Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter.
Read this article in French in Médianes.
Earlier this month, newsrooms across Europe opened their Meta dashboards to find that the company had removed all ads concerning “political, electoral, and social issues.” The move was a response to what Meta called “the unworkable requirements and legal uncertainties” introduced by a new law in the EU that puts strict conditions on the delivery of political advertising online.
Meta’s decision quickly drew criticism for reaching well beyond political ads, however. Swept up in the ban was not just political messaging but also thousands of promotional posts from news outlets, including subscription offers, fundraising drives, even cultural coverage. And it landed at the worst possible time for publishers, right in the middle of year-end campaigns. In France, newsrooms are already preparing coverage of next spring’s municipal elections, which typically relies on paid reach to connect with new audiences and turn followers into subscribers.
“And just like that, all of our campaigns were blocked,” said Marie-Agnès Cuisset, head of digital marketing at La Croix, a major French general-interest Catholic newspaper. It was a blow. “Meta is one of our key drivers: low costs, qualified traffic, and subscriptions,” Cuisset said.
Meta’s automated system for identifying and blocking the ads includes no human review pre-check tool. The system flags trigger words used in ads rather than assessing the intent of the messaging or the people behind them. That means Meta’s net sweeps so wide that it catches journalistic language touching on broad topics like health, the economy, and the environment. Workaday headlines such as “Is socialism on the rise?,” “What’s the future of public healthcare?,” or “How can we tackle climate change?” can trigger rejection and should be rewritten to avoid those triggers, according to Meta’s guidance.
The policy “doesn’t map to newsrooms,” says Julie Lelièvre, marketing lead at Vert, an emerging independent outlet focused on ecology. “You can cover an issue without endorsing it.” Her small team depends heavily on Instagram for visibility. Marie-Laure Gardaz, marketing director at XXI, a quarterly known for its long-form narrative journalism, called the trio of banned categories “the triptych from hell.”
Which ads trigger rejection and which are allowed feels arbitrary and inconsistent to newsrooms. Even politically neutral promos concerning a gardening story, a piece about Notre-Dame, or a new-issue launch were rejected. In addition, many outlets spent months obtaining Meta’s certification label for “political, electoral, and social-issue” ads, assuming that the certification would guarantee compliance with the EU law. Instead, the label became a liability: when the ban took effect, certified accounts were automatically filtered out. La Croix removed its certification label and saw its ads restored.
Depending on their size, newsrooms are feeling the effects of the ban unevenly. For independent newsrooms, each ad that is suspended means lost visibility and time. Larger media companies have more of a buffer. La Croix, part of the long-established Bayard group, appealed and eventually got some of its blocked posts restored.
XXI, on the other hand, is owned by a smaller independent media group called Indigo Publications. Its campaigns were abruptly halted. “Once the system flags one ad, it paralyzes the entire account,” Gardaz explained.
The Meta ban calls to mind the chaos sown by Facebook’s infamous “pivot to video” in 2015, which was motivated largely by advertising revenue. How long can newsrooms keep building strategies on ground that shifts at the whims of tech companies? Though Meta’s recent decision only affects paid content, for newsrooms the message is a structural warning. When a single platform controls visibility and traffic, what works to distribute content today might vanish tomorrow.
Despite these risks, news outlets continue to publish on Meta because the platform remains one of the cheapest and most effective ways to reach new audiences. Alternatives like LinkedIn or TikTok lack the scale and audience fit that Meta offers. And many publishers have already moved away from X. For most outlets, adapting to Meta feels safer than exiting it.
As one independent newsroom leader put it: “If Zuckerberg went off the rails like Musk, we’d face a real audience problem.”
Still, the moment has prompted a mindset shift. At Vert, the team has been exploring ways to build organic visibility on Meta by collaborating with like-minded media and creators with strong engagement like Le Tréma, known for its meme-driven content. “Rather than paying Meta, paying an engaged creator might be a better use of funds,” says Lelièvre. One collaboration drew nearly four million views.
“We’ll adapt, just like when X turned into a dumpster. It’s a crisis, sure, but there’s one like this every year or two with social platforms,” says Samuel Chalom, head of social media at Indigo. The group now pools marketing expertise across its five titles to reduce its reliance on platforms and strengthen its direct relationship to readers. “It pushes us to do better marketing,” adds Marie Le Quellec-Kern, Indigo’s marketing and communication director. And since Meta shut its doors, they’re knocking on another platform’s: Reddit, “a place that still loves media and linking,” notes Gardaz.
Tech platforms have long played Jekyll and Hyde with media companies, courting publishers with reach and then cutting them off overnight. For independent media, the only antidote is to cooperate with one another to find economic and technical alternatives. True independence lies in rebuilding their own bridges with audiences, and in working with partners who share not just journalistic values, but the goal of lasting trust and connection.
Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.
