Facebook is considering several countries including Germany, France, India, Brazil, and the UK to expand its News section. Although it is not clearly known as to when these countries will start to receive Facebook’s dedicated news section, the social media giant says that this step will be taken within 6 months to one year.
Now, that is quite a vague statement. And it seems that Facebook is scared to make this move because of its past failures in the news sphere.
Also, interestingly, Australia is missing from this list of considerable ‘candidates’ to receive Facebook’s News section, and it is understandable. Australia has recently proposed an antitrust law that demands these tech platforms like Facebook and Google to pay for the news content that Australian media outlets give to them. Facebook is f course not in favor of this law and looks like Facebook has decided to not extend its News feature for Australia for the same reason. However, France had ordered Google to pay for news content a few months ago, but it is in Facebook’s list of considerations.
When Facebook launched this section in the US back in June, the company had plans to pay the publishers that participated in providing the news content. And Facebook set some tough integrity tests to pass for any publisher who wanted to use the platform for news. Facebook had several conditions that qualified a publisher to become Facebook’s partner, and one condition was for them to have a large audience. Apart from this, Facebook had mentioned its intent to rely on third-party fact-checkers to check posts for any misinformation, sensationalism, or content that violated copyright infringements and could be used as clickbait.
On Tuesday, Facebook’s Vice President of Global News Partnerships, Campbell Brown said that the company will work closely with news partners and publishers of different countries, and the news content may vary from country to country based on consumer habits and reactions. They will look into the business models of different publishers and will make test different ways to deliver a valuable experience to the users.
Apart from valuable experience, Facebook should keep in mind that users will look for authentic news too, unlike what it used to provide in the past. The News Feed algorithm and Facebook’s ad business need serious checks and balances to ensure success for this venture now.
Read next: Shopping becomes more advanced as Facebook announces to bring new eCommerce features for the Facebook app as well as Instagram
Now, that is quite a vague statement. And it seems that Facebook is scared to make this move because of its past failures in the news sphere.
Also, interestingly, Australia is missing from this list of considerable ‘candidates’ to receive Facebook’s News section, and it is understandable. Australia has recently proposed an antitrust law that demands these tech platforms like Facebook and Google to pay for the news content that Australian media outlets give to them. Facebook is f course not in favor of this law and looks like Facebook has decided to not extend its News feature for Australia for the same reason. However, France had ordered Google to pay for news content a few months ago, but it is in Facebook’s list of considerations.
When Facebook launched this section in the US back in June, the company had plans to pay the publishers that participated in providing the news content. And Facebook set some tough integrity tests to pass for any publisher who wanted to use the platform for news. Facebook had several conditions that qualified a publisher to become Facebook’s partner, and one condition was for them to have a large audience. Apart from this, Facebook had mentioned its intent to rely on third-party fact-checkers to check posts for any misinformation, sensationalism, or content that violated copyright infringements and could be used as clickbait.
On Tuesday, Facebook’s Vice President of Global News Partnerships, Campbell Brown said that the company will work closely with news partners and publishers of different countries, and the news content may vary from country to country based on consumer habits and reactions. They will look into the business models of different publishers and will make test different ways to deliver a valuable experience to the users.
Apart from valuable experience, Facebook should keep in mind that users will look for authentic news too, unlike what it used to provide in the past. The News Feed algorithm and Facebook’s ad business need serious checks and balances to ensure success for this venture now.
Read next: Shopping becomes more advanced as Facebook announces to bring new eCommerce features for the Facebook app as well as Instagram
