Proactive Investors - Facebook (NASDAQ:META) will no longer pay news publishers in the United States and Australia for content shared on the social media site, the Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, ETR:FB2A, SWX:FB)-owned company said on Thursday.
It said that starting in early April it will be removing Facebook News, a dedicated tab for news content which paid out millions of dollars to publishers, in the US and Australia.
Facebook News was discontinued UK, France and Germany last year, with Facebook stating that it does not intend to enter new agreements with publishers in these countries.
“To ensure that we continue to invest in products and services that drive user engagement, we will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers in the future,” it said in a statement.
The social media platform said that “people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content.”
“The number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the US has dropped by over 80% last year,” Facebook said.
“As we previously shared in 2023, news makes up less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed and is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people.”
Facebook users will still be able to view links to news articles on the platform posted by other users or publishers on their pages.