Technology
Tuesday, September 5th, 2023 1:13 pm EDT
Facebook users in the U.K., France and Germany will no longer see a dedicated section for news articles starting in December.
Meta said Tuesday that it is plans to “deprecate” the Facebook News tab in early December for users in those European countries as “part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most.”
The company added that it plans to spend more time and money on short-form video, as best exemplified by its TikTok-like Reels product. News represents less than 3% of what people see in their Facebook feeds, Meta said.
Meta said it would honor the Facebook News obligations it had made to publishers in those countries, but said it won’t enter into new deals and has no plans to offer new products for news publishers.
Meta debuted Facebook News in 2019, saying at the time that the product “was built to bring people closer to the stories that affect their lives.”
The decision to deprecate Facebook News is part of a broader move away from the news business. The company recently shut down access to news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada after its government passed the Online News Act, which requires tech firms to pay content fees to media outlets in the country.
Meta disagreed with the Canadian law, saying that “the legislation misrepresents the value news outlets receive when choosing to use our platforms” and that it is “based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms.”
Some news experts criticized Meta’s decision to block users from viewing or posting news links in Canada, saying it could lead to a rise of misinformation and negatively affect local news organizations.
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