "Facebook for Business Status" page was still showing "major disruptions," to the social network's core services. But that was still an improvement from earlier in the day when the website was offline entirely.
"To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry," Facebook wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. The company confirmed its services "are coming back online now." In a post on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg also apologized for the services going down.
Zuckerberg didn’t elaborate on the cause of the lengthy outage. In an earlier tweet, the company’s outgoing Chief Technology Officer, Michael Schroepfer, cited “networking issues.”
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
The outage lasted more than six hours, taking down Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus. It also wreaked havoc on the company internally, with employees reportedly unable to access emails, Workplace and other tools. The New York Timesreported that employees were also physically locked out of offices as workers’ badges stopped working.
It also shaved billions of dollars off of Zuckerberg’s personal net worth as Facebook’s stock tanked, Bloomberg reported. Elsewhere, the company is still reeling from the fallout of a whistleblower who has accused the company of prioritizing “profits over safety.” The whistleblower was The Wall Street Journal’s primary source for several articles that details how Instagram is harmful to teens and the company’s controversial “cross check” program that allows high profile users to break its rules.
Security reporter Brian Krebs reported the outage was linked to issues with Facebook's BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) records, which prevented the company's services from being accessible. He later added it was "a routine BGP update gone wrong." DNS provider Cloudflare also cited BGP as the likely culprit, writing in a blog post that it was "as if someone had 'pulled the cables' from their data centers all at once and disconnected them from the Internet."
Facebook just offered its first look at the scale of its fight against election misinformation. In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, Facebook slapped warning labels on more than 180 million posts that shared misinformation. And it remove…
Engadget
The FTC may have narrowed down the time frame for an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. Politico sources claim the Commission is “likely” to sue Facebook before November is over. It might not be the quick, public legal battle some would hope for, th…
Engadget
Facebook is under intense regulatory pressure, and it appears to be bracing itself for the worst. The Wall Street Journal says it has obtained a document outlining Facebook’s defense if the government orders a breakup that would unload Instagram and…
Engadget RSS Feed
When Facebook said that it had removed a Wisconsin militia group and an event page associated with the organization following a deadly shooting, the company’s explanation wasn’t entirely accurate.While Facebook did remove the “Kenosha Guard” group fr…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook users in Australia could lose their ability to share news on the social network, the company is warning. The threat is the result of a proposed law from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that would require Facebook an…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook isn’t just limiting the spread of “boogaloo” groups on its platform — it’s tossing many of those groups out. The social media giant has banned accounts and PAges from the pro-civil-war group after deeming a violent network that breaks the co…
Engadget RSS Feed
Criticism of Facebook’s approaches to hate speech and misinformation may hit the social network where it hurts the most: its finances. CNN reports that clothing brand The North Face has become the most recognizable company yet to join an advocacy gro…
Engadget RSS Feed
Ustwo Studios — a division of the creative company behind Monument Valley and Assemble with Care – has dropped a new title on Facebook Gaming: Go Go Bots. It’s a fast-paced, strategic climbing game set in a glitchy, cyberpunk future — choose from on…
Engadget RSS Feed
Back in December we told you of a tool allowing you to transfer your Facebook photos to other platforms. Well it is now starting to roll out with users in the US and Canada able to use the data transfer tool to move their Facebook photos to Google Photos starting today. The tool is part […]
Come comment on this article: You can now move your Facebook Photos and Videos to Google Photos in the US and Canada
Facebook has removed more than a thousand of Donald Trump's campaign ads for breaking its rules prohibiting misinformation related to the 2020 U.S. census. The ads, which were first reported by journalist Judd Legum, urged users to participate in the…
Engadget RSS Feed
A couple of weeks ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published the results of its investigation into data the Ring app is sharing with third parties. While the Amazon-owned company has faced criticism over its links to law enforcement and the se…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook ostensibly frowns on anti-vaccination ads, but it's apparently letting some promos slide. BuzzFeed News has learned that alternative medicine company Earthley is running Facebook and Instagram ads that point users to a whooping cough treatm…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook has given Privacy Checkup a fresh coat of paint and an overall upgrade, which makes it more helpful when it comes to keeping your account secure. When you access the feature — simply search for "Privacy Checkup" on the platform to do so –…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook isn't entirely shying away from facial recognition, it seems. Code explorer Jane Manchun Wong has discovered a reference to a facial recognition system in Facebook's mobile app that would verify your identity. You'd have to take a "video s…
Engadget RSS Feed
Instagram has been struggling recently from an onslaught of spam comments, fake likes and fake follows. Now Facebook, which owns the service, has won a small victory against the spammers. The social media giant has settled a court case with a New Zea…
Engadget RSS Feed
