The American social network Facebook announced Monday the launch in Germany, from May, of its news platform Facebook News which will broadcast the articles of a hundred German media having accepted the remuneration of the tech giant.
Read also: The day Facebook censored all press articles in Australia
“
Facebook News, a place dedicated to journalistic content, will begin in May 2021 in Germany,
” Mark Zuckerberg's group announced in a statement.
This service, launched at the end of 2019 in the United States, then at the end of January in the United Kingdom, is a news feed composed only of articles from press editors, paid by Facebook.
With this project, the group is showing its desire to promote journalism and shed its reputation for disinformation.
Facebook has partnered with “
over a hundred media brands
” in Germany, including the prestigious Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the business daily Handelsblatt.
However, a major player is missing: the Axel Springer group, publisher of Germany's most widely read tabloid, Bild, which refused to participate in the project.
"
It is problematic that a platform tries to become itself an information medium and to extract from certain publishers remuneration that is too low
", told AFP a spokesperson for the group.
"
We are rather in favor of a European copyright which allows, in a transparent manner, all publishers to receive fair remuneration,
" he adds.
Newspaper publishers are experiencing a crisis in advertising revenue, the majority of which are captured by the digital giants who distribute their articles without remuneration.
This situation has worsened with the coronavirus pandemic which has plunged the advertising market.
To rebalance revenues between media and digital platforms, in 2019 the European Union adopted a directive, known as “
neighboring rights
”, which requires digital giants to sign remuneration agreements with the media.
Read also: Facebook signs peace with Australia
But for the moment, no text has been signed by Facebook, which prefers to highlight its own initiatives, such as Facebook News or its journalism support funds.
In Australia, Facebook suspended article sharing on its platform for several days in February, in protest against a government bill aimed at better paying the media.
Several official rescue service Facebook pages were also unintentionally affected.
In the face of the outcry, the company finally backed down, sealing a last-minute compromise deal with Canberra and, like Google, making deals directly with Australian media.
The Australian Parliament then passed the bill on February 25, the first such legislation to garner the attention of governments around the world.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/H7U7FJNUZBG6BPL5PZCMGC6EUY.jpg)