iWorld
Facebook ties up with Business Standard as part of subscription programme
MUMBAI: American social media giant Facebook has tied up with Business Standard as part of its subscription programme. Facebook on Friday announced that it had added a total of 28 such partners globally, Business Standard being the only one from India.
In November 2017, the Mark Zuckerberg-founded company had stated it was developing a paywall for subscription publishers to use in ‘Instant Articles’ with the goal of improving subscriber acquisition from the social media site. This newspaper is Facebook’s first India partner for the product.
Around the world, Facebook has partnered publications including Bild, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Hearst (The Houston Chronicle and The San Francisco Chronicle), La Repubblica, Le Parisien, Spiegel, The Telegraph, Tronc (The Baltimore Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and The San Diego Union-Tribune), and The Washington Post.
“We have seen consistent, positive performance of paywall ever since our earliest results were announced in June and today we're announcing several updates to our subscription tools, and the addition of 28 publishers to the test,’’ Facebook said in a blog. To make the subscriptions tools more accessible to a wide range of publishers, the company has redesigned the implementation approach to cut the development time by 75 per cent to a maximum of two weeks, it said. Also, the social media major is testing the ability of a publisher to allow a reader to continue reading if he shares his email address.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
