Facebook sunsets legacy monetization programs as Instagram lands on iPad

Facebook has completed the consolidation of its creator monetization programs. The universal Content Monetization Program, which began rolling out last October, became the sole option on August 31 as all legacy programs were sunsetted.

Depending on eligibility, monetization options on personal profiles and business pages now span the unified program covering text, photos, Stories, videos and Reels, plus Stars, partnership ads, subscriptions and storefronts. Creators are being encouraged to check eligibility, since the unified structure changes how payouts across formats are calculated.

Meanwhile, Instagram has launched a dedicated iPad app designed for bigger screens, a long-requested addition. Observers read the move as a push to compete harder with TikTok and YouTube for lean-back viewing, especially now that Reels can be linked together into series, a format TikTok pioneered, nudging the app beyond quick snackable clips toward longer watch sessions.

Instagram's momentum is notable elsewhere too: the platform is reportedly growing at ten times the rate of Facebook in the European Union.

Two broader threads are running through the creator world. First, AI is taking over social feeds in less obvious ways than expected: almost all social media managers already lean on AI tools to speed up content production, and the real challenge has shifted to keeping feeds authentic, trustworthy and human. Second, communities are pooling their own defenses against the information flood, compiling shared, living lists of trusted AI news and education sources.

And a small product note that resonated with page managers: a buried Facebook section holds pending page-like invitations, which some suspect tie back to the platform's auto-invite settings, another sign of how far the network has moved from the follow-based social graph toward recommendation-driven distribution.