MANILA, Philippines -- A Meta-owned tracking tool popular among journalists, publishers and researchers that has been used for studying mis- and disinformation patterns in social media will no longer be available after Aug. 14, 2024.

The announcement about CrowdTangle, which has been used in tracking hot content on social networks, was seen March 15, 2024.

"CrowdTangle will no longer be available after August 14, 2024. Our data-sharing products are evolving alongside technology and regulatory changes," read the note on top of signed-in users' dashboards.

When clicked, the announcement led to an FAQ page containing details such as changes and product experiences that users may expect.

Here, researchers of scientific or public interest subjects "with a qualified academic or non-profit institution" were advised to apply for access to a facility called Meta Content Library.

Commercial news organizations were meanwhile told to use the Meta Business Suite's Insights, a dashboard within Facebook.

The end of CrowdTangle possibly represents yet another Meta move to pivot away from news, an industry it has befriended and partnered with in the last decade as it was growing its content and video businesses.

In August 2022, a Poynter think piece articulated what was then a brewing fear among CrowdTangle users: "Concerns are growing over the loss of the unparalleled tool for analyzing trends, tracking article sources and understanding virality on Facebook."

Back then, there was no confirmation yet on what would happen to CrowdTangle.

But towards the end of 2022, online news managers in the Asia-Pacific were shocked to learn about the mass layoffs at the company formerly known as Facebook that affected staff who represented or paved the way for long-standing news publishers' relationships with the social media giant. Among those who were let go towards the end of the year were key CrowdTangle staff.

The eliminated Meta/ Facebook roles went as high up as news partnerships heads in Southeast Asia and other managerial posts that were pivotal in handling complex news content publishing issues on the social media platform.

ABS-CBN News itself used CrowdTangle in important stories that traced how social media influenced the 2022 Philippine elections:
Marcos content spreads via super-sharers on Facebook
Marcos is presidential bet with biggest Facebook footprint since 2016
Mayor Isko Moreno's presence on Facebook grew massively, quickly after 2019
Robredo has 393M+ reactions, comments on FB since 2016 -- mostly negative
Robin Padilla has biggest FB presence among Senate bets topping tallies 

Apart from these, numerous academic papers particularly on mis- and disinformation have been written on the basis of data obtained from CrowdTangle.

"Publishers around the world turn to CrowdTangle to surface stories that matter, measure their social performance and identify influencers," a Facebook spokesperson said in an email statement to a news organization back when it announced it was purchasing CrowdTangle in 2016.

The startup then claimed that thousands of journalists use its tool daily, with its customers around the world including newspapers, television stations, digital media outlets, nonprofits, and sports teams.