Meta announced Friday that it would discontinue Facebook’s news features for users in the United States and Australia in April, setting the stage for a potential showdown with lawmakers in both countries over the tech giant’s treatment of the media industry.
Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant said the removal of Facebook’s News tab was “part of our ongoing efforts to better align our investments with the products and services people value most.” . The number of people using Newstab in both counties decreased by more than 80% in 2023, the company said.
“As a company, we must focus our time and resources on what people have told us they want to see more of on our platform, including short-form video,” Mehta said in a blog post.
The move comes after Meta abolished the News tab in the UK, France and Germany last year. Meta said the change “does not affect the terms under existing Facebook News agreements with publishers in Australia, France and Germany,” and that the agreements in the US and UK have already expired.
Simultaneously with the publication of the blog post on Friday, Meta notified Australian distributors that their contracts would not be renewed. The Guardian newspaper reported. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese slammed Mr Mehta’s decision, telling reporters this was “not the Australian way”.
“We know that it is extremely important that the media is well-functioning and properly funded,” Albanese said. “Journalism is important, and the idea that investigations and research conducted by others should be available for free is completely untenable.”
Australia’s Deputy Treasurer Stephen Jones added: “No one should question the government’s determination to keep the media industry viable in this country.”
“We will not enter into new commercial agreements for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers in the future,” Meta said in a statement.
The Post has reached out to Mehta for further comment.
News organizations will still have access to the Facebook page, and Meta’s products and services will not be affected, according to the blog post. This means users will be able to view news articles within the Facebook app.
But the company has long been criticized by government officials for not adequately compensating the media industry for the traffic generated by its news content.
A recent study found that, conservatively, Facebook has to pay news organizations nearly $2 billion a year for content based on all of its digital advertising revenue, the Post reported last November. . The same study found that Google would have to pay between $10 billion and $12 billion a year.
Facebook signed a series of publishing deals in 2021 after Australia passed a law requiring technology companies to negotiate with publishers. The company temporarily removed news content from its platform before returning to the negotiating table.
Last year, Facebook removed its News tab in Canada following similar legislation.
Meanwhile, in the United States last year, Meta Inc. announced that it would be necessary for the state of California to move forward with a bill that would require online platforms to pay “journalism usage fees” to news organizations that post content on their sites. and threatened to remove news content for Instagram users.
Facebook faces a wave of government scrutiny over its business practices, including its failure to protect children from online horrors, from sexual exploitation to anxiety, depression and even suicidal thoughts. Therefore, the company withdrew from the news service.
The company has denied any wrongdoing and has touted the various tools it has released to protect users.
In response to the crisis, Sen. Lindsey Graham declared in a high-profile Senate hearing earlier this year that Mr. Zuckerberg “has blood on his hands.”
