Meta is taking another step away from news and politics, with it announcing it's ending Facebook News in the U.K., France, and Germany from December this year.
Originally launched back in 2019, the Facebook news tab had been designed to provide a more trustworthy source of news content within the app. It had done so through approved publishers that partnered with Meta to populate the separate news feed.
It came about as a response to Facebook being considered a primary source of news and an important facilitator of news and information for many, leading Meta to a more proactive play in policing news content, hopefully clearing out dubious sources by offering a more refined and authoritative experience of news.

Though over the years Facebook users have steadily decreased engagement with, and interest in news discussion, which already led Meta to shift its focus towards short-form video and updates from friends cut down on news and particularly political content in-stream.

What has now led to the demise of Facebook's separate News section.
As Meta explains

It's part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most, said a company spokesperson. As a company, we have to focus our time and resources on things people tell us they want to see more of on the platform, including short-form video. News is a tiny percent of what people consume on Facebook, and indeed, it's about connecting with each other and discovering new opportunities, passions and interests. News makes up less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed, so news discovery is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people.

All the way back in 2021, Meta said that the commonest feedback that it receives from Facebook users is that they do not want their News Feed to be flooded with political content. That was amid rising levels of political division and argument, and in response to this, Meta has incrementally gone about scaling back the presence of political content in its main app since then.

Fortunately, it does have a viable alternative in short-form video, where Reels have already become massive and are garnering more engagement within the app. And as Meta pushes further into AI-recommended content, now it can keep more users more engaged without relying on comments and/or shares for active engagement, which had been artificially propping up news engagement.
That shift will also allow Meta to escape its various deals with news publishers, which had cost it millions-dollars and injected new funding into the media industry-while also giving it more ground to push back against regional regulations that attempt to force Meta to pay local publishers for its use of news content.

Australia was the first to implement a specific process on this, its "Media Bargaining Code," launched in 2021, essentially forcing Meta to pay local news organizations for re-posts of their content within its apps. Which Meta argued made little sense, as it's the publishers themselves that garner all the benefit from this process, not Meta. But it negotiated in good faith, which led to more money then being diverted to local publishers from Facebook.

Though Meta probably shouldn't have blinked, because the Media Bargaining Code has since armed more governments with a stick to wield over Meta to demand more money, on behalf of their local media organizations.

Canada is the latest to press its case for more Facebook dollars to be redirected to local media, which has seen Meta ban news content in its apps entirely in the region, in response to its proposed "Online News Act".

And now, as Meta moves further away from talking about news within its apps, so it appears Zuck and Co. will really occupy the place this time, which will push the prominence of news discussion further - especially in some territories.

Is that a good move?

News content, according to Meta, constitutes an extremely small fraction of engagement within its apps, as Reels really come to drive audience activity in apps of this platform. And with Meta also being repeatedly hammered over the role that its platforms may or may not have played in amplifying political movements, it makes sense it should seek to move on from news entirely, if it can, and with the indicators pointing this as a broader usage shift, now seems the time for the company to move on from its news deals.

It will be interesting to see if this shifts how one gets their news in the future and whether Facebook's trend toward entertainment slowly changes perceptions about its impact in this realm.