Meta will remove Facebook’s News tab from interfaces in the United States and Australia, affirming the company’s pivot away from news while governments around the world consider laws to force it to compensate local outlets.
The platform announced late on Thursday that the Facebook News tab would start disappearing for users in the two countries starting in April. The journalism-focused part of Facebook was already removed in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in early December 2023 as the platform focused on other features desired by readers, such as improved support for short-term video.
Now it’s stripping the tab elsewhere due to declining traffic. Meta has shifted away from supporting news content as fewer users rely on Facebook for news and as the companies brace for legislation forcing them to pay news outlets.
The product change is part of an “ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most,” the platform stated in its post.
Facebook was the top social media source for news, according to a Pew Research Center survey from late September 2023. Three in 10 users reported using Facebook to check for news, while only 12% of users turned to X.
The pulling of the News tab in Australia also saves Meta money since it can then stop paying publishers there for their content once their current deals end. Facebook made international news when it blocked Australians from sharing and viewing news in 2021 after the country introduced a law forcing the social media platform to pay. The company eventually reversed its position on the ban, but it faces similar legislation in Canada and the U.S.
Meta had deals in place with dozens of Australian news outlets. The deals are worth about $200 million, according to The Age.
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The design change comes as legislators work toward bills to force Big Tech platforms to compensate for the effect that social media platforms are having on local news. Meta banned news sharing in Canada in June after the legislature passed a bill that would force Big Tech platforms to negotiate compensation deals with news organizations so that they must pay them for all content published on their platforms.
Congress is considering a similar bill in the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The bill was pushed through the Senate Judiciary Committee but has yet to receive a floor vote.
