Payback time? Facebook to offer news publishers money to show content

The initiative is currently open only to select US media outlets

Another privacy breach? Facebook admits storing passwords in plain text [File] Representational image | Reuters

Facebook is said to be in talks with news publishers to offer as much as $3 million to have the rights to put up content in their news section. The initiative is currently open only to select US media outlets. The media outlets that are currently reported to be in the talks are The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg and Walt Disney's ABC News. The fee that is said to be paid will be for licensing headlines and previews of articles.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had hinted at a news service earlier this year. It is still unclear whether the payment would be for a single news outlet or to multiple outlets. The initiative comes at a time when Facebook along with other tech giants like Google have been under scrutiny for antitrust regulations. They have also been criticised for taking away the larger share of ad revenues due to the monopoly-like hold that they have in their respective industries. The move could be a potential face saver for Facebook to give something back to news organisations, considering Facebook is being used as one of the primary mediums to share news.

Facebook has been accused of raking in all the moolah without having produced one single piece of news. Many organisations have also been forced to pay Facebook to run campaigns to get their news pieces across. But, considering the amount of revenue that Facebook rakes in every year, the $3 million payout would indeed be a smaller sum, unless the initiative is carried out to lot more news organisations around the world.

This new initiative could also be Facebook's way of staying on the right side of 'news', after being one of the primary carriers of 'fake news'. The move would also help them in putting up trusted news pieces in the 'news' section.

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