Facebook publishing is entering a new era that feels eerily familiar to veterans of the platform’s golden years.
After years of over-moderation, shrinking reach, and unclear monetization paths, Meta is rebuilding the foundation of Facebook for publishers. The company is rolling back restrictive systems, opening up to more diverse content again, and rebuilding trust with creators and media partners who once fueled its ecosystem.
In this deep dive, we’ll unpack the seven key shifts reshaping Facebook publishing right now, and what each means for your traffic, monetization, and long-term strategy.
1. End of Third-Party Fact-Checking
In January 2025, Meta officially ended its long-criticized third-party fact-checking program, replacing it with the Community Notes system, a seismic shift in Facebook’s content governance model.
For years, the legacy fact-checking initiative was plagued by false positives and uneven enforcement. Posts were frequently flagged for “false information” over satire, commentary, or politically sensitive content, leading to Page-wide or even account-level throttling that could last for months.
The new Community Notes system changes that completely. Under this model, individual posts receive contextual notes from users rather than formal “violations.” Reach limitations now apply only to the specific post, not the entire Page, unless a publisher repeatedly accumulates misleading content notes. This means creators and media Pages can once again share more diverse stories and commentary without fearing disproportionate penalties.
From a publisher’s standpoint, this marks the most significant shift in Facebook’s content ecosystem to date. It opens the door for broader storytelling, higher engagement, and ultimately, greater earnings potential.
What the Data Shows
- 50% reduction in enforcement mistakes: Meta reported a steep drop in content enforcement errors following the rollback of third-party fact-checking, while the prevalence of violating content remained stable.
- 61.4% decrease in misleading post spread: A 2024 University of Luxembourg study found that Community Notes-style systems reduce misinformation diffusion by over half on average. However, adoption challenges remain: only 5.7% of election-related notes on X were visible publicly by late 2024.
In short, Facebook’s new enforcement model prioritizes fairness and contextual transparency over blanket suppression, a move already delivering measurable improvements in accuracy and trust.
Prediction Probability: 100%. Confirmed rollout in progress across all regions.
2. Old Violations Removed
As Meta transitions to new moderation systems, publishers are already witnessing the gradual removal of legacy violations, from outdated “fake news” strikes to spam and nudity misclassifications. For years, creators and publishers were disproportionately affected by automated moderation errors that mistook harmless posts for violations. A single false flag could cripple a Page’s visibility for months, while multiple errors risked complete removal from the platform.
Meta has since acknowledged that its earlier moderation systems were too heavy-handed. In 2024, company executives, including Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg, admitted that error rates in automated content enforcement were unacceptably high. He described Meta’s moderation policy as a “living, breathing document,” noting the company’s struggle to balance AI-based detection with human judgment. These missteps had real business consequences for publishers: fewer impressions, lost ad revenue, and throttled reach due to algorithmic downgrades triggered by false positives.
The scale of the issue was immense. Meta’s transparency report from December 2024 revealed that the company removed millions of posts daily across its platforms, with 10–20% estimated as potential enforcement mistakes, many of which directly affected publisher Pages through automated spam or misinformation scans.
Historically, these moderation flaws hit publishers especially hard. Between 2019 and 2023, Facebook’s policies often targeted entire networks of affiliated Pages to curb misinformation, even when some of those Pages had no direct violations. Some publishers described this approach as a “blunt instrument” that unfairly punished legitimate outlets.
Now, as Meta refines its moderation framework and adopts contextual systems like Community Notes, the company is clearing outdated or erroneous violations from its database. Pages once held back by algorithmic penalties are regaining momentum, with some publishers reporting reach increases of 30–60% as old restrictions lift.
Prediction Probability: 80%. Cleanup is already in progress, with full rollout expected globally in the coming months.
3. New Content Moderation
Facebook is moving toward a more Libertarian era of content moderation, echoing what many publishers remember as the “Golden Years” of the 2010s. After years of rigid enforcement, Meta is now loosening restrictions on political, satirical, and even mildly divisive content, signaling a dramatic cultural shift inside the platform.
During the 2020–2023 period, Facebook heavily suppressed politically charged or sensational content in the name of “civic integrity.” But that suppression came at a cost: declining engagement, throttled reach, and millions in lost revenue for publishers who once thrived on provocative or high-interest narratives.
