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Facebook will pay major UK media outlets millions of pounds a year to license its articles, as the social network faces the threat of a government crackdown for its dominance of online advertising.
Most British newspaper groups have subscribed to the program, under which their articles will appear in a dedicated news section on the site due to launch in January.
While most of Facebook’s news consumption is currently via shared links on a user’s main newsfeed, the new dedicated news tab will engage social network employees selecting the ones they consider top. stories of the day from major media.
In return, publishers are promised large sums of cash and the promise of new readers.
Facebook declined to comment on how much money it is investing in the scheme, but some publishers privately hope to make millions of pounds a year from the multi-year deals they have signed with the social network. As a result, sources in the news industry estimated that Facebook’s total annual bill is likely to run into the tens of millions in the UK alone, making a difference in the finances of struggling media outlets.
“It is an extremely large investment and it is something we have done for several years,” said Sarah Brown, director of Facebook news partnerships in Northern Europe.
He said curators would prioritize the checks and balances associated with original reports when choosing which stories to highlight: “Is this a deep-sourced report, is it timely, does it offer an interesting angle, does it have a good source?”
The Facebook news feed will feature a combination of the top stories chosen by curators employed by the Upday news aggregation service, along with other stories chosen algorithmically to reflect a user’s interests.
Outlets that have signed up to be launch partners include The Guardian, Daily Mirror, The Independent, all the major UK regional news publishers and magazines such as The Economist. Facebook said it was hoping to add more publishers to the deal, with news stories like Rupert Murdoch’s News UK and Daily Mail owner DMGT having yet to sign up.
Other news sites that have not agreed to deals with Facebook, including hyperlocal sites, may appear in the section if they meet certain standards criteria.
The direct cash injection will please a news industry that has largely lost to Facebook in the battle for the UK advertising market. It also comes at a time when the social network is facing the threat of substantial government intervention from a new regulator designed to target its dominance of the online advertising market. Government sources have made it clear that they want Google and Facebook to do more to support the finances of news publishers.
