Facebook, what are you playing at, mun? 😳💷
Just when you thought running an independent website wasn’t already expensive enough, Facebook has apparently found another way of putting basic functionality behind a subscription.
While attempting to create a new Facebook post for The Riff Report, we were greeted with a message that made us genuinely stop and stare at the screen.
According to the notification displayed directly inside Facebook:
“You can add links to 2 posts per month, and you’ve used them all.”
Yep.
Two. Links. Per. Month.
Want to share more?
Facebook is pointing users towards its paid Meta One subscription.
And for independent websites, bloggers, bands, photographers, promoters, venues and small businesses that rely on Facebook to send people towards their websites, this could be a pretty significant change.
Grab a cuppa — or something considerably stronger — because this one’s going to annoy a few people. ☕🤘
🔗 What Happened?
We were creating a Facebook post containing a link when a pop-up appeared informing us that we’d reached our monthly allowance.
The message reads:
“Get more from links with Meta One”
It then explains:
“You can add links to 2 posts per month, and you’ve used them all. Unlock more links, custom previews and call-to-action buttons on every post with Meta One.”
Facebook then lists three benefits of subscribing:
🔗 Share Links More Often
The subscription allows users to drive traffic to their website beyond the monthly limit.
🖼️ Choose Your Preview Image
Subscribers can select the image people see when sharing a link.
📢 Add a Call-To-Action Button
Users can add buttons designed to encourage people to interact directly with the post.
At the bottom of the message sits the big blue button:
“Get Meta One”
Or, alternatively…
Close.
Cheers for that, Facebook. 😂
😳 TWO LINKS A MONTH?!
Let’s concentrate on that number for a second.
Two external-link posts per month.
For somebody who occasionally posts something on Facebook, perhaps that doesn’t sound catastrophic.
For a website?
It’s ridiculous.
The Riff Report can publish several stories in a single day.
We’re covering:
🎸 Rock and metal news
🤘 Festivals
🎤 Gig reviews
📸 Concert photography
🔥 Band announcements
🎟️ Tours
💿 Albums and singles
🎪 Festival guides
🎬 Entertainment
📚 Interviews
🇬🇧 UK music news
🐉 Welsh bands and festivals
Two links wouldn’t even get us through breakfast on a particularly busy news day.
💷 AND THEN COMES THE SUBSCRIPTION
The solution Facebook presents is simple:
Pay for Meta One.
The subscription being offered can run into roughly £40 per month depending on the plan and account, meaning something as straightforward as regularly posting links back to your own website could potentially become another monthly business expense.
Think about that.
You’re creating the content.
You’re paying for your website.
You’re paying for your hosting.
You’re spending hours writing articles.
You’re taking photographs.
You’re travelling to gigs.
You’re paying for equipment.
You’re building an audience.
You’re creating posts for Facebook.
And now you could potentially have to pay Facebook simply to regularly link those posts back to your own website.
That’s a hell of a business model. 😂💷
📰 THIS COULD HIT INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS HARD
This is where things become considerably less funny.
Large media organisations can potentially absorb another subscription fee.
For small independent publishers, every additional monthly expense matters.
There are thousands of independent music websites, blogs, photographers, community news outlets, football sites, gaming websites and specialist publications using Facebook as an important way of reaching their readers.
Many don’t have massive advertising budgets.
They’ve spent years building Facebook audiences organically.
Those followers have actively chosen to follow those Pages because they want their content.
Yet if external links become heavily restricted without a subscription, reaching those followers with website content becomes considerably more difficult.
🎸 THINK ABOUT SMALL BANDS
It isn’t only publishers either.
Imagine you’re in an unsigned Welsh rock band.
You’ve released a new single.
You want to post:
🎵 Spotify link
🎬 YouTube video
🎟️ Ticket link
👕 Merchandise store
🌐 Band website
💿 Bandcamp release
That’s already six different links.
Under a two-link monthly allowance, you’ve potentially used your allocation before you’ve even started properly promoting the release.
The same applies to promoters.
Tickets on sale!
There’s a link.
Stage times announced!
Another link.
Congratulations.
Monthly allowance gone. 😂
🎪 FESTIVALS COULD FACE THE SAME PROBLEM
Festivals use social media constantly to direct fans towards external websites.
Ticket sales.
Camping information.
Accessibility information.
Travel guides.
Merchandise.
Line-ups.
FAQs.
Accommodation.
Applications.
Press information.
A festival could easily need dozens of external links during a busy month.
For independent festivals already operating on tight margins, another subscription isn’t exactly going to have organisers cracking open the celebratory cans.
📱 FACEBOOK WANTS YOU TO STAY ON FACEBOOK
There is also a bigger issue lurking behind all this.
Social media platforms understandably want people spending as much time as possible inside their ecosystems.
External links do the opposite.
You click.
You leave Facebook.
You visit somebody else’s website.
For independent websites like The Riff Report, that’s exactly what we need.
Social media isn’t our website.
The Riff Report website is our home.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and the rest are brilliant tools for discovering our content, but ultimately we want readers visiting the actual publication.
That’s where the full articles live.
That’s where our festival guides live.
That’s where our reviews live.
That’s where our archive lives.
That’s where The Riff Report belongs.
🤔 SO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
For publishers, this is another reminder of something we’ve been saying for years:
Never build your entire audience on somebody else’s platform.
Algorithms change.
Reach changes.
Features disappear.
Rules change.
Subscription tiers appear.
And something that worked brilliantly yesterday can suddenly become useless tomorrow.
That’s why independent websites remain important.
Your website is yours.
Your mailing list is yours.
Your community is yours.
Social media should help people discover that community — not become the gatekeeper standing outside demanding another monthly payment.
🐉 THE RIFF REPORT ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE
Facebook can change its algorithms.
It can change its subscription plans.
It can decide that we’re only allowed two links, twelve links or one link every time Halley’s Comet flies over Merthyr.
We’ll adapt.
Because The Riff Report wasn’t built around Facebook.
It was built around music.
Bands.
Fans.
Festivals.
Venues.
Photographers.
Promoters.
And the gloriously chaotic rock and metal community that keeps this whole thing alive. 🤘
We’ll continue publishing.
We’ll continue supporting bands.
We’ll continue covering festivals.
We’ll continue taking photographs.
We’ll continue shouting about brilliant music.
And we’ll continue finding ways of getting those stories in front of you.
Even if Zuckerberg makes us send the bloody links by carrier pigeon. 🐦😂
💬 WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Would you pay around £40 every month simply to be able to regularly share links from your Facebook Page?
Or do restrictions like this make you less interested in using Facebook altogether?
For independent publishers and small businesses, this could become yet another reason to concentrate on websites, newsletters and platforms where they have more control over their audience.
One thing’s certain:
Two links per month isn’t going to cut it for The Riff Report.
Not when the rock and metal world produces approximately seventeen breaking stories while we’re trying to make a cup of tea. 😂☕🎸
Proudly Welsh. Proudly Loud. 🐉🤘
The Riff Report
Supporting bands, festivals, venues and the rock community — one ridiculously loud story at a time.
