Meta Platforms, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, plans to almost halve the monthly subscription fee that allows users to use the platforms without advertising messages. The proposed subscription price will be 5.99 euros, down from the previous 9.99 euros.

This information is provided by Reuters.

According to Meta's management, this decision is intended to relieve tension from regulators on privacy and antitrust issues.

Meta's proposal to reduce the cost of its ad-free subscription service in Europe is reported to have come in response to growing criticism from data protection advocates and consumer organizations.

Meta introduced the paid service in November in response to the EU's Digital Marketplaces Act (DMA), which limits the company's ability to personalize ads to users without their consent. This could pose a threat to Meta's main source of revenue. The company claims that the paid subscription model is aimed at balancing the tension between privacy and DMA requirements.

"We wanted to speed up this process because we need to achieve stability... so we proposed to reduce the price from 9.99 to 5.99 for one account and 4 euros for any additional account... This is the lowest end of the range that any reasonable person should pay for such services. And it's a serious proposal," Meta lawyer Tim Lamb said at a hearing at the European Commission.