Meta’s Instant Articles on Facebook will be discontinued

According to Axios, Meta will discontinue support for its Instant Articles format in the Facebook app next year. The quick-loading article format debuted in 2015, but Meta is abandoning it as part of a larger shift away from news-focused offerings. According to Meta spokesman Erin Miller, the firm has informed its media partners that Facebook will no longer offer Instant Articles in six months (or April 2023). After support stops, Facebook news links will redirect users to a publisher’s mobile site.

Meta has been reducing its spending on news in recent months. Earlier this year, the business moved resources away from Facebook’s News tab and Bulletin newsletter offering, and just this month, it announced that Bulletin will be phased out altogether by early 2023.

Instead, Meta is attempting to make Facebook’s Feed work more similar to TikTok’s, with the main feed focusing on algorithmic suggestions of material you may enjoy.

Meta isn’t the only firm that has made significant modifications to its quick-loading article format; Google no longer needs articles to be produced in AMP to be included in the “Top Stories” section and now ranks search results based on the “page experience.”