After Meta’s revenue shrank for the first time, the company just told its publishers that they won’t ever pay for content to run on Facebook’s news tab. According to a spokesperson in a statement, “Most people do not come to Facebook for news, and as a business it doesn’t make sense to over-invest in areas that don’t align with user preferences,”
Facebook spent around $105 million on such deals, like paying $20 million to the New York Times, $10 million to the Wall Street Journal, and $3 million to CNN previously when they boosted their investment in news and even higher journalists to direct traffic to the news tab. Back then, Facebook promised to pay partner sites including the Guardian and The Economist, for News in the UK when they launched the News tab back there in late 2020. After that, they signed a deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to pay for content in Australia. Along with Google, Facebook has also taken criticism for drawing Advertising dollars away from dedicated news sites that contributing to the failure of a quarter of U.S. news sites over the last 15 years.
