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Facebook considers revamping how it shares news stories

Facebook considers revamping how it shares news stories
Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman

  • Updated:

Facebook is once again turning its attention to news. Users crave it, but the social media platform is destroying the ability for publishers to monetize their content. The potential solution? A new Facebook news tab.

Mark Zuckerberg

What will that look like? The company has been aggressive in segmenting actual news away from users’ news feeds. In a video discussion shared on Facebook, Zuckerberg sounded like he didn’t have any plans to reintegrate news into the primary product.

“If you look at the ways that people are interacting now online, that are growing the fastest, it’s messages, it’s small groups, and it’s ephemeral stories. And these all have the property that they’re more private than these digital town square-type equivalents,” Zuckerberg said. “I think it’s clear that this is the next big thing that people want to get built.”

You can watch Zuckerberg’s discussion with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner here:

For most of human history, writers had to clear a high bar to be published. You’d need access to a printing press or the ability to impress an editor before seeing your thoughts hit the page. The internet changed all that. Now, anyone can publish anything and share it with the entire world. The algorithms behind Facebook and Google have directed audiences away from many legitimate publications. Fringe bloggers can have just as much sway as established media organizations with fact-checkers and institutional safeguards.

In 2019, free information is everywhere…

But free content isn’t always the most valuable. Investigative journalism, for example, requires a lot of time, effort, and resources. It’s not a place where a hobbyist can succeed. Some free content may simply be opinion, fabricated information, or an item created with an agenda – to sell you a product or an idea. As the standards of publishing erode, that hasn’t curbed our appetites. American adults spend an average of 10.5 hours consuming media every day. That hunger, combined with dwindling media company resources, is creating a major challenge for Facebook.

Just this week, a 177-year-old newspaper saw its staff fall below the bare minimum of people needed to field an NFL team.

Throughout Zuckerberg’s video conversation, the issue of a fair monetization system was a recurring theme. We need to pay for journalism somehow. As the advertising model continues evolving, that’s a serious problem. Digital ads pay nothing close to print ads. Ad-blocking software starves publishers even further. Perhaps something like Brave’s Basic Attention Token is the answer. Or maybe Facebook can find a way to bankroll media organizations, perhaps becoming a publisher in its own right.

One fear about a new news tab is that such a feature would actually shove news to an area where Facebook users wouldn’t even see it. Remember, Facebook’s primary goal is to keep you on Facebook, engaged with the platform. If you click away to read a story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the social network can’t monetize you anymore.

But until we solve the monetization problem, journalism organizations will continue to crumble, Facebook will have less content, and the threat to our democracy will grow.

Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who led Softonic.com's editorial team in 2018 and 2019. Before joining Softonic, he was the Head of Content for Curiosity.com and a news producer for NBC, Fox, and CBS. He is an award-winning filmmaker and director of sketch and improv comedy, and a contributing writer for the Pitch comedy app.

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