Many people have loved Facebook over the years and many more have become very addicted to the Social Networking site. That is not only because it has allowed us to communicate with and to people we love and those we don’t even know, but also because it has been free all the while. Things may soon change because the social networking site seems to be preparing for a Facebook paid subscription.
This is the indication we got from the statement made by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg when he faced the US Congress in response to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Although he stated that there would always be a free version of Facebook that would be there for everyone, he also made some statements that would suggest some form of the service that may require users to pay some money.
This came in response to a question thrown to him by Senator Orrin Hatch who had in 2010 met with the Facebook founder and he assured him that it would always be free. The senator asked again, “Is that still your objective?”
In response, Zuckerberg said, “There will always be a version of Facebook that is free. It is our mission to try to help connect everyone around the world and bring the world closer together. In order to do that, we believe we need to deliver a service that everyone can afford.”
Considering the fact that Zuckerberg made use of the word affordable instead of free, has made a lot of people to speculate that there may be some form of paid service for Facebook users.
YouTube Style of paid service?
As a result of this, it has been suggested that the Facebook paid subscription, if it gets to be introduced may be in the same way as the YouTube-style system which controls the delivery of advertisements in a different way between those who have subscribed and those who have not.
With the YouTube-style system, there is an ad-free service available for those willing to pay, while those who are not willing to pay keep receiving adverts.
Facebook paid subscription
It is not only Mark Zuckerberg that has provided a hint on the introduction of the paid service. In an interview with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg while talking on NBC’s Today show, she revealed that as regards privacy, users of the platform may be made to pay for absolute privacy.
The manner in which Facebook does its business is to collect advertisement from advertisers and show them to individuals whose data they have collected. What this does is to allow for targeted advertisement to be possible.
See Also: Social Media Obsession: 11 Signs You Have It And 9 Ways To Cure It
Today’s Savannah Guthrie asked Sandberg what happens if people don’t want to receive such targeted adverts. Are there tools that people can use to opt out of such services? The Facebook COO indicated that while there is no such tool for opting out, there may be such a tool, but again, people may need to pay for it.
“We don’t have an opt-out at the highest level. That would be a paid product,” she said.
