Meta announced that the company will "deprecate" the Facebook News tab starting in early December in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Facebook News Tab
Meta initially introduced Facebook News in France last February 2022. The Facebook News tab is a dedicated in the bookmarks section that highlights reliable news stories from various media organizations. After one year, the tech company is now ending the feature.
According to Meta's report, news only takes up to 3 percent of what people sees on their Facebook feed. This drew a conclusion that less people are actually utilizing the feature compared to Facebook's other features.
On the other hand, Meta clarified that users from UK, France, and Germany can still access news articles on Facebook. Likewise, European news publishers will have continuous access to their accounts and pages. Meta also promised that the company will honor the existing deals with the publishers until its expiration and will not be accepting any new deals from here on.
Facebook Realigns Investment
In blog post, Meta stated that the decision is part of improving their alignment on the company's investments to products and services. "As a company, we have to focus our time and resources on things people tell us they want to see more of on the platform, including short form video," Meta wrote.
Meanwhile, Meta assured that the news does not change the company's commitment to bring reliable information to its users. As of 2016, the company have contributed over $100million to fact-checking programs and will continue to invest.
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