Facebook plans shut down news tab in the U.S. and Australia. Meta wants to distance itself as much as possible from the regulations and payment complications related to news media. It is planning to remove Facebook’s news tab in the U.S.A. and Australia. The company announced today it would sunset the product by April 2024.
Meta announced last year that it was discontinuing Facebook News in UK, Germany and France, stating that they wanted to “allocate resources” to the products and services the people valued the most. The tone used by the announcement this time is similar.
According to the social media company, the number of users who use Facebook News in Australia or the U.S. has dropped by 80 percent in the past year.
This is part of a continuous effort to better align investments with our products and services that people value most. We have to spend our time and money on what people want to see on the platform. This includes short-form videos,” said the company.
Meta stated last year that news was less than 3% the content people see in the feed. Users might not even notice the depreciation. Publishers have seen a decline in Facebook referral traffic over the years.
Meta has withdrawn from investing in new product development and regulatory actions are to blame for the fate of Facebook News. In Australia and Canada, legislation was passed that required platforms to pay publishers for online content. In August of last year, the company began blocking links to news for Canadian users.
Meta clarified that the announcement today does not affect existing deals with publishers. In Australia and the U.S., people will also be able share news in their feeds. Publishers will have access to their pages to post links and manage them.
The company has stated that it does not plan to invest in any new products related to news.
It said that “Additionally to ensure that we continue investing in products and services which drive user engagement, in these countries we will not enter new commercial deals for traditional content and we will not offer Facebook products for news publishers specifically in the future.”
Meta has retreated from a consistent allocation of resources to news. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram’s social network Threads said that last year his company “would not amplify” news on Threads.