What happened to CrowdTangle?

Meta shut CrowdTangle down on August 14, 2024, less than three months before the U.S. presidential election. Its official replacement, the Meta Content Library, is limited to approved researchers, so most newsrooms lost access to the tool they used to spot stories early.

Updated October 2026

Timeline

1. 2016Facebook acquires CrowdTangle, by then an established tool used by publishers.
2. March 2024Meta confirms CrowdTangle will shut down and points researchers to the Meta Content Library, with access through ICPSR at the University of Michigan. Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, names third-party tools such as Sprout Social and NewsWhip as alternatives for journalists.
3. August 14, 2024CrowdTangle shuts down.
4. July 2025Sprout Social acquires NewsWhip.
5. September 2026Nieman Lab reports that newsrooms are still looking for a replacement, two years on.

Why it mattered to newsrooms

CrowdTangle let anyone follow lists of Facebook and Instagram pages and see which posts were overperforming: doing better than that page usually does. Editors used it to spot stories early, track rival outlets and see what their audience cared about. It was free.

What Meta offers instead

The Meta Content Library is open to researchers at qualified academic and nonprofit institutions, through an application. After criticism, Meta said journalists at nonprofit news organizations could also apply. Commercial newsrooms generally can't. Reviews at launch found it couldn't track follower counts over time, build public dashboards, or download posts from accounts with fewer than 25,000 followers, which excludes many local politicians. How it compares with SocialWire.

What journalists use now

Most options are either enterprise tools sold through demos, like NewsWhip, or research tools with application-based access, like Junkipedia. SocialWire brings back CrowdTangle's list-and-overperforming workflow for publishers, with monthly plans. Compare all the alternatives.