Instagram’s ‘pay or consent’ approach to ads is coming to UK after being rejected in EU

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, is introducing a "pay or consent" ad model in the UK after facing regulatory challenges in the European Union. This model will require Instagram and Facebook users to either pay a monthly subscription fee for an ad-free experience or consent to personalized ads. The subscription fees for the UK market start at £2.99 per month (around $4) for web users, and £3.99 per month (around $5.33) for Android and iOS users. Meta attributes the higher mobile fees to the fees charged by Apple and Google. This "all or nothing" approach means users must choose to either subscribe across all their accounts or not at all. Each additional account will incur an additional fee of either £2 or £3 per month. This move comes after Meta was forced to walk back a similar model in Europe, where regulators criticized the "binary choice" offered to users, and the subscription fees were significantly higher, starting at €9.99 per month (around $11.67) for web users and €12.99 per month (around $15.17) for mobile users.