Facebook to pay British publishers for news articles

A win for struggling news publishers who say Facebook benefits from their content but does not share any of its advertising revenue

Facebook will start paying some UK newspapers for selected articles that appear on its social network from next year. 

The articles will be published on Facebook News, which is launching in the UK in January.

Facebook said it will prioritise original, deeply reported stories and content that is not already on the social network. 

Facebook said hundreds of UK news outlets had already signed up including The Mirror, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, Elle and Esquire. 

The Guardian reported that publishers could expect “millions” in the deal.

The decision comes after years of tension between the social network and news publishers, some of which have accused it of cashing in on advertising revenue by sharing content it does not own. Advertising revenues in traditional publishers have taken a dip since the advent of social media and online content aggregators like Facebook and Google. 

The decline of traditional newspapers, which impacts local and regional journalism of importance to the public, has been brought up in numerous government meetings with technology executives and has been a focus in some of the antitrust hearings in the US. 

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was one of the first to publicly call on Facebook to pay media organisations a fee for content in 2018. His publications were not included in the lineup. 

Facebook News will be available on the mobile app rather than a web browser.  Facebook told the BBC that its earlier launch in the US has shown that new readers who have not interacted with the news organisations in the past made up 95pc of the traffic through the app, which is promising for lucrative new readership. 

Facebook said in September that it would block Australians from sharing local and international news if the country passes a law requiring the company to pay publishers for their content.