Publishers are concerned news could be permanently dumped from Facebook

News publishers are increasingly concerned that news could be dumped from Facebook entirely as the tech giant make changes to its platform.

Meta chairman and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Picture: Bloomberg

Publishers say Meta’s decision to switch off its hidden news tab will have little impact on how Facebook users consume news and instead they remain worried about their future as the tech company refuses to rule out ­banning news from its platform.

Many publishers are concerned about the long-term accessibility of news on the social media platform and whether Meta will repeat what it has done in Canada and ban it altogether.

Country Press Australia president Andrew Schreyer said he predicted Meta (the owner of Facebook) would follow in the footsteps of action it took in Canada that resulted in all news being removed from appearing in Facebook users’ feeds.

Country Press Australia president Andrew Schreyer.

“Based on the Canadian experience, if Meta is designated under the News Media Bargaining Code, it is likely Facebook will not carry any news on its platform and the Facebook pages of news outlets in Australia will be shut down,” he said on Tuesday.

“This will have a massive impact on the rural, regional and outer-suburban communities served by the 230 Country Press Australia member mastheads that rely on the news they receive from publishers on Facebook.

“Other than the local newspaper, there is often no other local news source in the communities they serve, which poses a significant threat to democracy in these areas.”

As Meta, led by chairman and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, begins the process of “deprecating” Facebook news from its Australian and US platforms, it means users will not be able to access news under the news tab.

This change will take a few days to be completed and it comes after Facebook News was deprecated in the UK, France and Germany last year.

Meta has also claimed that the number of people using Facebook news in Australia and the US has fallen by 80 per cent in the past year and that news makes up less than 3 per cent of what people see in their Facebook feeds.

These claims have been rejected by some media companies but Meta would not share data on how many people will be affected.

Despite the concerns, a Meta spokeswoman said there were no plans to abandon news altogether. “There is no change to publishers’ ability to use Facebook and they can continue to benefit from our free tools and products which they can voluntarily use should they want to,” she said.

The latest move breaches the tech company’s deals with Australian publishers and it will likely result in it being “designated” by the federal government under the code’s terms.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland recently met with her Canadian counterpart to discuss the challenges faced on how to best regulate big tech companies. In 2021, the former Coalition government introduced the News Media Bargaining Code in a world-first move and it resulted in more than 30 commercial agreements between digital platforms including Google and Meta and Australian news publishers.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has spoken with her Canadian counterpart about Meta’s move to abandon news content. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

The payment-for-content deals – worth close to $250m a year for local news publishers including News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian, Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media and the ABC – caused concern particularly among news outlets and political leaders.

The news tab has previously been labelled a “faux product” by some media outlets which claimed it was set up to fail – it was located under the menu tab and difficult to find with some users not even having access to it.

There were also cases where at times there was very little fresh news content under the tab.