{"id":161657,"date":"2025-09-26T13:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T13:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/161657\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T13:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T13:50:08","slug":"facebook-and-instagram-to-charge-uk-users-3-99-a-month-for-ad-free-version-meta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/161657\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook and Instagram to charge UK users \u00a33.99 a month for ad-free version | Meta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook and Instagram<\/a> users in the UK are to be offered advert-free versions of the social networks for up to \u00a33.99 a month.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Meta has responded to regulatory warnings about personalised adverts<\/a>, in which users\u2019 data is crunched to produce targeted ads, by launching an ad-free subscription service.<\/p>\n

Web users will be charged \u00a32.99 a month, and mobile phone users \u00a33.99 a month, to scroll through Facebook<\/a> and Instagram without ads. If the accounts are linked, users only need to pay one monthly fee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will give people based in the UK the choice between continuing to use Facebook and Instagram for free with personalised ads, or subscribing to stop seeing ads,\u201d said Meta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meta said the service will be rolled out over the coming weeks. Users who do not take up the subscription will still see ads.<\/p>\n

The subscription offering is similar to a service offered by Meta in the EU<\/a>, which has been deemed in breach of the digital markets act \u2013 a piece of legislation designed to rein in big tech \u2013 by the bloc\u2019s executive arm, the European Commission.<\/p>\n

The commission fined Meta \u20ac200m this year, stating the company should have launched a free version of its sites that used less detailed personal data, such as gender, age and location, for making targeted ads.<\/p>\n

The UK\u2019s data watchdog, the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office (ICO), said it welcomed the move.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis moves Meta away from targeting users with ads as part of the standard terms and conditions for using its Facebook and Instagram services, which we\u2019ve been clear is not in line with UK law,\u201d said an ICO spokesperson.<\/p>\n

This year the ICO said internet users should have an \u201copt out\u201d from their data being used to create targeted ads, after Meta settled a court case<\/a> with a UK citizen over targeted ads.<\/p>\n

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Meta agreed to stop targeting Tanya O\u2019Carroll, a human rights campaigner, who had alleged the company breached UK data laws by failing to respect her right to demand that Facebook stop collecting her data for personalised ads. Following the settlement Meta said it was considering launching an ad-free subscription to its social networks.<\/p>\n

Gareth Oldale, a partner at the UK law firm TLT, said the ICO\u2019s support for the Meta subscription service showed divergence between the EU and UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis position in certainly pro-business and illustrative of the UK government\u2019s direction to regulators to support economic growth and development of the digital economy,\u201d he said. \u201cIt does, however, mean that the divergence between the UK and the EU positions has grown a little wider.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook and Instagram users in the UK are to be offered advert-free versions of the social networks for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-161657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}