Sources: Meta begins telling its 50 US news partners that it will no longer pay for content to run on Facebook's News Tab, ending a three-year deal from 2019
Meta on Tuesday began telling its news partners in the U.S. that the company no longer plans to pay publishers for their content … Tweets: @sarafischer , @sarafischer , @joshelman , @rj_writes , @mattbrownep , @amasna , @nickstatt , @mikeelgan , @sarafischer , @blackamazon , and @ivanthek See also Mediagazer Tweets: Sara Fischer / @sarafischer : 🚨SCOOP: @Meta officially cuts funding for news pubs — The deals for the News Tab were worth roughly $105 million in the U.S. — In addition to that, the company spent around $90 million on news videos for the company's video tab called “Watch.” https://www.axios.com/... Sara Fischer / @sarafischer : .@Facebook & news industry, a relationship timeline: —2018: Changes algo to favor friends over publishers —2019: MZ announces News Tab & funding alongside News Corp CEO on stage —2021: FB starts cutting politics in feed —2022: FB cuts funding for news pubs https://www.axios.com/... Josh Elman / @joshelman : This is an interesting timeline. But misses the launch of the Facebook Share feature in 2007, the work @AndreaBreannaNY and I did to bring Facebook Connect to Huffington Post in 2008-9, The like and comment widgets in 2010. Long journey, lots of iterations... more will come! https://twitter.com/... @rj_writes : Glad an entire industry didn't pivot its entire strategy to chasing the whims of a changeable algorithm! Wait ... https://twitter.com/... Matt Brown / @mattbrownep : wow who could have predicted that Facebook might not be a reliable business partner for publishers https://twitter.com/... @amasna : It was always coming https://twitter.com/... Nick Statt / @nickstatt : Super cool. I'll now eagerly wait the Pivot to Video 2.0 and whatever bait-and-switch tactics Facebook will use to lure more publishers onto the rug before they pull it out again. https://twitter.com/... Mike Elgan / @mikeelgan : Alt headline: “Facebook to publishers: Thanks for letting us take your audience. Now fuck off.” https://www.axios.com/... Sara Fischer / @sarafischer : While news publishers are still eligible to have their content included in the News Tab, the funding to roughly 50 publishers for their content will not be renewed. https://twitter.com/... @blackamazon : Citing News , cutting Twitch sponsorships, announcing they ain't gone be listening to objections .... But okay https://twitter.com/... @ivanthek : There it is. https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2019 News Tab launch was framed as a responsibility play: at an event with News Corp's Robert Thomson, Zuckerberg said every internet platform had a duty to fund news partnerships, and Facebook began paying some partners up to $3M a year to appear in the tab. Roughly three years on, that posture has inverted — a week after a staff memo announced resources were being pulled from the News tab and Bulletin toward the creator economy, Meta is telling its ~50 U.S. news partners the money stops.
The sums involved are material for publishers: reporting pegs the U.S. News Tab deals at roughly $105 million, plus around $90 million spent on news videos for Watch. The endpoint of this arc is already visible in later coverage, where Meta moves to deprecate the News tab outright in the US and Australia and stop signing traditional news deals altogether.
First-order effects
- About 50 U.S. publishers lose licensing revenue overnight — collectively on the order of $105 million in News Tab deals plus the ~$90 million Watch video spend — hitting newsrooms that staffed up for Facebook-funded video and tab placements.
- Meta frees itself from renewal negotiations with individual outlets, converting news from a paid partnership category into unpaid feed content.
Second-order effects
- Publishers that built Facebook-specific production capacity must redirect it toward other distribution channels or their own properties, while the creator-economy pivot the memo signaled means they now compete with creators for the same platform attention and budgets.
- With voluntary U.S. deals ending, the bargaining question shifts from 'will platforms pay?' to whether regulators force them to — echoing the platform-versus-publisher tension behind the 2017 test that demoted Page posts into a secondary feed and cut media engagement.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — pilot payments, quiet wind-down, then tab deprecation — direct platform licensing of traditional news becomes a closed chapter rather than a recurring revenue line, leaving legislation or nothing as the replacement income stream for publishers.
- Platforms' news strategy consolidates around whatever drives engagement metrics, formalizing a split between professional publishers and creators that the 2019 'responsibility to fund' era was meant to prevent.
The trend: Major platforms are unwinding paid news licensing in favor of creator-first economics, shifting the fight over who funds journalism from boardroom deals to regulators.