Facebook to stop supporting news in Europe

Meta said Tuesday that it will remove the news tab on Facebook from early December in the UK, France and Germany. The tech giant said it was part of an “ongoing effort to better align our investments in the products and services people value most.”

Facebook is about to stop supporting and providing news and press in Europe, picture 1 — Photo: FT

Meta said news organizations will continue to have access to their Facebook accounts and pages, where they can post links and news article content, and will “honor our obligations under all existing Facebook News agreements with news publishers in the UK, France and Germany until they expire.”

The News tab accounts for less than 3% of what people around the world see on their Facebook feed, the group said, “so news discovery is just a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people.”

European news organizations have complained that the move will deprive them of revenue and traffic. Meta has also dropped Instant Articles, a mobile format that allows quick access to articles on the Facebook app.

In July, Reach, the UK's largest commercial news agency with newspapers including the Mirror and Express, said the incident had caused its digital advertising revenue to fall in the first half of the year.

Meta will also stop renewing its separate funding for the Community News Project (CNP), which was announced in 2018 to support journalism in underserved communities. Meta has contributed $17 million to CNP over the past five years.

Henry Faure Walker, CEO of Newsquest Media Group, said they had hired about 20 reporters through the CNP program. “It is disappointing that Meta has turned its back,” he said.

Owen Meredith, CEO of the News Media Association, which represents newspapers in the UK, said the decision was “not surprising given the news blackouts we have seen Meta enforce in Canada and Australia”.

Meta says it will remove news from its Canadian feeds ahead of regulations that would require big tech companies to pay news outlets and broadcasters for content that appears on their platforms.

“Meta continues to exploit its dominant position, profiting from the news content on its platform without adequately compensating the publishers who invest in it,” he added.

“We’ve learned from the data that news and links to news content are not the reason the vast majority of people come to Facebook, and as a business we can’t afford to over-invest in areas that aren’t the most relevant to our users’ interests,” Meta said.

Hoang Hai (according to FT)

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