Facebook has announced that it is investing an additional $8 million over three years to support Canadian journalism.
The social media giant notes that this $8 million investment is on top of the nearly $10 million in partnerships and programs in the last four years.
“These additional dollars will also help ensure that publishers of all sizes can fairly access these funds, especially small and local publishers,” Facebook outlined in a blog post.
As part of this latest investment, Facebook is extending its Facebook-Canadian Press New Fellowship through to 2024. In addition to the fellowship program, the company says the investment will allow Facebook to build programs to increase the strength of underrepresented voices in journalism.
Further, Facebook notes that it wants “to explore commercial deals with publishers for access to additional news links as we experiment with ways to connect people to news on Facebook.”
“As we’ve shared previously, Facebook is not going to pay for news links or content that publishers voluntarily put on our platform. However, in instances where the Facebook community might benefit from additional access to news links, Facebook would pay to bring those opportunities to our users.”
It’s worth noting that this investment comes ahead of a hearing at a parliamentary committee where Facebook will face questions about blocking Australian users from sharing news.
Source: Facebook
