Stories from news outlets, including the Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Financial Times, will appear in a dedicated Facebook feed starting today.
The launch of the Facebook News service in the United Kingdom is the first outside the United States. In addition to deals already closed involving the Guardian, the Economist and hundreds of local sites, Facebook announced new partnerships with Channel 4 News, Daily Mail Group, DC Thomson, Financial Times, Sky News and Telegraph Media Group on Tuesday.
The deal, which will yield millions of leading publishers, will be a financial boost as they face a bleak economic scenario, in part because a large proportion of the ad market is now controlled by the social network.
Facebook said the investment is intended to “support the industry in building sustainable business models”.
However, it will also be seen as a strategic move by the company to discourage broader international regulation of the news media market – by showing that it is prepared to support local publishers without government intervention.
This occurs as Australia moves forward with a proposal for a “news media trading code” that would force technology companies to enter into negotiations for payment for the content or face arbitration by third parties if they cannot reach an agreement.
Meanwhile, the EU’s copyright directive threatens a similar scenario across Europe. Last week, Google made a deal to pay news publishers for online content in France, the first such deal on the continent.
Facebook said the deal in the UK, where the EU copyright directive does not apply, was “the beginning of a series of international news investments” that “puts original journalism in front of new audiences, in addition to providing publishers more advertising and subscription opportunities to build sustainable businesses for the future ”.
Hired news editors – working for the Upday news aggregator, but overseen by Facebook’s curatorship team – will select the stories of the day, while other stories selected algorithmically according to the user’s interests will also appear.
Facebook said the product would provide curated “news summaries”, covering the most important stories about the day’s stories, giving an example of a collection of coronavirus-related stories to coincide with the launch.
While some publishers have signed seven-digit deals, others are not paid in advance and will see an increase in referral traffic or ad views in the form of instant Facebook articles.
In addition to its regulatory concerns, Facebook also hopes that by providing news with a separate feed, it can strengthen its reputation as a responsible platform in an era of unreliable sources.
He can also hope that, by providing his own news, he may eventually separate highly controversial stories from the tastiest content from pets and family, which remains the most powerful draw for most users – although it is a post by Jesper Doub, news director for partnerships in Europe, said that “news articles shared by people and pages will continue to appear in the News Feed [Facebook’s main feed], just like they do today ”.
Of the UK’s national news editors, News UK – which publishes the Times, Sunday Times and Sun – is the most significant. You already have an agreement with Apple News.