Meta has announced plans to “deprecate” the News tab in Facebook’s bookmarks section in the UK, France and Germany . This feature is not a feature that is used or liked very much by users. Changes are expected in early December, according to Meta.
News tab being removed from Facebook
“As a company, we have to focus our time and resources on what people tell us they want to see more of on the platform, including the short video,” the company said in a press release today .
This change is also Facebook’s latest step to make news a lower priority on its platform. At the same time, the “short video” side said in the statement means another step towards TikTokization. Additionally, in early July, Meta announced that it would stop paying US publishers to put their content on Facebook’s News tab. The company also said last year that its engineering and product teams would focus more on video content from creators rather than the News tab.
Active in the US, UK, Germany, France and Australia, News accounts for less than 3 percent of what users around the world see in their Facebook feeds . Users will still be able to see links to news articles in their feeds, and news publishers in Europe will still be able to access their accounts and pages after the changes come into effect in December. Meta also seems to encourage news organizations to turn to short-form videos. Meta is also reportedly investigating ad-free paid subscriptions in Europe.
