Meta Link Caps Hit Public Agencies Promised Exemption, City Says

Greenville, Texas, a city of about 35,000, manages nearly a dozen Facebook pages for city operations, and its library page was told this month it can place links in two posts per month before hitting a wall. Hitting that limit requires a Meta One subscription priced at $50 or above each month. The library page is labeled as a government building and had been verified by Meta previously.

Meta has been testing paid link sharing for almost a year, and the feature now sits inside its Meta One subscription tiers. The $14.99 monthly plan adds no Facebook link allotment. The $49.99 plan permits eight links monthly, the $149.99 plan permits 20, and the $499.99 plan permits unlimited links. The company has said government and nonprofit pages are outside the scope of the test.

Daniel Starks, communications manager for Greenville, said more than half of the city's communication directs residents to information on its website. He told staff to move URLs into comments and made a graphic explaining the shift to followers. "When you have an official governmental entity that is trying to get out in some instances very, very, important information, and we're being paywalled by Facebook all because we're trying to post a link, that's a problem," he said.

Bethany English, co-president of East Side Pawject in Indianapolis, said last week she could not attach her website link to a post about an event because her two monthly links were spent. An expert plan covering 20 links runs $150 monthly. Her group has just under 1,000 followers and uses the page to publish pantry locations, donation requests and volunteer needs. She is weighing Facebook events for each listing or having board members post links from personal profiles, which are not subject to the caps.

Jeff Bannister, marketing manager at SparkPoint in Transylvania County, North Carolina, called $50 for eight links "crazy" and said the return on investment "seems almost negative." He is looking at ways for local nonprofits to swap information with each other to pull back from Facebook use, though he said much of the county remains on the platform. David Diskin, president of California Freethought Day in Sacramento, received notice of a limit days before an annual civic engagement event and was quoted $40 monthly for eight links, $119 for 20 links or $399 for unlimited. The restriction was lifted this week without explanation. "It wasn't until after our big fundraiser had passed that they fixed the problem," he said.

A Meta spokesperson said the company is "testing whether sharing links on Facebook should be part of the Meta One subscription" and will adjust based on feedback. In an October 23, 2026 update, the spokesperson said pages must carry "nonprofit" in their category field for Meta systems to classify them that way. It remains unclear why organizations naming their status elsewhere, or those using Meta fundraising tools, are not recognized.

People running the affected pages report confusion about where the limits apply. Some can still post links in comments while others cannot, and Meta's plan descriptions and help center pages do not identify the link restriction as a test.