As Facebook and Instagram strategize, parent company Meta has also stopped paying U.S. publishers. The media reported that Meta spent nearly $105 million on the deal (and another $90 million on news videos) over the last three years of the “experimentation period,” including $10 million / $20 million / $3 million to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and CNN.
As you may have heard, the future of Facebook and Instagram will rely heavily on AI-curated content from creators.
The News Tab project, which Facebook launched a few years ago, no longer seems to be a big part of that.
"The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Internet giants like Facebook have become less enthusiastic about paying for news amid regulatory pressure. In addition, according to one source, paid news push was an 'experiment that ultimately didn't pay off."
In a statement to Axios, an unnamed Facebook spokesperson said.
"The company signed a deal three years ago to test adding more news links to Facebook News in the United States. However, reality shows that these changes introduced by over-investing in areas that fail to cater to user preferences are pointless."
When Facebook launched the “News” tab in 2019, it is said that it emphasized headlines “handpicked by a team of journalists”.
The social networking giant had hoped to avoid the pitfalls of fake news and other communications, but unfortunately, it has lost out to reality. After all, the platform’s customization of user preferences may vary from one target audience to another.
In addition, Instagram’s attempt to imitate TikTok also ended in failure.
