After years of speculation that it was looking to shut down its platform monitoring tool CrowdTangle, Meta has finally confirmed that CrowdTangle is indeed going away, effective August 14th.

According to Meta:

"Our data-sharing products are evolving with technology and regulatory changes. Moving away from CrowdTangle will free up resources that we can put towards new research tools: Meta Content Library & Content Library API, providing useful and high-quality data for researchers. Meta Content Library was designed to help meet new regulatory requirements around data sharing and transparency while meeting the rigorous privacy and security standards we have at Meta."

CrowdTangle was a cause of controversy within Meta as long ago as 2021, when some doubted its accuracy as it apparently showed that Meta's apps were playing a more influential role in the spreading of divisive political content than was actually the case.
 
For a number of years now, a bot account on X or what is formerly known as Twitter, initiated by a New York Times journalist Kevin Roose, reflected the most popular Facebook posts of each day, reckoned from listings supplied to Meta through its CrowdTangle platform.
The listings were frequently controlled by right-wing spokespeople and Pages-thus giving the appearance that Facebook is amplifying this type of content through its algorithm.

Facebook was not pleased by this characterization, so as a form of response, it laid off the CrowdTangle team in July 2021 after a disagreement over what content to display on the app.

Most had assumed that marked the end of CrowdTangle, but the project continued feeding data insights to users, including Roose's bot (until June last year, when X changed its rules around API and bot access).

But now, Meta is finally moving on from CrowdTangle, and referring researchers to its other data tools instead.

If you are a researcher conducting scientific or public interest research and retain, or have an affiliation with an accredited academic or non-profit institution, you are encouraged to apply for access to the Meta Content Library. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan handles and evaluates requests for access to the tools independently.
But CrowdTangle also has value beyond academic-needs-the app holds much utility for marketers and journalists alike who want to dig up information regarding trends; track page posts, check analytics, etc.

Meta reports that for this audience, you can use "Insights within Meta Business Suite" instead and that the information can be replicated using third-party social listening tools.

Which aren't really replacements, but that's more or less what we'd be left with, which would decrease the overall research capacity surrounding Meta's apps as well as cost users more money in signing up to multiple tools for roughly the same purpose.

But, really, the writing's been on the wall for CrowdTangle for years-it's amazing it's lasted this long. I use it daily-it's a fantastic research and insights tool-and it's always a shame to have these threatened.

But it also makes sense: Meta no longer has a dedicated team supporting it, and it would prefer not to share the same level of data insight that the app currently facilitates. So it's going away, though you still have a few months to dig into the data and uncover key trends if you need.