By late 2024, Meta began quietly rolling back those restrictions, allowing political, cultural, and satirical discussions back into the feed, provided they stayed within community guidelines.
For publishers, this opens the door to stronger narrative framing, emotional hooks, and more open debate, reminiscent of the early Facebook publishing boom when Page owners were earning hundreds of thousands, if not millions, per month from viral storytelling.
While blatant misinformation remains off-limits, publishers can now “stretch the edges” of storytelling and present content with more sensational or interpretive framing without fear of immediate suppression. Meta’s evolving moderation philosophy reflects a broader industry trend toward free expression over algorithmic paternalism.
However, this new freedom comes with a warning label. As our own experience at Publisher In A Box has shown, violations can still erase a Page overnight. Even experienced publishers can wake up to a “spam violation” that wipes out months of growth.
As moderation relaxes, vigilance is still essential. Every link post should be reviewed under strict editorial standards, especially those using bold or emotionally charged framing. Always monitor your Support Inbox daily. It’s where Facebook quietly drops violation notices. Caught early, most violations can be appealed successfully, often with Meta admitting, “Oops, we made a mistake.”
If a Page begins receiving multiple link or spam violations, the safest move is to scale back to image posts with links in captions until the account stabilizes, a strategy we regularly apply across our network. Simultaneously, continue experimenting with post formats to find what resonates while keeping engagement high and risk low.
Prediction Probability: 95%. It’s already happening, and the shift is accelerating across the platform.
4. New Revenue Share Programs
Meta’s next big move will be the rollout of standardized and transparent guidelines for its Facebook revenue share programs, a long-overdue shift toward clarity that mirrors what competing platforms have already done.
For years, Facebook’s monetization ecosystem was a black box. Publishers could earn substantial payouts through in-stream ads or performance bonuses, but qualification thresholds, eligibility criteria, and enforcement logic were often opaque.
In contrast, platforms like YouTube and X have long made their rules clear, publicly listing view, follower, and engagement requirements for participation in ad revenue programs.
Now, Facebook appears ready to follow suit. And that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Meta has always been a fast follower in feature adoption.
They borrowed the For You feed from TikTok, Stories from Snapchat, video monetization from YouTube, and most recently, Community Notes from X.
Even Facebook’s emerging “free speech” posture reflects X’s open-content ethos.
The logic is simple: to compete for the best publishing talent, Facebook will need to attract creators with predictable monetization models. Expect new dashboards with clear qualification benchmarks, standardized payout tiers, and transparent enforcement processes. This will finally allow publishers to scale confidently, forecast income, and manage their assets like structured media businesses rather than experimental side hustles.
The potential here is transformative. Imagine owning ten Facebook Pages each generating consistent monthly income, balancing 1:1 between website referral ad revenue and Facebook content monetization payouts. At that scale, publishers aren’t just managing pages; they’re running legitimate publishing enterprises, often with tens of thousands in recurring monthly profit.
And the system works, if you understand how to scale it scientifically. We’ve demonstrated how a pet niche was scaled from $800 to $8.5K per month in just six months, simply by identifying winning content, documenting what works, and replicating it efficiently.
Breaking news and topical distribution are also key levers. Cross-page distribution allows publishers to multiply income by pushing the same story across multiple high-performing Pages, each with its own audience and monetization stream.
Ultimately, Meta’s goal is clear: create a more publisher-friendly environment that keeps creators producing content on the platform instead of redirecting traffic away from it. In return, publishers gain transparency, predictability, and the confidence to reinvest in scaling.
Prediction Probability: 75%. Initial signals are visible, and the push for clarity is inevitable as competition with YouTube and X intensifies.
5. Better Opportunities for Creators
After years of being labeled the “boomer platform,” Facebook is poised for a massive cultural revival. And this time, data backs it up. Despite facing fierce competition from TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, Facebook still holds the largest global user base of any social platform, and its leadership is now intent on making it cool again.
Mark Zuckerberg himself has promised a return to Facebook’s “OG days,” when it was the heartbeat of the internet. Back then, people checked their feeds multiple times a day (if not hourly), shared breaking stories, debated ideas, and discovered viral content that felt alive, unfiltered, and essential.
Those dynamics are exactly what Meta is reviving through looser content moderation, expanded monetization, and a creator-first strategy.
And it’s already working.
