Today, we are announcing that in the UK, France and Germany we will deprecate Facebook News – a dedicated tab on Facebook in the bookmarks section that spotlights news – in early December.
This is part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most. 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. We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content – they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests. News makes up less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed, so news discovery is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people.
The changes affecting the Facebook News feature will not otherwise impact Meta’s products and services in these countries. People will still be able to view links to news articles on Facebook. European news publishers will continue to have access to their Facebook accounts and Pages, where they can post links to their stories and direct people to their websites in the way any other individual or organization can. News organizations can also still leverage products like Reels and our ads system to reach broader audiences and drive people to their website, where they keep 100% of the revenue derived from outbound links on Facebook.
While we’ll be deprecating Facebook News in these countries, we will honour our obligations under all existing Facebook News deals with publishers in the UK, France and Germany until they expire. However, to ensure that we continue to invest in those products and services that drive user engagement, we will not enter into new commercial deals for news content on Facebook News in these countries and do not expect to offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers in the future.
Our Commitment to Connecting People to Reliable Information
This does not impact our commitment to connecting people to reliable information on our platforms. We work with independent third-party fact-checkers – certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network – who review and rate viral misinformation on our apps. We have built the largest global fact-checking network of any platform by partnering with more than 90 independent fact-checking organisations around the world who review content in more than 60 languages. We have contributed more than $100 million to programs supporting our fact-checking efforts since 2016 to combat the spread of misinformation and we will continue to invest in this area.