Facebook To End Payments To US News Publishers

Major news organizations like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post are among the media outlets that will be affected by Meta’s recent decision to phase out exclusive deals with news publishers.

The planned axing of paid deals with American publishers — worth more than $100 million — is part of Mata’s goal to restructure and shift focus from its news tab strategy to the creator economy.

“A lot has changed since we signed deals three years ago to test bringing additional news links to Facebook News in the US,” a Facebook spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal. “Most people do not come to Facebook for news, and as a business, it doesn’t make sense to overinvest in areas that don’t align with user preferences.”

It is worth noting that deals the firm has in other regions, particularly Europe, will not be affected by the changes. Facebook News will continue to maintain partnerships with outlets in the UK, France and Germany.

In fact, under regulatory pressure to remunerate content creators for news distributed on Big Tech platforms, paid Facebook News deals in Europe seem to be solidly in place for the time being.

Google, another Big Tech firm, has also come under intense scrutiny from competition watchdogs in Europe, and last year, the US tech giant was forced to sign a deal to settle a copyright dispute with French news publishers.