Meta has informed Australian publishers it will be reverting to automated news content, removing all human editors and putting future news media bargaining agreements at risk.
“Along with European curation deals expiring, we plan to end our in-house curation of Facebook News in Australia by the end of the year,” Andy Hunt, Meta Australia’s news partnership boss told local media.
“This update will have no impact on our commercial deals and the Facebook News product will still be accessible in Australia.”
Facebook News was implemented in 2019, and is curated by a team of human editors.
“People want and benefit from personalised experiences on Facebook, but we know there is reporting that transcends individual experience,” Facebook said in a blog post at the time. “We want to support both.”
Although Meta assures this won’t impact the current deals struck under the news media bargaining code, it certainly doesn’t bode well for future deals, nor for Jacinda Adern’s current attempt to force similar negotiations between the tech giant and New Zealand’s media publishers.
Facebook famously bristled against the bargaining code when it was introduced in Australia last year, going so far as to pull all news from its feed to avoid having to kowtow to the legislation.
It threatened a similar news blackout in Canada a few weeks ago, as the country looks to introduce its own bargaining code.
While the company eventually agreed to commercial deals with a number of Australian publishers, internal leaks showed Zuckerberg resented being strongarmed.
