Facebook News: Meta will end its collaboration with Media Services, a subsidiary of AFP

Meta, the American group that owns the social network, has also confirmed the end of this contract, preferring to entrust the "curation" (sorting and selection) of information content to algorithms rather than journalists.

The fixed-term contracts of more than a dozen people hired by Media Services as part of this mission will therefore not be renewed, according to AFP management, without further comment.

"We are constantly evaluating our global content curation partnerships based on user and product needs," said a Meta spokesperson in a statement sent to AFP and Le Figaro.

Facebook News, a social network tab reserved for journalistic content, will be maintained at least until the end, in 2024, of the contracts signed since last fall with part of the French press for the use of its content.

Regularly accused of being a channel for the propagation of false information, Facebook had started this service in France in February, after having deployed it in the United States at the end of 2019, then in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia.

Its launch was made possible by the signing in October 2021 of a framework agreement with the Alliance for the General Information Press (Apig), which brings together nearly 300 titles.

For a renewable period of three years, this agreement included the remuneration of both neighboring rights - a kind of copyright created in 2019, at the heart of a tough battle between the media and the web giants - and publishing content on Facebook News.

The end of the contract with Media Services comes as Meta is going through a bad patch, with net profit which fell 52% to $4.4 billion in the third quarter, and intends to strengthen the production of short videos (reels) to compete Tik Tok.

In July, in the United States, the group confirmed that it was redirecting part of the resources of Facebook News and its Bulletin newsletter platform to other products.

Meta also pays more than 80 media worldwide, including AFP, under a content verification program, separate from the contract with Facebook News.

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