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Facebook Groups May Soon Charge Monthly Subscription Fees For Access (theverge.com)
Facebook announced today in a blog post that group administrators can start charging $4.99 to $29.99 a month for exclusive membership in certain groups. "Parenting, cooking, and home cleaning groups will be the first ones to get the new feature as part of an early test," reports The Verge. From the report: As it stands now, free groups will remain intact, but they will soon have the option to launch premium sub-groups. For instance, lifestyle blogger Sarah Mueller's Declutter My Home group is starting an Organize My Home group that costs $14.99 a month to join. And the Grown and Flown Parents group is making a College Admissions group that charges $29.99 for access to college counselors. Facebook says the new feature is so that group admins, who put a lot of time and dedication to growing their communities, can also earn money at the same time. The company also says admins could take the money they earn to create higher-quality content for the group as well, whether that be more posts, videos, or offline meet-ups and events. Facebook reportedly won't be getting a cut of the subscription fees.
I want my free FB with no ads and no collection of my data.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
My sides, they're exploding, I'm laughing so hard!
I seriously hope you guys don't do this.
Thanks, Mr. Gowdy!
Can I add that $29.99/mo to my student loan?
Which other country gets as much scammed by Nigerians as the US ?? LOL Pay to have yourself exposed now, fools !!
* Get a Facebook account purely for 'business' purposes
* Start some shitty 'group' for something lame and lulzy to attract trolls
* Group fills up with trolls and their natural prey
* Start charging $29.99 a month to be in the group
* Trolls paying to troll, troll-prey paying to be troll-prey
* INFINITE MONEYS xD xD xD
I've never used Facebook, so I have no idea what these groups are like. Are they highly-moderated circle-jerks like Reddit subreddits, StackExchange Q&A sites, or SoylentNews, where free thought is frowned upon and actively punished? If these Facebook groups are like that, then they sound more like TV channels to me, where a small group of 'elites' broadcast their narratives to a larger audience who laps them up without any critical thought. There's no meaningful discussion allowed or possible, making it hard, in my opinion, to consider such groups to be communities of any inherent value.
Choose one :)
If you're not paying for a product, then you are the product!
asking people to pay for stuff that can be had for free is an exercise in futility.
always trying to monetize every part of the pig, including the snout.
Are you so hard up you cannot make friends IRL? You have to pay to talk to disembodied humans online?
How about getting to know your neighbors.
Jebus. You freaks are weird.
Maybe they need the income to make up for that lost because they aren't selling as much user data to folks who use it for advertising or to others, like Cambridge, to create profiles of users for political targeting.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
We've had newsgroups and email lists that have been 100% free since the start of the Internet. 25ish years later, people are PAYING for these same services, AND are giving the service 100% of their personal data. Wow. You've come a long way, baby!
I don't respond to AC's.
Fitting. And nothing of value will be lost.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This would be OK if when accessing those paid groups you wouldn't be fleeced with ads and marketing by Facebook. I doubt that will happen and what exactly do these charges cover? What perks will a paying member of said group get?
I would pay nothing for access to a single group. I might pay for access to X number for a small fee. NO group is worth 30.00
And I can ubsubscribe for free.
Cable tv started as way to pick up OTA TV in areas where they where hard to get. Then super stations showed up with AD's. HBO was and still is ad free.
Cable networks back in the day had ad's
When I saw the headline about Office365 being rewritten in Javascript, I thought that was hilarious, the funniest joke/prank in a long time.
But Facebook selling subscriptions to groups?! THIS is hilarious!
Now I will keep my eyes open for the story about Stallman rewriting HURD in Rust...
A dingo ate my sig...
CompuServe returns...
FaceBook
to return to
per MB fees ?
No group on FB is worth $4.99/mo IMO
Absolute proof neither political party is actually "for the people". Our "elected" officials are pawns of the Oligarchy.
... sees this for what it is:
People who pay for content are verified consumers of whatever the fuck is related to the special interest group.
Zuck gonna tell advertisers, "I got a group of suckers, and the price of poker is going up!"
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
"Facebook reportedly won't be getting a cut of the subscription fees."
Wow! I'm shocked.
Welcome to social media.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Every subscription checkout page should come with a link to Discord since that's where everyone's leaving to anyway if they do this.
This could make raffle groups legal. No more shady payments through paypal. Now they get funneled through Facebook as a group subscription. You can give away products to a group of friends legally. It would be a stretch to call it gambling, making the waters even grayer which is good for Admins.
Facebook is wanting to become a premium content provider, and while they might not be taking a cut of subscriptions it doesn't look like they will be sharing any advertising revenue with the creators. Seems like a good deal for the new players but they will be locked into the facebook system for life.
That somehow does even sound reasonable.
They want to pillage my browsing history, then fuck me up the ass and charge me? Nah.
Never joined, never will.
Most forums have been dying ever since social media took off.
This is great for now... but it will change. They'll take a cut later. They'll be able to threaten the income stream to get compliance from people too. As youtube, they could demonetize it at any time.
So, Pray they don't change the deal further.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I don't really see the problem with this, now hear me out.
1. This is not Facebook charging for all groups, or even Facebook determining which groups do charge. Rather they are giving the option for group admins, which for the most part are private individuals, to charge admission to the group that they run.
2. To my knowledge there is no way for current group admins to make money directly for all the work they do in their group. Right now they are forced to use referal links to stores or otherwise direct readers to outside websites where the admin makes money off the ads. These methods don't work for all groups.
3. That leaves two real options for Facebook in tryting to compensate group admins and continue to build robust groups. Either, Facebook gives admins a share of the ad revenue they are making from the pages of the group, or they build another revenue stream for the group.
4. I actually wouldn't even be too upset if facebook took a small percentage of the charge, 10%. This would give Facebook another none ad revenue stream. Perhaps they could take 5% for regular groups and 10% would allow for an "ad free" group. To me that would make facebook groups an attractive option for my private group.
Just my 2 c.
Not a member you're a member because they track you and build a shadow profile.
You're addicted.
They sell your info to partners who do shady things with your info.
They lose your info.
They delete your info without asking.
If you try to leave they nag you and stalk you til you come back.
Now they're going to charge you for all these great features!
Facebook is wasting too much of my time with nonsense from groups I never subbed to in my feed anyway.
Totally cool with this.
I hope they all do it.
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