Facebook Pages require paid subscription to post more than two links per month

ChrisArchitect

late 2025: Facebook tests £9.99 monthly subscription for sharing more than two links https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46314668

superkuh

On Google's Youtube to post links (like in video descriptions, etc) you have to pay by adding sellable/monetarily valuable personally identifying information to your account like a phone number and ID. Otherwise even with a google account from 2006 in good standing you can't post links anymore. Attempts to edit old video descriptions with HTTP/S links (from before the policy) also don't work.

DataDaemon

They just want kill small web and keep people on their platforms.

sirnicolaz

So happy. All the fake news will cost much more now. Best case: less shit-links going around. Best case 2: Facebook closes down. No worst case.

Kim_Bruning

Presumably this is an A/B test? I don't see how that's remotely sustainable

mightyham

Is this not a good idea? It makes average users more selective about what content they are sharing, and reduces scam/bot content that can currently spam post links for free.

josefresco

As someone who helps small businesses create their own websites... thank you Facebook! Seriously though, back when "Facebook Pages instead of websites" were all the rage, FB demoting page content in feeds officially killed that movement and I was similarly happy.

jstummbillig

Those free and open models though

TrackerFF

Guess it's a tactic to go after bots and scammers?

writtenone

archived facebook help page, no trackers: https://nonograph.com/about-links-in-organic-facebook-page-p... source: https://www.facebook.com/help/1929252614431792

rcr-anti

I hate to devil's advocate this. But is the observed behavior of 'is this an outgoing link' the only practical way to defend against external bot advertising campaigns? Aside from Facebook obviously wanting you to pay them for advertising, how does any independent forum deal with this at scale without banning links?

wg0

This is last stage capitalism of these tech platforms. Nothing much left to innovate.

tapland

This can't be sustainable. The few groups I'm in, local wildlife and pet bird groups, mainly consist of people asking questions that need to and are usually answered by posting links to local resources or regulations.

codingisfreedom

I seriously can’t understand why there’s so much respect for anyone that works at Meta. These people have arguably contributed nothing to society for over a decade (and maybe even made it worse in some instances) for very fat salaries, and yet they’re being praised for being the example of best engineers. I periodically use their websites and they’re horrible! Seriously, we should know better as the dev-tech society. And I don’t give a darn about their research that is being built on top of barely legal mass surveillance so don’t tell me their contributions from stealing data were helpful.

apt-get

World Wide Web, huh? Those hyperlinks ain't free, you know.

ciefa

Simply insane. But honestly if anyone is using Facebook still that's on them. I can't fathom how people still use it.

SwellJoe

Surveillance capitalists have built a truly miserable internet. I've been researching local newspapers, and the problems they face, lately, and one of them is that none of the social media sites allow them to get any visits from their followers because they either significantly de-rank posts with links off-site or it costs money to reach followers with links, or both. Of course Google scraping their sites and summarizing is another symptom of the same problem; FAANG wants all the revenue and a monopoly on what you see. Every penny every eyeball. None for small businesses, none for independent media, none for individuals.

AndrewKemendo

Genuinely, I think having a postal code based swap system run by post offices would be the ideal situation You get both the safety of a public place to meet and identity verification through your post office representative Seems like a win for everyone and we get FB out of the way

belak

I wonder if this is an effort to combat pages which post a short clickbait description and require you to click "read more" to see the full description, and often post the link in the comments. There are lots of sites (Polygon immediately comes to mind) which are notorious for doing this as a way to get fake engagement which boosts their posts which gets more clickbait engagement. I know it's all speculation, and this does come across as more monetization creep, but I can't help to wonder if there's an underlying reason beyond "line go up".

sergiotapia

They are in the squeezing what's left position for that platform. Young kids think of facebook like we think of myspace. Social media as a platform in fact may just be over. my kids don't really use social media, they use whatsapp/iphone groups. in fact... maybe kids think of instagram as a boomer unc platform now too.