Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Meta plans to remove news content on Facebook starting in December for users in European countries. Residents of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany will no longer be able to access the Facebook Newsbar.

The reason Meta removed news on Facebook was an effort to focus investments on products and services most valuable to users. According to Meta, news represents only 3% of the content viewed by Facebook users.

Meta, which also owns the Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, plans to devote more resources and time to running short-form video products similar to TikTok.

Facebook News has been a product available to Facebook users since 2019. Facebook said at the time that the dedicated News Bar was “designed to bring people closer to the stories that impact their lives.”

Meta said it would continue to fulfill its obligations to its partner news publishers in countries affected by the removal of Facebook News. However, Facebook will not discuss new offerings or offer new products to news publishing companies.

Meta's decision to begin shedding Facebook News is part of the Mark Zuckerberg-led company's move to divest itself from the news business.

Meta recently shut down Canadians' access to news content on Facebook and Instagram. This measure was taken after the Canadian government adopted regulations on online news that require technology companies to pay news companies for each content circulating on their respective platforms.

This regulation in Canada was rejected by Meta on the grounds that it “does not represent the value that news publishers earn when they choose to use our platform” and that it is “based on the false premise that Meta take advantage of the information content shared on our platform. “

According to CNBC International, Observers criticized Meta's decision to block information because it could lead to an increase in the wave of fake news, disinformation and destroy local information entities.

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