Meta has abruptly slashed promised payouts on its Reels platform by tens of thousands of dollars to many creators, blaming a glitch in its systems and spurring loud protest and calls for legal action from affected creators.
The promised payouts—which ranged as high as $45,000 per video according to screenshots viewed by Fortune—involve Meta’s test of a new ad revenue sharing program for Reels videos that use music from Meta’s library. Angry comments and screenshots from creators posted in the private Meta Creator Community (US) Facebook group revealed the extent of the diminished earnings, with previously promised payments of tens of thousands of dollars in some cases, suddenly revised to hundreds of dollars. Meta appears to have deactivated comments in the group as a mountain of negative comments piled up.
