Facebook plans to expand its news tab into the UK in January which is going to be the first country after U.S  . Facebook is to pay mainstream UK news outlets millions of pounds a year to license their articles, as the social network faces the threat of a government crackdown over its dominance of online advertising.

Most British newspaper groups have signed up to the programme, under which their articles will appear in a dedicated news section on the site that is due to launch in January.

While most Facebook news consumption is currently through links shared on a user’s main newsfeed, the new dedicated news tab will involve employees of the social network selecting what they consider to be the main stories of the day from mainstream outlets.

Publishers are going to benefit out of it as they are promised good return and new readers.

“It’s an extremely large investment and it’s something we’ve done over multiple years,” said Sarah Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships in northern Europe.

Facebook News section will feature a mix of top stories chosen by curators employed by the news aggregator service Upday, alongside other stories chosen algorithmically to reflect a user’s interests.

The outlets that have signed up to be launch partners include the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, the Independent, all the UK’s major regional news publishers, and magazines such as the Economist. Facebook said it hoped to add further publishers to the deal, with the likes of Rupert Murdoch’s News UK and Daily Mail owner DMGT yet to sign up.

Facebook first launched its News tab in selected US cities back in October 2019, then expanded the roll-out to all of the US in June to help provide more coverage amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Facebook announced in August that it would be looking to expand the program in 2021, and the UK will become the first cab off the rank in the New Year.

Source- Tech Crunch

Country- UK