#Nytimes news free

The Wall Street Journalreported that the agreements were worth as much as $3 million a year, and a Facebook spokesperson told me that number is “not too far off at all.” But in at least one instance, the numbers are evidently much larger. The exact terms of these deals remain secret, because Facebook insisted on nondisclosure and the news organizations agreed.

What Facebook News does deliver-though to only a handful of high-profile news organizations of its choosing-is serious amounts of cash. Participating in Facebook News doesn’t appear to deliver many new readers to outlets the feature is very difficult to find, and it is not integrated into individuals’ newsfeeds. Under the cover of launching a feature called Facebook News, Facebook has been funneling money to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Bloomberg, and other select paid partners since late 2019. Less well known, and potentially far more dangerous, is a secretive, multimillion-dollar-a-year payout scheme aimed at the most influential news outlets in America. As a result of its many roles in degrading our democracy, it faces mounting scrutiny by politicians and regulators.įacebook has responded to the negative attention by creating a highly sophisticated public relations effort, which includes becoming the number one corporate spender on federal lobbying and engaging in a massive advertising blitz aimed at the D.C. The social media company is financially asphyxiating the news industry even as it gives oxygen to conspiracy theories and lies.

#Nytimes news free

Facebook’s threat to a free press-and, by extension, to democracy-is especially pernicious. Many factors contributed to this economic collapse, but none more so than the cornering of the digital advertising market by the duopoly of Facebook and Google. Local newspapers have been particularly devastated, making it ever more difficult for people to know what is happening in their communities. newspapers shut down, and almost all the rest cut staff, for a total of 36,000 jobs lost between 20 alone.

Over the past two decades, as Big Tech has boomed, news organizations have been going bust.