This isn't surprising, given Meta's broader shift away from news content, but it's another blow for media organisations, many of which are already struggling to stay relevant – and to stay financially afloat – in an increasingly changing online media landscape.

As part of its broader shift away from news content, Meta has just announced it will stop paying Australian news outlets.

Today, Meta said the following:

In early April 2024, we will sunset Facebook News – a dedicated tab in the bookmarks section on Facebook that highlights news – in the US and Australia [.] This is part of our ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most.". As a firm, we need to focus our time and resources on activities where people tell us they would like to see more of on the platform-from short form video and other areas.

Usage of Facebook News in Australia and the US is also down by over 80% year-over-year, according to Meta.

Meta says that its current deals will be respected, but it is not going to sign new payment deals with the Australian publishers.

"While we'll be deprecating Facebook News in these countries, this announcement does not affect the terms under our existing Facebook News agreements with publishers in Australia, France, and Germany. Those deals have already timed out in the US and the UK.". And to ensure that we continue to invest in products and services that drive user engagement, we will not enter into any new commercial agreements for traditional news content in these countries, nor will we offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers in the future.

This marks the end to Meta's brief truce with the government of Australia over what that government considered a "fair payment" from Meta for use of its news content.

When last year's negotiations between Meta and Australian publishers failed, the country's "News Media Bargaining Code" made international headlines as all content from Australian publishers was blocked on Facebook and Instagram.

After swift renegotiation, Meta ended the ban and agreed to pay Australian publishers a smaller sum for news content use. But the standoff raised further questions as to the power that Facebook wields within the broader publishing landscape, and how much it actually needs, or doesn't need, local news content.

Meta has long maintained that news content made up a relatively small piece of its service—and in today's announcement, it stressed that news accounts for less than 3% of what people around the world view in their Facebook feed—and now it probably makes up an even smaller portion of the service, which is reason enough that Meta is getting out of its old news org deals whole-hog.

Which, as I mentioned above, isn't really much of a surprise.

Last week, in response to news that Indonesia also is considering laws that would require Meta to pay local publishers for the use of news content, I wrote that :
"Ultimately, Meta made a mistake by negotiating with the regulators in Australia and accepting a watered-down version of that country's revenue-sharing proposal because that set a precedent for others to follow."

Meta should never have agreed to Australian publishers as even the compromise of paying any sum of money at all to local media companies only goes to fuel more regions into thinking about their own propositions under the same vein.

All along, the media organizations sponsoring such deals have based their arguments on flawed perceptions of market dynamics. It's not Meta that needs the content, it's the businesses that profit from distribution scaled up through Meta's apps.
And now, as Zuck and Co set their sights on further steps to distance themselves from news content, they need such less than ever.

Here's the data. Meta stopped surfacing content from Canadian publishers in its apps as of August 1st last year.
Usage in the North American region actually increased during the period even though no Canadian publisher content was ever surfaced.
Meta is now actively searching for ways to limit news discussion on Threads, while it's slowly been rolling out comparable efforts in other apps.

AI-recommended Reels have accounted for virtually all of its engagement gains over the last couple of years, as short videos - targeted to users based on what their interests are, rather than on the pages they follow - have proven a winning strategy and a lever away from divisive posts.

And now, it is no longer theoretical as to whether Meta can live without news content-it has now been, once and for all, definitively proven-leaving publishers, and the governments representing their interests, in a much worse negotiating position.

So while the Australian Government can bluff Meta on this, and try to compel it to play by the rules of the News Media Bargoning Code (and apparently it does), Meta knows that it can block publishers with minimal consequence.

Really, Meta's not going to pay. And it's now up to Australian authorities to decide whether publishers should put up with what they have, or whether it should make Meta seal off the final vestiges of referral traffic that Meta apps still send their way.