The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times both reported through unnamed sources that Meta plans to offer EU residents an ad-free way to access its Instagram and Facebook products in the coming weeks.
The report said Meta will offer EU residents a way to block Instagram ads on their smartphones for $14 a month. Additionally, Meta will offer a way to get rid of Facebook and Instagram desktop ads for $17 a month. Meta will still offer an ad-based version for free in the EU.
There have been rumors about such a plan before, but this is the first time we've got schedule and pricing information for an ad-free plan.
European regulators claim that Meta cannot provide services that harvest users' personal data, like Instagram or Facebook, so that it can show users ads without their consent. Offering a subscription-based, ad-free network could appease these regulators.
Meta was already fined 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) by the European Data Protection Board earlier this year. The fine stems from Meta's transfer of personal data of European citizens to Facebook servers located in the United States. Meta said it is appealing the decision.
There has been a growing trend for some time to offer subscription-based services on social networks that were previously completely free to access. Company X (formerly Twitter) launched the XBlue service in 2023. It offers many features, including reduced ads, and costs $8 a month.
This week, TikTok, another large social network, was spotted with threads of code in its app that may indicate it plans to launch an ad-free version of its own service soon.