Meta has announced that the instant articles for mobile app feature introduced in 2015 will no longer be available to Facebook users come 2023.
The feature which allows news articles to load more than 4.9x faster than your iPhone or Android device’s usual web browser will be banned.
According to The Sun UK, the feature designed to help publishers load stories on the Facebook app is being withdrawn next year because the option isn’t used enough.
A rep for Facebook said, “Currently less than three per cent of what people around the world see in Facebook’s Feed are posts with links to news articles.
“And as we said earlier this year, as a business it doesn’t make sense to over-invest in areas that don’t align with user preferences.”
Facebook is planning to switch off Instant Articles in mid-April 2023.
This is apparently so the 37,000 pages that use it have time to adjust.