In a new move, Meta has decided to end support for the Instant Articles feature, which loads news articles faster. It has been available to mobile apps since 2015.
The feature helps news articles load quickly on mobile devices. Over 4.9x faster than the usual web browser for an iPhone or Android device.
But according to Axios, this feature will be discontinued by mid-April. Because this option is not used enough.
A Facebook representative said: “Currently, less than 3% of what users around the world see on the Facebook homepage are posts with links to news articles.
Axios noted that Meta has reduced its investment in news content, such as ending payments to US publishers to include their articles in the News tab.
With Instant Articles turned off in mid-April 2023, 37,000 Pages using the feature had enough time to re-evaluate their strategies on Facebook. This step means that the links will go directly to the publisher's site instead.