Recent data from eMarketer shows that Gen Z is the only generation increasing its usership on Facebook, with U.S. Gen Z users rising 8.6% year-over-year. By 2024, nearly half (49%) of all Gen Z Americans were already active Facebook users, a figure that continues to climb as new creator tools and monetization programs launch.
Statista data further confirms the trend: as of June 2025, nearly 19% of U.S. Facebook users are aged 18–24, up from prior years, a demographic rebound contributing to projections of 262.8 million total U.S. Facebook users by 2028, compared to about 250 million in 2024.
What this means for publishers and creators is simple:
Facebook’s next growth wave will be youth-driven. The same generation that once abandoned the platform is now rediscovering it, drawn by video-first discovery, viral post formats, and creator monetization that feels accessible and profitable.
Initially, the resurgence may be led by right-leaning or culturally conservative audiences, who tend to engage more actively and monetize better, but broader adoption across all communities will follow as Facebook’s algorithm continues to favor open conversation and high-engagement storytelling.
Prediction Probability: 75%. The demographic shift is already measurable, and Meta’s strategy is accelerating it.
6. Bigger Page Followers = More Opportunities
After years of downplaying Page size in favor of algorithmic discovery, Facebook is once again rewarding scale, meaning your follower count is about to matter a lot more.
For much of the last few years, Page owners felt a familiar frustration: they’d spent years building massive audiences, only to see their reach throttled while small pages with viral posts sometimes outperformed them. The platform’s pivot to “content over community” made followings feel less valuable.
But that’s changing fast.
In line with its broader push to recreate the “OG Facebook” experience, Meta is restoring a model where larger Pages regain their advantage. Simply put: the bigger your audience, the more people you can reach again. Engagement-heavy pages will see their organic visibility rise, while smaller ones will have to fight harder, or pay to compete.
This renewed emphasis on scale will reignite the classic Facebook growth engine: publishers investing in follower acquisition through ads, collaborations, and viral campaigns to increase their baseline reach and monetization potential.
For Meta, it’s a smart economic move.
The more publishers spend to grow their Pages, the more ad revenue the platform generates. But the payoff is mutual: those same publishers will earn more as traffic, engagement, and monetized impressions surge.
In essence, Facebook is reestablishing a symbiotic cycle. Platform and publisher growth feeding each other, just like in the early 2010s. For digital publishers, that means it’s time to start building audiences aggressively again, whether organically or through paid “Like” campaigns designed for high-value markets.
Prediction Probability: 80%. Early algorithmic signals already confirm a renewed preference for established, high-follower Pages.
7. Promoting News Content
For years, Facebook took the path of least resistance when dealing with misinformation challenges: instead of fixing its approach to fact-checking, it simply stopped promoting news content altogether.
The logic was that news was messy, subjective, and difficult to moderate at scale. But that decision came at a cost.
Facebook lost its place as the world’s go-to destination for real-time information.
Now, Meta appears ready to fix that. The success of X, which has seen explosive engagement growth as the internet’s primary real-time news hub, has made it clear that users crave timely, shareable, visual news content.
In fact, research shows that 38% of U.S. adults regularly get their news from Facebook, keeping it ahead of YouTube (35%) and Instagram (20%) as the leading social media source for news consumption.
Meta’s own data shows that visual news performs best. Posts that pair headlines with compelling images or short videos achieve 2–3x higher engagement rates than text-only news posts.
Visual-driven stories now account for over 70% of the most-shared content on the platform. This trend naturally aligns with entertainment-style news — celebrity updates, viral events, human-interest stories — which produce up to 40% more shares than politics or hard news. Even though entertainment content makes up only 15% of total published news, it drives 25–35% of all news-related shares.
To regain habitual use and daily log-ins, Facebook needs to revive news as a hook, the type of content people check dozens of times a day to stay updated. That means reducing throttling on link posts, especially those from credible publishers and creator-led news pages, while rebalancing the algorithm toward timeliness and engagement.
Yes, users might spend slightly less time per session when clicking out to external links. But overall time spent on the platform will rise, as people return more often, drawn by dynamic, fast-moving updates. This cycle naturally benefits both Facebook and publishers: the platform regains relevance, and publishers see a resurgence of referral traffic and ad revenue.
It’s a strategic return to what made Facebook indispensable in the first place. A place where people go to know what’s happening right now.
Prediction Probability: 60%. Signals are emerging, and Facebook’s competitive pressure from X makes this shift highly plausible.
