Facebook may cough up for news content

Facebook may pay news websites to publish high-quality content on its platform, according to Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook may pay news websites to publish high-quality content on its platform, according to Mark Zuckerberg.

The chief executive of the social network said the company was considering building a dedicated section of its website for trusted news and was looking at ways that it could pay publishers.

The move would mark a significant shift from Facebook’s policy over the past year to focus more of its news feed on showing users posts from friends and family and fewer news articles.

Facebook, which is based in Menlo Park, California, is the world’s largest social media site, with 2.3 billion active users. This rises to 2.7 billion once its other apps, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Facebook Messenger, are included.

The social media group has tried several strategies to work with news publishers, but it has not made it a policy to pay them for their content. However, it is said to be testing the idea of a dedicated news section internally.

Mr Zuckerberg, 34, said he wanted this product to “surface high-quality and trustworthy information” and that he wanted the right business model and “ecosystem” to support this.

He said Facebook was not considering charging users for the content.

The comments came in an interview the Facebook co-founder conducted in Berlin with Mathias Dopfner, 56, chief executive of Axel Springer, the largest news publisher in Europe.

Facebook may be reacting to regulatory and industry changes. New copyright laws from the European Union expected in the next two years will require companies such as Facebook to compensate publishers for news articles or videos that appear on its website.

Facebook is also likely to be watching Apple’s News Plus, which was launched last month. It gives users access to 300 publications for $US9.99 a month.

The idea of Facebook paying publishers to host their journalism has been suggested previously by Robert Thomson, 58, chief executive of News Corp, which owns The Australian and The Times.

Mr Thomson has proposed that Facebook pays publishers for content in the same way that a cable company pays to carry channels such as Bloomberg and CNN.

“We hope Mark’s words are followed by concrete steps towards actually creating a new business model that recognises and compensates the work of quality journalism,” Mr Thomson said.

The Times