Meta, aka Facebook, are looking to review commitments to pay publishers for their news articles. The payments, said to be 100s of million US$ a year to mostly larger news publishers, have shown little return to the Facebook platform or gained them many extra users.
Some of the larger publishers, both in the US and elsewhere, are going to have to figure out a way to make up for a substantial shortfall if Facebook decides to abandon its commitment to sharing the news articles, and paying for the pleasure. Sites include The Washington Post which was making US$20 million a year, The New York Times, much the same amount, and more than US$10 million to The Wall Street Journal.
The so-called Journal fee, introduced in 2019, was a business model which proposed to reward news publishers, was part of the “Facebook News Deal”. The initial deal expires this year and industry pundits say…
