Meta has launched paid subscriptions for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, meaning users will need to pay to experience some bonus features on the apps. Sounds reasonable enough, except the features that Meta is selling reveal something about where all of this is heading.
It feels like “enshittification,” where internet platforms become worse for non-paying users. Essentially, the lifecycle of internet platforms goes as follows: first, they are good to users; then they turn good to business customers at the expense of regular users, and then they extract maximum value from everyone until the whole thing collapses under its own rot.
Meta’s subscription push fits the pattern almost too neatly.
Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus will cost $3.99 a month, while WhatsApp Plus runs $2.99 a month, with each plan offering things like profile customization, super reactions, and story insights.
Sounds modest; however, the plan worth paying attention to is Meta One Advanced at $49.99 a month because of what it is actually selling.
Paying for Meta One Advanced gets your account to appear higher in Facebook and Instagram search results, gets it featured in the Facebook feed, and can automatically send follow invitations to people who engage with your content.
This is Meta selling you the algorithm. Pay and you move up, and if not, you slide down relative to every account that does.
The feed stops being about what is relevant and starts being about who can afford to be seen, the same way X’s blue checkmark stopped meaning “this account is verified” and started meaning “this account paid,” except Meta is doing it with reach itself rather than just a badge.
In Kenya, a lot of small businesses have built their entire customer base on Instagram and Facebook, following the platform’s own logic of consistent posting and organic growth.
Meta is now telling those same businesses that the reach they spent years building is up for grabs, and the going rate to protect it is KES 6,500 a month.
WhatsApp is its own conversation entirely, because WhatsApp in East Africa is not really a social media app. It is how people run businesses, share news, and stay connected across the country.
WhatsApp Plus currently offers themes, custom ringtones, extra pinned chats, and premium stickers, which are all cosmetic for now. Once the subscription infrastructure is in place, the line between optional extras and essential features has a way of moving quietly over time.
Meta has been upfront that the whole point of these plans is to find new revenue beyond advertising, since its apps have already hit a ceiling on user growth globally.
They are not pretending this is about improving your experience. They need more money from the users they already have, and they know you are not going anywhere because your contacts, your customers, and your community are all already in there with you.
That lock-in is the whole game. You did not sign up for WhatsApp and Instagram on the understanding that you would eventually need to pay to stay visible. You signed up because they were free, and now the deal is changing after you have already built something on top of it.
It happens tier by tier, update by update, until the free version of the app you depend on works just well enough to keep you from leaving and just badly enough to keep nudging you toward a subscription.
That is enshittification, and it is already here.
