Zuckerberg may have been telling both the Europarlament and the US Senate that Facebook will never be a paid platform, but his actions speak louder; FB is currently testing methods of monetizing the group content on its platform. Paid groups are nothing new on FB, but they have been existing in a state of a, how to put it, freestyle. Groups administration had to come up with 3rd party ways and means for the group members to pay their fees. What Zuckerberg’s platform is working on is creating a single, in-platform method for the groups administration to gather fees from their users with the use of a mobile app (what about stationary users?).

It can be argued whether or not FB’s upcoming tools are made with group administrators in mind or are they a new mean for Facebook to monetize its users. Perhaps it is both these things at the same time. We shall see when the tests are complete – date unknown – and the feature comes online.