Then-Facebook introduced Instant Articles in May 2015 with the aim of letting publishers on its platform provide users with content that boasted faster load times and more rich media. Now-Meta said Friday that support for Instant Articles will be no more as of mid-April 2023.
The demise of Instant Articles continues the trend by Meta of scrapping its investments in news content on its platform, as the company said in late July that it would no longer pay for content aggregated for its News tab in order to reallocate resources to artificial-intelligence-based video experiences.
Meta followed that up by revealing earlier this month that off-platform newsletter offering Bulletin would sunset early next year.
A spokesperson for Meta confirmed the report by Sara Fischer of Axios, saying in a statement, “Currently less than 3% of what people around the world see in Facebook’s Feed are posts with links to news articles. And as we said earlier this year, as a business, it doesn’t make sense to over invest in areas that don’t align with user preferences.”
