Reports are circulating online that social media giant Facebook is planning to launch its News tab this coming fall.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook has approached several publishers, offering deals worth millions of dollars to license article previews and headlines.
People familiar with the matter told WSJ that Facebook representatives are willing to pay as much as $3 million USD every year for the rights to their content.
Some of the news outlets Facebook are said to be in negotiation with are ABC News, Dow Jones, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg.
To date, Facebook and Google have been criticized by the news industry for their contribution to the decline of newspaper ad revenues. The two tech giants earned 60 percent of the overall digital advertising revenue in the United States last year, eMarketer reported.
Facebook News Tab
WSJ’s sources noted that Facebook could launch the new News tab in fall. However, the content-licensing negotiation with news outlets may take another three years.
Facebook has not announced anything about the News tab yet. Also, it is not known whether any of the outlets mentioned above have agreed to work with Facebook.
The WSJ report said that Facebook had offered news outlets discretion over how their articles would appear on the News tab. They’ll have the option to either host the news directly on Facebook or just include headlines and content preview on the tab with a link to their websites.
The second setup would allow new outlets to increase traffic to their websites while gaining revenue from licensing their content to Facebook.
At the moment, Facebook is still working on its News tab feature and is planning to get feedback from new agencies to improve it.
Facebook and the Fight Against Fake News
For the past years, the social media network owned by Mark Zuckerberg has played a crucial role in the delivery of news to people.
Facebook is free for everyone to access. But because of this freedom, many have used the social networking site to spread manipulated content, hate speech, and fake news.
In the past three years alone, Facebook has been hit by numerous controversies regarding its data-gathering practices, handling of posts, and lack of action against fake news.
But, the company has shown resilience amidst criticisms, continuously working on its services to improve user experience.
Apparently, this move to have a separate tab for legitimate news organizations is part of Facebook’s fight against fake news.
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