Meta One Trial Pays $50 for Links, Stranding City Libraries and Nonprofits

A new Meta subscription tier is restricting how many links Facebook pages can share, a change that has reached government and nonprofit accounts despite company promises of exemption.

The experiment, part of the Meta One plans, limits free link sharing to two posts per month. To post more, pages must pay for a subscription. The $49.99 tier allows eight links monthly, while the $149.99 tier permits 20. Only the top tier at $499.99 offers unlimited access.

Daniel Starks, communications manager for Greenville, Texas, a city of 35,000, oversees nearly a dozen city pages. The Greenville Library page, verified by Meta as a government building, recently hit its two-link limit. Starks said the city relies on Facebook to direct residents to website information. He told staff to stop putting links in posts and instead place URLs in comments. He also created a graphic to inform followers of the change. Starks described the situation as a problem for an official entity trying to share important information while being paywalled for a basic function.

Small nonprofits face similar hurdles. Bethany English, co-president of the East Side Pawject in Indianapolis, manages a page with just under 1,000 followers. Last week, she found she could not add a website link to a post about a pet food pantry event because her two monthly links were already used. The "expert" plan for 20 links costs $150. English is considering using dedicated Facebook events or asking board members to post links from personal profiles, which remain exempt.

Jeff Bannister, marketing manager at SparkPoint, a North Carolina nonprofit, called the $50 price for eight links "crazy." He noted that the return on investment seems negative. He is exploring ways for local groups to share information directly to reduce reliance on Facebook, though much of Transylvania County remains active on the platform.

David Diskin, president of California Freethought Day, received a notice of the limit earlier this month, days before an annual event in Sacramento. He was quoted prices of $40 for eight links, $119 for 20, and $399 for unlimited. The restriction was lifted this week without explanation. Diskin said the issue was not fixed until after the group's major fundraiser had passed.

Meta has tested paid linking for nearly a year, first under Meta Verified and now under Meta One. The $14.99 tier includes no extra Facebook links but allows a dedicated link page on Instagram. The company’s help center pages do not state that the link restriction is a test. Interviewees noted confusion over the rules, with some users able to post links in comments while others could not.

A Meta spokesperson said the company is "testing whether sharing links on Facebook should be part of the Meta One subscription." In an update on October 23, the spokesperson stated that pages must list "nonprofit" in the category section of their Facebook page for Meta’s systems to recognize them. It remains unclear why organizations that state their status elsewhere or use Meta’s fundraising tools are not identified.