The social media giant’s news service has already launched in the US, UK and Germany.
A subsidiary of AFP, Media Services, will be responsible for selecting the journalistic content that will appear on the news feed that will soon be launched by Facebook in France, AFP management said on Thursday. “Meta (the American group that owns the social network Facebook, editor’s note) has chosen Media Services, a subsidiary of AFP, to ensure the curation of the future Facebook News project“, indicated Agence France-Presse, confirming information from the media La Lettre A.
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Asked by AFP, Meta for his part confirmed that the AFP subsidiary “had been appointed as a curation partnerbut did not release Facebook News launch details. In digital jargon, content curation is the activity of sorting and selecting content on the internet in order to feed a site.
“Media Services is a press agency, a subsidiary of Factstory, a production company itself a subsidiary of AFP“, clarified the management of AFP, pointing out that Media Services employed “journalists holding press cards“.
Scheduled arrival originally scheduled for January 2022
Facebook announced last October that it had signed a framework agreement with the Alliance for General Information Press (Apig), which plans to pay French daily press publishers for two years for the use of their content.
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This agreement provides for participation of these publishers in Facebook News. This service allowing Facebook users to access information has already been launched in the United States, the United Kingdom, then in Germany in May. Initially, the arrival of Facebook News in France was expected for January 2022.
In addition, Meta pays more than 80 media worldwide, including AFP, under a content verification program developed by Facebook, regularly accused of being a channel for the propagation of false information. The contract signed as part of Facebook News is however separate from this agreement on the verification program, indicated the management of AFP.