A disgruntled FB post from former admin:
Meta has started to charge big bucks for businesses like my own Grand Adventure to be able to post links on Facebook to expose followers to content outside of their platform -- like, say, my Grand Adventure YouTube videos, the very foundation of my business. Why? To maximize their ad revenue by keeping people doom scrolling within their own ecosystem.
Those of us who were around at the beginning in the 80's and 90's remember various transfer protocols in the Internet's early days: Usenet, FTP, other lesser-used protocols like Archie and Veronica, and eventually, the World Wide Web (WWW). The World Wide Web (just think about that name for a moment) was created entirely around the use of hyperlinks. It couldn't exist without hyperlinks. They're the foundation of the Internet that we all know and use today, and Meta is now asking businesses of any size to pay a big fee to actually post a free hyperlink.
Meta has made zero distinction between a small business owner like me that barely turns a profit, and a multi-billion-dollar Fortune 500 company. Both are asked to pay the same price: $149 per month for posting up to 20 links per month, or $499 per month for unlimited. ANY fee to post a hyperlink is an affront to an open Internet; those fees, though, are positively outrageous.
To quote the article's author, "Meta has decided that sharing a simple hyperlink on Facebook is no longer a normal thing to do. It is a paid luxury feature now." Like most of us, I initially joined Facebook to stay connected (and reconnect) with distant friends and family. Then, however, Facebook began actively courting small businesses. They created Facebook Pages, and I agreed to build one for Grand Adventure.
For years, Meta begged for my free labor to build content for THEIR audience as they tacked their own ads onto my content -- and keep 100% of that ad revenue. Hell, I STILL get reminders to "post daily to build (my) audience," yadda, yadda. They did the same thing to all manner of small businesses around the world, from local cafes to independent artists.
Fine. Keep the ad revenue. You have to pay for the servers somehow, and I don't decry any business the right to be profitable. They're not a charity, after all. I accepted that bargain as a way to build awareness for my brand, a win-win for both sides. But as I've been doing their work for them all these years, Facebook slowly began throttling the reach for any of my posts that contain an external link -- while asking me to pay THEM to stop doing so, calling that "Boosting" like it's a feature that I should be thrilled to purchase. That's where the calculus of that bargain we had struck started to change unilaterally.
That was bad enough, but now that Grand Adventure has accumulated 7,500 Facebook followers as a result of MY hard work, they now want to charge ME $499 per month to provide that content and continue that relationship.
As the article's author puts it, "Imagine buying an apartment in a modern condo, and the landlord suddenly tells you that you can exit the parking lot only twice a month for free. If you want to leave your own home more often, you must pay a monthly toll. Does that sound normal to anyone? Because that is exactly what Mark Zuckerberg is offering you today."
Sorry for being so direct (you should expect that from me by now), but Facebook can suck it. I'm now giving serious consideration to telling them to go to hell and pulling the plug on them completely. Do I really need Facebook? When I look at my YouTube stats for the past year, Facebook accounts for 2,204 out of 1,220,476 video views - a measly 0.18%.
I truly believe that this new policy will be their death knell. Welcome to MySpace and AOL, Facebook.
