Mark Zuckerberg’s company recently announced its intention to slow down its efforts regarding Facebook News in Europe, or at least in parts of it. Starting in December, the social media giant will begin phasing out this service in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Facebook News, introduced in 2019, has its own tab on the social network’s website and app. While it was planning to expand to Latin America, starting with Brazil, it seems that due to its limited success in European test runs, it won’t be reaching this region after all.
For now, Facebook supports local and international news that may be of interest to each market. In its original function, articles were selected through an algorithm, although it had a section of articles chosen by humans. However, a year ago, Meta made all posts be chosen algorithmically.
Chronicle of a Foretold Death
Facebook News was doomed almost from the moment it was born. Without the necessary support from Meta, which focused on its promising Metaverse and later on the Llama 2 artificial intelligence, it couldn’t gather the momentum needed to compete against other news aggregators like Google’s Discover. This might seem curious, considering that a significant part of Facebook’s existence has been about sharing news, but the company saw greater profitability in other markets.
Moreover, Facebook News found itself in a delicate position within Meta, as legislative initiatives emerged against major tech companies becoming news distributors, led by Australia and closely followed by Canada, though with varying results.
Even with the closure of Facebook News, the media outlets that used to publish their news there can continue to do so through their own pages, where they can post stories and links to their news. However, Meta hasn’t offered any solutions to help these media outlets overcome this setback. At least not for now.
