Meta One subscription forces city libraries and small charities to pay for Facebook links

A communications manager in Greenville, Texas, is being forced to pay Meta a monthly fee to share basic information on Facebook. The city's library page recently received a notice limiting it to two links per month. That quota has already been used. Adding more links now requires a Meta One subscription with a starting price of $50.

Daniel Starks oversees nearly a dozen city pages for the municipality of approximately 35,000 residents. The library account is verified as a government building. Starks said that more than half of the city's digital communication relies on directing residents to its website. To avoid the fee, he instructed staff to stop putting URLs in the main body of posts. Instead, staff now place links in the comments section. Starks created a graphic to explain the change to followers. "When you have an official governmental entity that is trying to get out in some instances very, very, important information, and we're being paywalled by Facebook all because we're trying to post a link, that's a problem," Starks said.

Small organizations are facing similar barriers. Bethany English co-presides over the East Side Pawject, an Indianapolis group that manages pet food pantries. Last week, English attempted to add a website link to an event post but found the monthly quota exhausted. The plan that would allow 20 links costs $150 per month. The page serves just under 1,000 followers who use it to locate pantries and donate. English is considering using personal profiles, which are exempt from the restrictions, or creating dedicated Facebook events to bypass the limit.

Meta has tested paid linking for nearly a year. The feature is currently bundled with its Meta One plans. The $14.99 tier includes no extra Facebook link sharing. The $49.99 tier allows eight links per month. The $149.99 tier allows 20 links. Only the top tier at $499.99 offers unlimited links.

Jeff Bannister, marketing manager at the North Carolina nonprofit SparkPoint, called the $50 price for eight links "crazy." He said the return on investment "seems almost negative." Bannister is exploring ways for local groups to share information directly to reduce reliance on the platform, though he noted that much of Transylvania County still uses Facebook.

Users interviewed reported confusion over the rules. Some pages can still post links in comments while others cannot. Meta's help center does not explicitly state that the link restriction is a test. David Diskin, president of California Freethought Day, was quoted prices of $40 for eight links, $119 for 20, or $399 for unlimited earlier this month. The restriction was lifted this week without explanation. Diskin said the issue was fixed only after the group's major fundraiser had ended.

A Meta spokesperson said the company is testing whether link sharing should be part of the Meta One subscription. In an update on October 23, the spokesperson stated that pages must list "nonprofit" in the category section of their Facebook page for the system to recognize them. It remains unclear why organizations that state their status elsewhere are not identified.