on november 29, 2018, a majority of the staff were laid off after facebook canceled a video deal with the company. altchek notified staff during an all-hands meeting, saying that "facebook caught us by surprise at a really bad time" and that "the majority of the teams including people, finance, hr, productions, video, editorial, marketing, revenue and executive team will be departing, effective today." the same day, mic was sold to bustle media group for less than $5 million, which was a fraction of the "hundreds of millions" that altchek said the site was worth in 2017.