Facebook announced this week that they’ll be spending $300M over the next 3 years to support journalism. Google made a similar announcement last year.
As Peter Kafka over at Recode writes, a bunch of this is actually going towards helping publishers contribute content to Facebook’s Watch product:
Facebook will keep spending money on its previously announced program to bring news videos to its Facebook Watch hub, which launched last year. Facebook is paying news outlets like Fox, ABC, and the BBC to produce programming for its site — but those payments aren’t guaranteed
Peter Kafka, Recode
As Jason Calacanis points out, Facebook is committing 0.3% of it’s annual revenue towards this:
Right on cue, Facebook does the most misguided, heavy-handed and unsustainable version of sharing the wealth, by sharing $100m a year — .3% of their yearly revenue — in a series of grants.
Jason Calacanis
The cynical take is that these kinds of one-time payoffs, to highly influential media organizations, are designed to silence and tamper criticism — they’re buying off influential people for a pittance.
Outbrain has paid out to publishers over 4x this amount (more than $1.3 Billion) over the *past* 3 years. And this is money that went directly to publishers, with no strings attached. Don’t let Facebook’s PR confuse the story – their core business is a direct competition to publishers, both in ad $$’s and users’ attention. Unlike Facebook, Outbrain has a truly enormous impact on publishers’ ability to create journalism sustainably.