I think this is all theatrics to avoid EU regulation. Subscriptions for Meta products have already been a thing in the EU for several months.

It went a bit like this:

- EU mandates that users should be given the option to opt out from non-essential cookies.

- Meta responds by implementing an ad-free subscription-based model in EU, which allows them to dodge regulation.

- EU of course sees through their scheme and prepares to sanction them.

- Meta rolls-out subscriptions worldwide, so that it becomes harder for EU to claim that subscriptions were specifically created for dodging EU regulation.