In the ongoing storm of legal controversy around Facebook and whether it engaged in anticompetitive behaviors, yet another player has joined the fray. Soon the Justice Department will open its own antitrust investigation into the company, according t…
Engadget RSS Feed
Internet giants are about to face another test of their liability for the content they host. The Verge has learned that Fox 29 News anchor Karen Hepp filed a lawsuit against Facebook, Giphy, Imgur, Reddit and porn outlet XNXX for allegedly violating…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook is directly tackling complaints about its facial recognition practices for photo tagging. It's expanding access to its Face Recognition privacy setting (introduced in 2017) to all users, and will stop scanning faces by default. Those who d…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook knew its Libra cryptocurrency would face a regulatory gauntlet, but it might not have expected a united front. Regulators from the US, UK, EU and four other governments have asked Facebook to answer several questions about how it will prote…
Engadget RSS Feed
Red may be an attention-grabbing color, but too much of it can trigger anxiety. You might soon see a lot less of the hue on Facebook. The company is testing the ability to turn off the crimson in-app notification dots that seem to pop up every time y…
Engadget RSS Feed
Future Huawei phones will no longer come pre-installed with Facebook's apps, according to Reuters. The social network has reportedly prohibited the Chinese manufacturer from loading its main app, Instagram and WhatsApp onto any phone that hasn't left…
Engadget RSS Feed
The Tribeca Film Festival is underway, and it's live-streaming a handful of its talks. Through the festival's Facebook page, you can watch conversations with celebs like Queen Latifah, Michael J. Fox, Denis Leary, Ali Wong and Tiffany Haddish. You ca…
Engadget RSS Feed
On the same day that Facebook announced it was banning white nationalism from its platforms, journalists obtained a lengthy email chain involving Instagram's content moderators, highlighting their struggle to crack down on anti-Semitism.
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook is quick to tout its efforts to thwart misinformation campaigns in major European countries and the US, but its approach in other countries might not be quite so enthusiastic. Developers in Moldova told BuzzFeed News that they'd been asking…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook has cracked down on companies churning out and peddling fake accounts. The social network has filed a lawsuit in US federal court against four companies and three individuals based in China, not only for promoting the sales of fake accounts,…
Engadget RSS Feed
According to TechCrunch, Facebook has been paying teenagers around $ 20 a month to use a VPN app called "Facebook Research" that allowed the company full access to all of their phone and web activity. The app appears to be a reincarnation of Onavo Pro…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook has made many major acquisitions over the years, with Instagram and WhatsApp being two of the most notable integrations. Up to this point, though, all of those services and platforms have been almost totally separate, but it looks like that might be changing in the future. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly wants to have users from […]
Come comment on this article: Facebook wants to integrate messaging from Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger
Facebook's efforts to improve civic engagement are expanding beyond easy access to politicians and voter registration campaigns. As of January 21st, it's launching a Community Actions feature in the US that brings political petitions to the News Fee…
Engadget RSS Feed
John Carmack isn't the only one ending a legal fight with ZeniMax. Facebook and ZeniMax have agreed to settle a lawsuit that had accused Facebook and Oculus of violating copyright for the alleged "unlawful misappropriation" of ZeniMax VR code. The…
Engadget RSS Feed
If you're looking to keep certain content from ever appearing on your Facebook wall, there might be a feature in the pipeline for you. Computer science student Jane Manchun Wong discovered code on Facebook that appears to show the company is testing…
Engadget RSS Feed
Earlier this year, Facebook rolled out Watch Parties, a way for group members to watch the same videos together. Now, it looks like the company is testing a similar feature for Messenger. TechCrunch reports that code spotted by mobile investigator An…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook didn't take long to roll out Messenger's unsend feature, although it may be a while before you have the option of correcting missteps in your part of the world. Unsending is now available in Messenger's Android and iOS apps in Bolivia, Colo…
Engadget RSS Feed
When Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey left Facebook, neither said exactly why. The implication that it was due to his quiet donation to a group spreading pro-Trump memes. Now, however, we might have a better idea — and it raises questions about Fac…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook isn't done shaking up its strategy for Oculus. TechCrunch has learned that Facebook reorganized its augmented and virtual reality teams this week to focus on areas of technical expertise, rather than specific products. The company acknowle…
Engadget RSS Feed
More than two weeks after Facebook revealed a massive data breach, we still don't know who was using the flaw in its site to access information on tens of millions of users. Now the Wall Street Journal reports, based on anonymous sources, that the co…
Engadget RSS Feed
After an abrupt exit by Instagram's founders, there have been reports that they weren't always happy with being seen as one of Facebook's apps, instead of a standalone platform. With curious timing, TechCrunch reports that at least one user, Jane Man…
Engadget RSS Feed
Facebook teased a simplified redesign for its Messenger app earlier this year, also indicating that the next refresh for the app would come with a dark mode. Now that update is finally rolling out from Facebook directly, so users should expect to see it over the coming weeks. The update rearranges the navigation bar on […]
Come comment on this article: Facebook Messenger finally gets its sleek, simplified redesign, plus a dark mode