Facebook sends bill to media minnows

UNITED STATES: Facebook is moving publishers’ posts out of people’s news feeds unless the companies pay thousands of dollars to reach their audience.

The new format is being tried in six countries, including Slovakia, Serbia and Sri Lanka, and moves any posts that do not come from users’ friends and family into a secondary feed unless they are paid for. Paid promotions still appear in news feeds as normal.

The change could wreck the business models of small publishers who depend on organic sharing on Facebook for a large part of their audience. It could also have a big impact on larger companies such as BuzzFeed that create content designed to go viral on the site, as ‘‘likes’’ cause Facebook’s algorithm to promote them in news feeds.

The biggest media companies would be less badly affected as more readers go straight to their home pages.

Early reports indicate the traffic of many publishers would tumble as a result of the change. In Slovakia some pages lost two thirds of their traffic overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.

The move would be deeply controversial if introduced internationally but would limit the sharing of fake news and other stories from disreputable sources, while potentially increasing revenues from others.

Facebook has introduced a number of measures to tackle fake news, after stories attacking Hillary Clinton influenced last year’s US presidential election. Nevertheless, it remains a serious problem on the social network, with false stories proliferating immediately after the Las Vegas shooting .

Critics yesterday accused Facebook of devious tactics, in giving publishers a huge organic reach and only later charging for that audience. Sources close to Facebook yesterday indicated that the measures would not be introduced globally, although its official statement does not rule them out.