Facebook’s parent company ‘Meta’, which is in conflict with governments around the world over news usage fees, announced that it will discontinue its news service in the UK, Germany, and France following Canada. Data also showed that stopping the news did not significantly affect the platform. In Korea, portals such as Naver are also reducing the proportion of news due to political pressure.
On the 5th (local time), Meta announced that it would discontinue the ‘ Facebook News ‘ service in the UK, Germany, and France from early December . ‘Facebook News’ is a news section introduced by Meta in 2019 and is a dedicated tab within Facebook that provides content through contracts with the media.
“We know that people visit Facebook not to read news or political content, but to connect with others and discover new interests,” Mehta said on its blog. “We have signed existing agreements with the UK and France. , We will fulfill the German media’s obligations under the ‘Facebook News’ contract until it expires, but we will not enter into any new commercial agreements for Facebook News content in that country, including driving user engagement or continuing investment in the service. “It won’t happen,” he said.
This is due to the conflict over ‘news royalties’ with governments of each country. Meta, along with Google , has been signing licensing agreements with media in European Union ( EU ) countries in accordance with the ‘ EU Copyright Directive ‘ since 2019 . Meta discontinued its news service last month when the Online News Act, which mandates a news usage fee, was passed in Canada in June. In the UK, Germany, and France, the dedicated news tab simply disappears, but in Canada, article link posts cannot be posted.
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discussions on platform regulation become more active in other countries such as the U.S. and New Zealand, conflicts over news usage fees are expanding globally, and Meta is opting out of the news market in exchange for paying usage fees. was chosen. Shim Young-seop, a professor in the Department of Media, Image and Public Relations at Kyung Hee Cyber University, said in a phone call with Media Today on the 7th, “Meta should be seen as having retreated a lot in the news world. This is because the news distribution channel has changed from before,” and added, “At some point, Korea also started using news on Facebook.” “The volume is not large. Rather, now they are moving to other methods such as YouTube and TikTok in other countries,” he said.
There is also data showing that the suspension of actual news services did not have much of a impact on Facebook. According to a Reuters report on the 29th of last month, Facebook’s daily active users ( DAU ) and app usage time did not change much even after Meta blocked news in Canada in early August.
According to a report published in March by U.S. consulting firm NERA , news content accounted for less than 3% of the content users see in their Facebook feeds. “There is no reason to believe that the decline in news on Facebook will have a significant impact on other commercially meaningful metrics, such as user numbers, user engagement, or advertising revenue,” the report said. “This fact of little value explains why (people’s) willingness to pay for news content is mostly zero.”
It is difficult to view this figure as a result of users ignoring the news. Song Hae-yeop, a professor of media culture at Kunsan National University, said in a phone call, “If you look at the context of meta, we have continuously emphasized that the proportion of posts containing news links on Facebook is not high. Even when looking at transparency reports, etc., there are similar parts, so it is a characteristic of the platform. “You’ll have to see it,” he said.
Since 2016, Meta has continuously reformed the algorithm on Facebook to reduce the proportion of posts and links on pages such as press articles and companies and increase the exposure of posts written by individual users. This is interpreted as a measure to respond to the problem of reduced communication between individuals and the spread of false information on Facebook.
What about Korea, where most news is consumed through ‘portals’? In Korea, the proportion of news services has continued to be reduced due to political pressure, and there is a possibility that a reorganization will be carried out to reduce news services in the future토토사이트.
As pressure from the political world continued, Naver stopped arranging news by human editors, stopped arranging news on the Naver Mobile home screen, and discontinued the operation of the Portal News Partnership Evaluation Committee, which was in charge of reviewing Naver and Kakao’s media partnership. Lee Dong-kwan, chairman of the Korea Communications Commission, said on the 4th, “The responsibility of portals for transmitting fake news is ambiguous. We need legislation to strictly hold them accountable.” On the 6th, the Korea Communications Commission announced that it would form a ‘fake news eradication task force’ that could review Internet newspapers and take ‘one strike out’ measures.
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Professor Shim Young-seop said, “Portal operators will definitely be affected. If the government defines it as illegal, there must be some kind of temporary measure. Until any decision is made in the lawsuit on the merits, operators will be able to avoid problems. “Changes in the type of news consumption also have an impact. From a business perspective, news is not very fun. Even if it is not news, portals have various channels through which consumers can flow in.
Ultimately, it is pointed out that only media outlets with limited news distribution channels are affected. Professor Shim said, “The media is bound to suffer because the inflow channel is gone. In addition to the Internet newspapers mentioned by the government, paper newspapers cannot survive without portals. They must be able to maintain their own platforms, but to what extent can they survive?” “Whether to enter the platform is the key,” he said. “There has been talk of breaking away from platform dependency for a long time, but it is not easy. Media companies need to find out what kind of grammar news users like.”