One of the reasons why Facebook collects information on its users is because they can use that information to sell to advertisers, who can then create targeted ads to hawk products and/or services to Facebook users. Save for ad blocking, there is no official way to disable ads on Facebook.
However earlier last week during Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to the US Congress, he seemed to hint that Facebook could be considering a paid version of its platform which presumably would not come with ads. However the question is, how much would an ad-free Facebook cost users? According to a report from TechCrunch (via 9to5Mac) who crunched the numbers, it could cost users anywhere between $11-$14 a month in subscriptions.
Now it should be noted that this is only a hypothetical analysis which more or less is based on how much Facebook would have to make to offset the cost of reduced ads purchased on its platform. This means that should there ever be a day where an ad-free Facebook is launched, the price could be something else entirely.
However it has been pointed out that while $11-$14 might seem relatively low, it could encourage other websites to implement similar models which means that users could end up with subscriptions totalling hundreds a month just to escape ads. TechCrunch also notes that this could have a negative psychological effect on Facebook users who might start to end up resenting the company because they can’t afford it or can’t justify paying for it, but what say you?
Is $11-$14 a month something you might pay for an ad-free Facebook experience?
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