Meta continues to screw over its creators
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Meta continues to screw over its creators
I received this email from Hüseyin Kilic, the founder of the science news site Interesting Engineering (which I profiled a few years ago over here):
Hey Simon,
Hope you’re well. It has been a long time.
Wanted to put this in front of you because I think it’s a piece for you and the more I look at it, the more I think it’s not just a publisher story.
Since the beginning of April, established creators in Meta’s Content Monetization Program are reporting 60–90% revenue drops overnight. Same content, same reach, same audiences, same posting schedule. Not a slow decline, a collapse and it’s because of RPM cuts.
I posted in the Facebook Bonus Program Issues group and the response was instant from top contributors and verified accounts. Drops of 70%, 80%, 92%. Followers going from thousands per week to a handful per day. One creator put it best: “money has halved, like a light switched off.”
Here’s where I think the bigger story is. This isn’t only about publishers losing income. It’s about what’s filling the gap.
Meta is openly shifting massive capital into AI. Several creators in the thread said it directly: “they’re shifting to finance their AI initiatives, the money had to come from somewhere.”
AI-generated content is increasingly winning distribution. Synthetic videos, AI voiceovers, AI-generated images, and faceless pages are getting reach while human-made content with real on-camera presence is being deprioritized.
At the same time, Meta launched Creator Fast Track on March 18 and is paying flat-fee invite deals to new creators. Pay your established creators 70% less, replace them with fixed-fee newcomers and AI-generated content, capture the savings. That’s the shape of what’s actually happening.
They are replacing humans with AI, automated customer service which creates so much trouble.
Let me know if you want to cover this.
Yes, I certainly want to cover this, because it touches on a theme I’ve returned to again and again in my newsletter: Meta screws over its creators.
For years, the company has operated “bonus” programs where it arbitrarily distributes cash to creators to incentivize their posting, only to then reel those payments in the moment it’s convenient. Then Meta sits back and waits for creators to start abandoning its platforms again before introducing a new bonus program. As one creator put it in that Facebook group post linked above:
I wish more people started to wake up about this.
It’s why Facebook offers bonuses as it spikes dopamine in people.
It’s like a casino giving people little wins every now and then, keeps people addicted and chasing the “win” when the reality is most won’t win.
Does Meta continue to be an enormously profitable company despite treating its creators poorly? Yes. But as I’ve argued in a previous newsletter, that approach also creates public relations problems and political headwinds for the company.
Polling consistently finds that Meta is one of the least-liked major tech companies, and governments around the world continue to introduce policies aimed at curbing its influence. I think the fact that it has repeatedly alienated some of the institutions with the largest megaphones — creators and media companies — has played a significant role in fueling that unpopularity.
ICYMI: This media startup is trying to reach readers exhausted by political noise
How Straight Arrow News is trying to build a national news brand around trust instead of outrage
That case study actually sits behind a paywall, but if you’re not ready to subscribe, I also included it in an ebook that you can download over here.
Quick hits
The nonprofit that owns Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood has started uploading episodes of the show to YouTube. [Current] I think we’re going to see more and more legacy media companies do stuff like this — put old IP on YouTube and leverage its huge reach to find new audiences and revenue.
A Massachusetts news site that simply creates transcripts of local government meetings and then leverages AI to summarize them flipped on a paywall. So far, it has 350 paid subscribers and is generating $25,000 a year. [Boston Globe]
A product manager at Microsoft has amassed over 800,000 followers across video platforms by posting highly technical content about AI. [Net Influencer]
“Opendorse, the NIL marketplace and tech company, projects that [college] freshman athletes across all sports will rake in $780 million [in sponsorships] in the next school year.” [WSJ] It’s incredible to consider how much the college sports landscape has changed in just the last decade now that athletes can actually monetize their fame. (BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)
Jimmy Kimmel appears to have absorbed a sizable portion of Stephen Colbert’s late night audience, while Fallon lags even further behind. It’s a further signal that we’re in a post-Johnny Carson media environment and that partisanship can be a smart business strategy. [Puck] (BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)
Apple TV is a tiny streamer compared to its competitors, but an extremely high percentage of its subscribers tune in to each show it produces. [The Verge]
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The software company that’s quietly building a media empire
For years, HubSpot was known as a pioneer of content marketing, building a huge library of articles that helped attract potential customers to its software products. But more recently, the company has expanded far beyond blog posts. It now owns newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels, and creator-led media brands that reach millions of people every month.
Jonathan Hunt, HubSpot’s VP of media, has helped oversee this evolution after working at companies like Vice, Vox Media, National Geographic, and Complex. In our interview, he explained why HubSpot is investing so heavily in media, how it turns content audiences into software customers, and why it sees creators as a major part of its growth strategy.
You can watch the interview on YouTube.
If you want to listen to an audio version, subscribe to the Business of Content wherever you get your podcasts: [Apple] [Spotify]