Meta will discontinue Facebook News in early April for users in the United States and Australia as the platform works to reduce the focus on news and politics. This feature was closed in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany last year.

The "News" tab was launched in 2019, curating headlines from national and international news institutions, as well as smaller local posts.

Meta said users will still be able to view links to news articles, and news organizations will continue to be able to publish and promote their stories and websites, as can any individual or other organization on Facebook.

This change comes as Meta tries to reduce news and political content on its platforms after years of criticism over how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarization.

Danny Lever, Meta spokesperson, said, "This change does not affect posts from accounts that people choose to follow, it affects what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more.” "This announcement follows years of work on how we handle and deal with political content based on what people have told us they want."

Meta said the change in the News tab does not affect the fact-checking network and misinformation review.

However, misinformation still poses a challenge for the company, especially with the start of the U.S. presidential election and other races.

Sarah Cripps, Director of the Technology Policy Institute at Cornell Brooks College of Public Policy, who studies technology policy and how new technologies evolve online, said, "Facebook never saw itself as a political platform, it was run by tech enthusiasts, then suddenly it started expanding and found itself immersed in politics, and they themselves became a headline," "I think with many major elections approaching this year, it's not surprising that Facebook takes another step away from politics so it doesn't unintentionally become a major political headline."

Rick Edmonds, media analyst at Poynter, said the dissolution of the "News" tab is not surprising to news organizations that have seen decreased traffic from Facebook to their websites for several years, prompting these organizations to focus on other ways to attract audiences, such as search and newsletters.

Edmonds added, "I would say if you were watching, you could see this coming, but it is another very harmful thing in the news field."

Meta said news accounts for less than 3 percent of what users see worldwide in their Facebook feeds, adding that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the United States dropped by more than 80 percent last year.

However, according to a 2023 study by the Pew Research Center, half of adults in the United States get news at least sometimes from social media. And one platform stands out above the rest: Facebook.

Three out of ten American adults say they regularly get news from Facebook, according to Pew, and 16 percent of American adults say they regularly get news from Instagram, which is also owned by Meta.

Recently, Instagram users expressed dissatisfaction with the app's choice to "proactively" stop recommending political content posted on accounts they do not follow. Although the option to turn off the filter was always available in user settings, many people were not aware that Meta had made this change.