Over the years, Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook has faced criticism from the news organizations to pay them for their content on its platform. In that direction, Facebook has launched 'Facebook News', a new section dedicated to finding major and local news. The app is currently active in the US and will soon expand to other regions including India, Germany, France, Brazil and the UK. This expansion may take up to a year.
Facebook stated that the consumer habits and news inventory vary by country, so it will work closely with news partners in each country to tailor the experience and test ways to deliver a valuable experience for people while also honouring publishers' business models.
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What is Facebook News?
Facebook News is a dedicated news section introduced by Facebook on its platform. This section will help the users to find major and local news from the news organizations.
Where will you find Facebook News?
After opening the Facebook app, you'll find a bookmark like option under the three-lined 'more' menu on the mobile app. If you frequently visit it, you will find it as a button or tab in the Facebook App. However, the company has not yet launched the News Desktop Tab.
Publications on the Facebook News
Facebook revealed in a blog post that it has 200 news organizations on board for its News section such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, Bloomberg, and ABC News. As per a report by Bloomberg, the company will pay its publishers anywhere between $1 million to $3 million. However, the company has not revealed the names of Indian Organizations that are willing to collaborate with its news initiative.
How will this initiative work?
Facebook News will redirect the reader to the publishers' site so that the user can read the entire story for free. However, in case the publications are paid, the reader will be able to read a free article and will be asked to pay further.
There is a wide range of news content across four categories of publishers: General, Topical, Diverse and Local News.
Key features of Facebook News
The key features of the latest section are listed below:
1- Today's stories: This part will contain the hand-picked stories by a team of journalists.
2- Personalized experience: This section is solely based on the user and will show the news based on what you read, share and follow on Facebook.
3- Topic Sections: The user can explore with a variety of sections like business, entertainment, health, science and tech, and sports.
4- Your Subscriptions: The users can link their paid news subscriptions with Facebook account and access them from Facebook App.
5- Control: The user has full control to hide news articles, topics and publishers.
In addition to these, Facebook has also added several other features such as timely news digests, targetted notifications and news alerts. In late 2020, Facebook is planning to combine the 'Today In' local news discovery on its platform. Also, the preference will be given to the original piece of news.
Why Facebook has launched this initiative?
Over the years, Facebook is facing criticism from various news organizations about their content being used on the platform having millions of users. The organizations have raised criticism that Google and Facebook take a bigger share of profits from the content they don't produce while the publishers get very less share. The organizations have asked the social media company to pay them for their content. In the wake of this, Facebook planned a dedicated section on its platform and will pay the publishers. Also, Facebook is promoting quality journalism with the aim to stop the spread of fake news.
Code of Conduct drafted by Australia
Recently, Australia has drafted a code of conduct which would require tech giants like Google and Facebook to start paying news companies to distribute their content. The Australian government says it will give US Tech companies three months to negotiate terms with publishers over how they will compensate them for their work.
If the publishers and tech companies fail to come to an agreement in 45 days, a third-party arbitrator will be assigned by the government to make a binding decision on behalf of the two parties.
Background
In the year 2019, Facebook began testing its news section with a handful of users in the US. In June 2020, amid the lockdown, the new feature was rolled out for the US users. In August 2020, the company announced that it will be expanding its news section to the regions like India, Germany, France, Brazil and the UK. In August 2020, Facebook expressed that it is considering to expand its News section to other regions as well.
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