Facebook is done with news. First, there was a multiday standoff with the Australian government on news payments, followed by the quiet removal of a revenue-sharing News tab from Facebook in the US. And then came an all-out news link ban in Canada. And now, Meta is killing off the News tab in France, Germany, and the UK, where it is also ending funding for a well-liked local news project. As in Canada and Australia, the change of policy in Europe preempts legislation across the EU as well as the UK that may see the social giant asked to pay for news it shares.
Facebook-owner Meta said this week that it would remove the News tab in all three European countries by December, meaning it will no longer pull in articles to show in the app. Users may well shrug, but it also means the end of payments to the news media taking part. Meta said it would continue to honor existing deals, but would not renew them when they expire—and would not make paid-for news partnerships in the future. “It looks like Meta is pushing the reset button, but very few news organizations are prepared for that,” says Sarah Anne Ganter, an expert in platform regulation and governance at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
This is not Meta’s first news strategy flip—every few years, it has introduced a tool to pull in external news, before refocusing to prioritize posts from friends and family. Trending Topics lasted four years before conspiracy-theory scandals sparked its closure. Instant Articles lasted longer, but the media industry didn’t mourn its passing earlier this year; a Columbia Journalism Review study showed more than half of launch partners quit within three years. In 2020, Meta tried another tactic, adding a News tab to Facebook apps to surface stories while paying the media organizations supplying the content.
The tab was already ditched in the US last year. No idea what tab we’re talking about? You’re not alone. The News section isn’t on the social network’s website—just the app, where it’s buried deep in the menu. So it’s no surprise that news makes up just 3 percent of viewed content, according to Meta in a blog post announcing the changes. Instead, Facebook will again pivot to video.
At the core of all these changes is Meta’s apparent unwillingness to pay for the news it shows users on Facebook. News is one source of content that helps keep Facebook users on the platform rather than moving on to another site or app. But news media have been hard hit by the shift online, losing control of the lucrative advertising market to Google and Facebook, hitting budgets, and leaving local papers fighting to survive. Through the years, Meta has sought ways to financially prop up news organizations, but so far nothing has worked—and now it appears to be giving up.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
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