As per rumors in the past, Facebook has considered the idea of paid- subscription before as well, however, this time there’s more internal momentum to pursue it, which is mainly because the company is facing a crisis of public trust after the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. It is a known fact that Facebook has been the leading platform for social media advertising and marketing due to its enormous online audience and high user engagement rates. The majority of the social network’s revenues are generated through advertising targeted with this user data. Now, that consumer sentiment is changing and with mounting evidence that its huge user base is reaching saturation due to this insecurity about their privacy, Zuckerberg & Co. merely might be looking to diversify beyond its one-trick revenue policy. And that includes an ad-free iteration. Though Facebook declined to comment on subscription-based ad-free service. Yet in recent weeks, one of the company’s highest-ranking executive has left open the possibility of a subscription option. During the company’s first-quarter earnings call last week, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company has “certainly thought about lots of other forms of monetization including subscriptions, and we’ll always continue to consider everything.” Also, during his testimony to Congress, The chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told the lawmakers that there would “always be a version of Facebook that is free,” as the site says, “it’s free and always will be.”
