Meta has announced that Facebook will no longer support its news tab in the U.S. and Australia starting in April — another indicator that the company is divesting from the news industry.
“This is part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most,” the social platform said in a press release. “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.”
The change arrives in an election year not just for the United States, but in more than 50 nations across the globe. More than half the world’s population will head to the polls this year. And in the U.S., election years also mark more news consumption. More Americans attest that they pay attention to political news when ballots are ahead; in the months leading to a presidential election, 42% of Americans say the follow national politics news “very closely,” according to Gallup.
In announcing the sunset of Facebook’s News feature, Meta cited that usage for the tab has sharply declined with the number of Americans using the news tab down 80% in the last year. Meta also asserted that that news make only 3% of what people around the world see in the Facebook feed.
Facebook News launched in 2019 as a dedicated tab for news stories in the website’s bookmark section. The feature was also dropped in the UK, France, and Germany last year.
The company said the news will not impact its commitment to combat misinformation on its platforms. It noted that it has contributed $150 million to fact-checking efforts since 2016 — the year the platform was embroiled in a election interference scandal. Facebook has since been the subject of criticism and scrutiny from global lawmakers.
Facbook’s shift away from the news
Facebook has long been distancing itself from the news business. In 2022, the company ended publishing deals worth millions of dollars with major outlets like the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the New York Times. That same year, the company told employees it was shifting resources away from the news tab to focus more on the creator economy.
It’s also been losing leaders dedicated to news media. In October, Facebook’s head of news partnerships left the company.
Meta’s platforms are moving on
This is just the latest example of a trend in Meta platforms moving away from news to re-focus on content created by users.
🫂 Facebook: Before shuttering the News tab, Facebook did away with its other previous entries into the news space. It killed “Trending Topics,” a feature that showed popular topics that users were discussing on the site, in 2018 after it repeatedly highlighted conspiracy theories and misinformation. In 2022, the platform stopped supporting “Instant Articles” a product which let users open quick-to-load versions of news articles inside the Facebook app.
🧵 Threads: Shortly after Meta’s X competitor launched in mid-2023, executive Adam Mosseri said that Threads, would not encourage hard news or politics. “There are more than enough amazing communities – sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc – to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news,” he wrote in a Threads post.
📸 Instagram: Meta announced in February that alongside Threads, the app would not recommend political content to its users. “We won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads,” a company blog post read.