‘Close subscriptions via FB Instant Articles is not coming to iOS’

Facebook and Apple would not come to an agreement in the negotiation of subscribing to media via Instant Articles. Apple would like 30 percent of the proceeds, Facebook wants all the money to go to the media.

The deadlock in the negotiations has been going on for months and will ensure that the subscription function will only be available on Android, Recode reports. An iOS variant will not come or will follow later, depending on how the negotiations go. Google would not want a share of the proceeds, making the function on Android possible.

The intention is that the function to take out subscriptions via Facebook will be available soon. Facebook announced the subscription feature in August and it should be available this month. This is a test with presumably mainly American media. Instant Articles also get a logo of the medium from which the article is next to the text, to make it clear who made the article.

Facebook has decided to take the steps after discussions with many publishers last year. Many publishers have already dropped out of Instant Articles, because the system has taken a lot of time and energy and yielded little. In addition, in the News Feed, Facebook did not prioritize Instant Articles over externally hosted articles, leaving media with little benefit from using the system. However, Facebook started to prefer videos and messages from family and friends to those from publishers, which reduced the reach of the media on Facebook.

Facebook presented Instant Articles a few years ago. In addition, Facebook hosts the articles and due to restrictions on the pages, they have to load quickly on mobile devices, while publishers of their own advertisements are allowed to keep all the revenue and 70 percent of the revenue from advertisements sold via Facebook.