Users in the US and Australia will begin to see the Facebook News tab vanish at the beginning of April. As part of its attempts to “align [its] investments to [its] products and services people value the most,” Meta has announced that it is deprecating the dedicated tab located in the social network’s favorites area. Early in December 2023, the firm announced that it was retiring the News tab in the UK, France, and Germany and allocating its resources to other content that users expressed a want to see more of, such short videos.
According to Meta‘s most recent post, there has been an 80% decrease in the amount of users in the US and Australia who have been utilizing the News tab over the last year. It appears that news accounts for less than 3% of what Facebook users see, and it’s simply not a significant portion of their experience. “We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content — they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests,” the business stated.
By pulling the News tab in Australia, the company will also stop paying publishers in the country for their content after their current deals end. A few years ago, Facebook blocked news links in the country in response to the then-proposed law that would require companies like Meta to pay media organizations for their content. The company unblocked news links just a few days later after it started striking deals with Australian media organizations.
According to The Age, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission believes that Google and Meta inked deals with dozens of outlets, including Guardian Australia and News Corp Australia, worth about $200 million a year. Meta is responsible for around one-third or $66 million of that total amount, meaning its decision is bound to have a huge impact on the news business in the country. And there seems to be no room for negotiation: The company made it clear in its announcement that it’s not going to enter new commercial deals for traditional news content in any of the regions where it has already removed the News tab.
Meta has not blocked news links in the aforementioned countries, however, and Facebook users can still access any that’s been posted on the social network. Publishers can also continue posting links to their stories on their official pages as usual.
