Key Points
- Australian and US-based Facebook users will not be able to access its News tab from next week.
- The feature was launched in 2019, but its end comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content.
- Meta will also not renew content deals it has with some Australian media outlets.
Facebook users in Australia and the United States will no longer have access to Facebook News from next week as the platform further de-emphasises news and politics.
The feature was shut down in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in 2023.
Launched in 2019, the News tab curates headlines from national and international news organisations, and smaller local publications.
says users will still be able to view links to news articles and news organisations will still be able to post and promote their stories and websites, as any other individual or organisation can on Facebook.
The change comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarisation.
"This change does not impact posts from accounts people choose to follow; it impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more," Meta spokeswoman Dani Lever said.
"This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted."
The fight over Meta's Australian content deals
The tech giant first announced the move in late February, which drew the ire of the federal government and Australian news publishers.
Meta has multimillion-dollar content deals with a number of Australian media outlets, and it has said these won't be renewed when they expire in April.
The government says it's examining whether Meta should be designated under the news media bargaining code, which would require it to negotiate commercial deals with eligible media outlets or face fines of up to 10 per cent of their local revenue.
But Meta could choose to withdraw its services in Australia to avoid fines, having made a similar move in 2021 when the push to make tech companies pay for news content came to a head.
Facebook's blocked all news links being shared to its platform in Australia, in an action that also removed the pages of charities, non-government organisations, and emergency services.
After Canada introduced a law based on Australia's news media bargaining code last year, Meta blocked the sharing of news content on Facebook and Instagram (which it also owns) in a ban that has lasted for six months and counting.
Meta said the change to the News tab did not affect its fact-checking network and review of misinformation.
But misinformation remains a challenge for the company, especially as the and .
"Facebook didn't envision itself as a political platform," said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy in the US.
"It was run by tech people, and then suddenly it started scaling and they found themselves immersed in politics, and they themselves became the headline."
"I think with many big elections coming up this year, it's not surprising that Facebook is taking yet another step away from politics so that they can just not, inadvertently, themselves become a political headline."
With reporting by the Associated Press via the Australian Associated Press.
