Meta has announced plans to end two long-standing features that once defined Facebook’s presence across the wider web. The company confirmed that its external Like and Comment plugins will be discontinued on February 10, 2026, marking the quiet closure of a chapter that helped shape how users interacted with online content in the early 2010s.
The two plugins allowed visitors to show approval for web pages or leave comments using their Facebook accounts without leaving the site. Both features became common across blogs and news outlets (including Digital Information World) when social sharing was at its peak. Over time, though, the landscape shifted. Social activity moved inside apps, third-party integrations faded, and Facebook’s influence on external web traffic gradually waned.
Meta says the removal is part of a broader effort to streamline its developer platform. The company describes it as a technical update rather than a disruptive change. After the cutoff date, the plugins will no longer appear but will not break site functionality. Each will simply render as an invisible 0x0 element instead of showing the familiar buttons or comment sections. Website owners are not required to act, though they can remove the old code to keep pages clean.
The company’s note positions this decision as part of ongoing modernization. It signals a shift in focus toward tools that reflect how businesses and developers use Meta’s ecosystem today rather than how they did a decade ago. The move also mirrors a wider industry trend where large platforms continue to retire older web integrations that no longer align with user behavior or advertising priorities.
The Like and Comment buttons, introduced around 2010, once drove massive engagement loops between publishers and Facebook feeds. For years, they helped the platform dominate referral traffic. But as algorithms evolved and sharing patterns changed, those widgets lost their place on many sites. The quiet sunset in 2026 closes a once-central feature that defined an earlier phase of social connectivity online.
Notes: This post was edited/created using GenAI tools. Eyestetix Studio/unsplash
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The two plugins allowed visitors to show approval for web pages or leave comments using their Facebook accounts without leaving the site. Both features became common across blogs and news outlets (including Digital Information World) when social sharing was at its peak. Over time, though, the landscape shifted. Social activity moved inside apps, third-party integrations faded, and Facebook’s influence on external web traffic gradually waned.
Meta says the removal is part of a broader effort to streamline its developer platform. The company describes it as a technical update rather than a disruptive change. After the cutoff date, the plugins will no longer appear but will not break site functionality. Each will simply render as an invisible 0x0 element instead of showing the familiar buttons or comment sections. Website owners are not required to act, though they can remove the old code to keep pages clean.
The company’s note positions this decision as part of ongoing modernization. It signals a shift in focus toward tools that reflect how businesses and developers use Meta’s ecosystem today rather than how they did a decade ago. The move also mirrors a wider industry trend where large platforms continue to retire older web integrations that no longer align with user behavior or advertising priorities.
The Like and Comment buttons, introduced around 2010, once drove massive engagement loops between publishers and Facebook feeds. For years, they helped the platform dominate referral traffic. But as algorithms evolved and sharing patterns changed, those widgets lost their place on many sites. The quiet sunset in 2026 closes a once-central feature that defined an earlier phase of social connectivity online.
Notes: This post was edited/created using GenAI tools. Eyestetix Studio/unsplash
Read next: Apple’s Next iPhones May Gain Smarter Satellite Capabilities
