Facebook Parent Company meta has decided that, less than a year after discontinuing the functionality that allowed buying and selling non-fungible tokens (nft) will cease NFT trading through its two major platforms, Facebook and Instagram, announced by senior representatives of the company.
“Some product news: Across the company, we’re looking carefully at what we prioritize to grow our focus. We’re discontinuing digital collectibles (NFTs) for now in order to support creators, people and businesses. to focus on other methods of Stephen Kasriel, head of commerce and financial technologies at Meta, Said in a tweet.
A company representative announced that Meta “looks forward to supporting the many NFT creators who continue to use Instagram and Facebook to amplify their work.”
At the same time, Kasriel said the social media giant will continue to invest in the rollout of “fintech tools” that people and businesses will need for the future. We’re streamlining payments with Meta Pay, making it easy to checkout and pay, and investing in messaging payments across Meta.”
“Let me be clear: Creating opportunities for creators and businesses to connect with and monetize their fans remains a priority, and we’re going to focus on areas where we can make a massive impact, like Reels. messaging for and opposing monetization.” They said.
The latest announcement has triggered a wave of reactions from industry observers and various stakeholders. A significant portion of the comments criticized the social media giant.
Among others, Dave Krugman, a Brooklyn-based photographer and founder of the creative community Allships.co, Tweeted That he considers Meta’s decision premature, but also potentially damaging to the future development of the creator-focused digital art marketplace.
“Such a short-sighted move. The inclusion of digital collectibles has so much potential to help creators engage their communities and counteract the disadvantages of attention-based advertising economies. You guys quit before you even started. Shame really And there’s a lot of really smart work to undo.” By the great people out there,” he said.
In another expression of criticism directed at Matthew Ferrick, creative lead at Nifty Gateway, a social media giant, Said that Instagram “just (again) discovered that it is more profitable/easier to continue exploiting artists to sell to advertisers than to help artists make money on their platform”.
He concluded by saying that “posts on IG never translated to more sales on the NFT marketplace”.
last july, meta Have been taken To allow a group of American creators to display NFTs on their profiles. The company rolled out digital collectibles support on Facebook, initially limiting it to select creators and starting a slow rollout, in the US only.