After Meta’s income shrank for the primary time in its historical past, the corporate has reportedly informed publishers it can now not pay for content material to run in Facebook’s News Tab, based on Axios. “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,” a spokesperson mentioned in a press release.

Facebook spent round $105 million on such offers, paying $20 million to The New York Times, $10 million to The Wall Street Journal and $3 million to CNN, based on Axios. Facebook struck the offers again in 2019 because it boosted its funding in information and even employed journalists to direct visitors to the information tab. 

Facebook additionally promised to pay accomplice websites together with The Guardian and The Economist for information within the UK when it launched the News Tab there late in 2020. Shortly after that, it signed a cope with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to pay for content material in Australia, after the Australian Parliament handed a legislation requiring Facebook and Google to take action. 

Along with Google, Facebook has taken criticism for drawing advert {dollars} away from devoted information websites. That has contributed to the failure of 1 / 4 of US information websites during the last 15 years, based on Poynter, with the skilled journalism vacuum typically been crammed by false or deceptive information on Facebook.