Hey y’all, I didn’t think I’d be writing another one of these posts, but FB is pulling a new shenanigan that makes it very hard for authors and small businesses to operate or stay there. I want you to know this because there’s a real chance I won’t be on the site after October 30th.
Here’s the first problem. I know it’s a bit hard to read but it’s basically saying once they switch entirely over to the Meta One subscription model, you’ll have to pay, per profile, anywhere from $14.00 USD to $499.00 USD PER MONTH to make FB work for you professional. I’ve underlined the prices in red. This was introduced in September 2026 so we knew what’s coming.
Why this matters. Basically it’s telling the users that you either pay for genAI slop to be added to your profile and maybe you’ll be seen by actual humans, or you’re just taking up space. Pay to play. For small businesses like mine, there’s no way I can afford this. To just interact? When genAI slop is taking the lion’s share the writing income? FB has already strangled most of the interaction on my “Official Siobhan Muir” professional FB page (which they insisted I needed to make), so I’d pretty much stopped using it. What’s the point when I have to pay to “boost” my posts to no one who actually follows the page?
“Too specialized or too costly to bring to everyone”. Yeah, I’m not buying that. It’s more of ‘we’re the richest company in the world, but we need YOUR money because you’re really our products.’ What they’re actually saying is you must pay to stay (they think it’s play) and they are hard-core pushing toward genAI bots anyway. I’ve gotten friend requests recently that came out of nowhere, but they’re almost human. It has made me stop accepting friend requests until I can figure out if they aren’t bots.
But the next thing is just awesome for small business owners, NOT.
Here’s what’s coming on December 16 2026. Just like on December 16 2025, FB is making a major change to see how much the users will tolerate. This time they’re limiting “organic” links unless you signed up for “verified” – it’s basically the Blue Check system the Muskrat implemented on Twitter. Be verified and get full use (rather than special perks). Suddenly, it’s not possible to promote ANYTHING on FB without paying for it. Hell, I can’t even tell you to go visit my blog where I know the links won’t be hidden. I swear, Meta is trying to lose users.
Here’s a link about it: Social MarketingNut
If that wasn’t bad enough, now they gave us a new threat. This is from their new Terms of Service that goes into effect on October 30 2026:
“You authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents) and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users’ use of Meta Company Products and services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs. Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products, services, and features provided under these Commercial Terms and any other applicable supplemental terms.”
Link source: Nieman Lab
Oh Fuck NO! You’re not scraping my writing just because I show up on your site. I get them scraping their own site’s posts – there are plenty of them. But they aren’t jumping through a URL and scraping MY site, too. That really makes my use of FB and Insta problematic. Like I will be deleting my page and 14 years of use.
So what am I proposing if you only know me from Facebook?
Join me at the links below:
Newsletter: siobhanmuir.com/newsletter
Discord: House of Muir Server
Bluesky: Siobhan on Bluesky
Mastodon: Siobhan on Mastodon
YouTube: Siobhan Muir
Tumblr: siobhanmuirromance
Patreon: Siobhan on Patreon
Join me on Discord – House of Muir Server
It’s a lot like Facebook in that people can comment and respond to posts. It’s a great way to keep on the day-to-day.
Join Mastodon. It’s free and you can choose any server that fits your interests. I’m on socel.net which is a graphic arts/digital arts server, but I interact with writers and artists alike there. Siobhan on Mastodon
I’m also on Bluesky, which is a Twitter alternative and works a lot like that except here are better blocking capabilities and no one is worried about blue check marks. Siobhan on Bluesky
Other free options are my Youtube channel: Siobhan Muir
Tumblr: siobhanmuirromance
Newsletter: siobhanmuir.com/newsletter
Or you can support me on Patreon, which keeps me doing all sorts of things and you get to benefit from them.
The point is, FB isn’t the only place you can keep up with me and now, I have even more reasons to stay off the Meta sites (Insta, FB, Threads). I know a lot of people refuse to leave Meta products because it’s been easy, but it’s now unusable for small business owners and I won’t be party to their theft.
I’ll leave the links in a graphic on my profile and page until October 29th. Then I’m shutting things down. Hope to see y’all in other places because I sure do like connecting with you.