Meta One subscription announcement published in September 2026. Picture: Shutterstock/Koshiro K
News publishers are excluded from new restrictions on the number of external links that Facebook pages can post for free in a month, Press Gazette understands.
The tech giant announced its Meta One subscription service in September, with perks for business pages such as verified badges, more audience insights and more content scheduling tools.
But the most notable feature has been using the scheme to effectively charge for the right to post external links on Meta sites. Meta is testing a restriction on the number of links that Facebook and Instagram business pages can post per month.
Without paying for a subscription, pages could come up against a maximum of two Facebook links per month.
This limit only applies to select Facebook pages. User profiles with Professional Mode turned on so far, meaning some creators and businesses, are hitting the limit but others can continue to post unrestricted.
Until now it has been unclear whether news publishers will come up against the link limit. But Press Gazette understands that news publishers are excluded – as they were from similar tests for the Meta Verified subscription (now folded into Meta One) that began at the end of last year.
However it has not been confirmed how Meta defines who falls into this category – and Press Gazette is aware of small publishers that have been told they hit the free link limit.
Under the Meta One trial, those restricted from posting links would have to pay $49.99 (£37.65) per month to post eight links, $149.99 (£112.98) to post 20, or $499.99 (£376.60) for an unlimited number (alongside the other perks included).
The cheapest Essential plan ($14.99/£11.29) does not include any extra links, keeping the limit at two per month.
The changes also mean Instagram links will be possible for the first time , with the Advanced plan giving four links per month in Instagram reels or posts, eight in the Expert plan, and 12 in the Max plan. Previously creators and publishers have had to write “link in bio” and used a link hosting page as external links are harder to post organically.
Across various social media platforms that have begun restricting outbound posts by downgrading them in their algorithms, creators and publishers have got used to publishing a post without a link and writing “link in comments”.
However the new restrictions being tested include links in comments. Users included in the test have reported that once they hit the limit, their URLs appear as plain, non-clickable text.
On Facebook the only links that do not count towards the new limits are: additional links in the comments of a post where a link has already been posted, links to other Meta-owned platforms (including Whatsapp), links for partners through Facebook’s affiliate partnerships, and links in adverts.
Social media expert Matt Navarra told Press Gazette it was “frustrating” for publishers that they had not explicitly been told they were excluded from the tests.
He noted that the move towards “explicitly selling higher link allowances” was a “pretty extraordinary shift when you stand back from it.
“Facebook used to court publishers for their links and now it’s experimenting with charging pages for the privilege of sending people away from Facebook. I think that tells you a lot about where Meta’s priorities are now.
“News has been steadily deprioritised on Facebook for years while creators’ reels and native content have become much more important. So even if publishers ultimately get an exemption the wider direction of travel is pretty obvious, I think. Meta increasingly sees an external link as something that takes value out of its ecosystem rather than something that adds value to it.”
The restriction on posting links in comments “is where it gets particularly painful”, Navarra added, “because the old social media manager trick has always been fine, you know, if platforms don’t like links in posts, you put the URL in the first comment…
“Meta appears to be deliberately closing that workaround as well. That matters because it suggests this isn’t really about tweaking the algorithm, this is about controlling the actual ability to create an outbound link, and that makes Meta One much more consequential for publishers, I think.
“For years publishers have been told to adapt their content to each platform – native videos and carousels, reels, whatever a platform wanted. This potentially takes that one stage further: create natively for free. Want to send that audience somewhere you own? That may increasingly cost you. And for publishers, that’s the bit I’d be watching most closely.”
[Read more: Facebook algorithm change in April ‘crushed’ audience reach for Digitalbox ]
Publishers have begun weighing up whether a subscription would be worth it to them if they are limited to two posts per month in future.
In December Meta signed its first AI licensing deals with major publishers in the US including CNN, People Inc and Fox News . Other AI deals with the likes of OpenAI have included access to otherwise paid-for enterprise tech suggesting Meta One could end up on the negotiating table.
Navarra said publishers would need to “look at how many clicks Facebook genuinely drives, what those visitors are worth and whether the subscription pays for itself”.
He said: “If Facebook is still sending a publisher significant traffic and that traffic converts into subscriptions, registrations or meaningful ad revenue then paying for more links may simply become another distribution cost. But for plenty of publishers Facebook referral traffic has already declined quite dramatically, so paying Meta to restore something that Meta itself has spent years making less effective isn’t automatically a great deal. I’d treat it like paid acquisition.”
Navarra added that publishers “should probably use this as another reminder not to build their business around rented distribution… direct audience relationships become even more important when a platform can suddenly decide that outbound links are a premium feature.
“I think the bigger lesson here is that publishers don’t own their Facebook audience as we’ve known for years. Meta owns the tap and now it’s putting a price on that tap.”
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