Facebook and Instagram soon without advertising for ten euros a month

Samuel Buchmann

31/10/2023

Translation: machine translated

In future, adverts on Meta's platforms can be hidden for a fee. This is the company's response to EU data protection requirements.

From November, Meta will be offering a subscription model for Facebook and Instagram in Switzerland and the EU. The company announced this in a blog post. For 10 euros per month, you can free yourself from adverts. If you take out the plan via Apple's App Store or Google's Play Store, it will cost you 13 euros per month. This is because Meta passes on the fees charged by smartphone manufacturers to end customers.

The prices apply to all platforms together until 1 March 2024 - but only for one platform after that. From then on, an additional 6 euros will be charged for each additional linked account (or 8 euros via the app stores). So if you want to remove advertising on both Facebook and Instagram, for example, it will cost at least 16 euros in total.

According to Meta, the paid plans are a response to the new data protection requirements, the Digital Service Act and the EU's upcoming Digital Markets Act. The European regulatory authorities are enforcing that Meta must ask for permission if the company wants to use user data for personalised advertising. It also needs explicit consent if it wants to combine data from different services. With the new plan, users on Facebook and Instagram will have the choice between personalised advertising or the new paid model.

The Irish data protection authority imposed a fine of 390 million euros on Meta in May. The company had used unfair means to force users to agree to personalised advertising. In response, Meta has announced that you will be able to opt out in future. However, it was not clear that this choice would be subject to a charge.

With the new plans, Meta is likely to further expand its substantial profits - in the most recent quarter, Mark Zuckerberg's company recorded record figures. Turnover totalled over 34 billion US dollars. Because Meta simultaneously reduced staff costs, profits doubled compared to the same quarter of the previous year to over 11 billion US dollars.

Samuel Buchmann

Senior Editor

Samuel.Buchmann@digitecgalaxus.ch

My fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.