Facebook plans to “deprecate” the News tab for users in the United States and Australia by April, according to a confusingly worded announcement Thursday night. what does that mean? From what we can tell, this means Facebook doesn’t want anyone to use the platform for news anymore and will be getting rid of its dedicated News tab.
“In early April 2024, we will be deprecating Facebook News — the tab dedicated to news in the Facebook Bookmarks section — in the U.S. and Australia. Previously, we announced in September 2023 that last year we were deprecating Facebook News in the U.K., France, and Germany Facebook News is deprecated.” read.
Facebook insists that users do not use the social media site to get news anyway, claiming that only 3% of the content seen by users globally is news articles.
“The number of people using Facebook for news in Australia and the United States fell by more than 80% in the last year. We know that people come to Facebook not for news and political content, but to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests.” The statement continued said.
Why does Facebook say they will “deprecate” this news, a word that seems strange? Your guess is as good as ours. Typically, most Americans probably understand the word deprecate as expressing disapproval. Other common definitions include “to put down or put down.”
But Facebook appears to be using the word “deprecate” as a synonym for de-prioritize, although it’s unclear why using it in this way would require a news announcement. If you look where it already appears, the News tab has been de-prioritized.
I took the screenshot below to show how “outdated” the News tab is compared to all other tabs. I have to zoom out of the browser to show the News tab without scrolling down. Is it the part circled in red below? That’s the News tab.
This primacy may indicate that Facebook users don’t necessarily dislike news. Maybe they just don’t know where to find it.
Facebook decided to kill the News tab after other Meta properties like Instagram and Threads made it clear they didn’t want to be in the news business. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that since launching Threads last year, it has Not a place for news.
In a statement on Thursday, Facebook stressed that news outlets can still share their content on the platform and users can still share any news article they like in their feeds. Facebook also noted that they remain committed to fact-checking claims on the site.
“This does not affect our commitment to connecting people to reliable information on our platform. We work with third-party fact-checkers—certified by certifying bodies like the nonpartisan International Fact-Checking Network—who are on our app to review and rate viral misinformation,” Facebook said.
“We have built the largest global fact-checking network of any platform by partnering with more than 90 independent fact-checking organizations around the world, who review content in more than 60 languages,” the announcement continued.
Facebook parent company Meta did not immediately respond to emailed questions Thursday evening. Gizmodo will update this article if we hear back.