That’s something that Facebook seems to have explored, according to the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg who during Facebook’s recent earnings call revealed that the company had thought about creating a paid subscription version of its service. However Sandberg’s statement seems to be in the past tense, suggesting that they might have thought about it but might not have gone forward with it.
According to Sandberg, “We’ve certainly thought about lots of other forms of monetization including subscriptions, and we’ll always continue to consider everything.” This isn’t the first time that Sandberg hinted at a paid version of Facebook, where previously she was quoted as saying that being able to opt out of data collection might be a paid-for feature.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg had also hinted at the possibility of a paid version of Facebook, where during his testimony to US Congress he stated that there will always be a version of Facebook that is free.