FACEBOOK ADDRESSES PUBLISHERS

By Ravie Lakshmanan

Social network Facebook, which is facing unprecedented criticism over its role as a platform for disseminating fake news, enabling Russian trolls in 2016 U.S. elections and posing mental health risk to passive users, finally came out and said what media publishers may have wanted to hear all along.

Take it or leave it!

At Recode's Code Media conference in California on Feb. 13, Campbell Brown, the company's head of news partnerships, had a far less enthusiastic message to share.

"My job is not to go recruit people from news organisations to put their stuff on Facebook... My job is to make sure there is quality news on Facebook and that publishers who want to be on Facebook… have a business model that works. If anyone feels this isn’t the right platform for them, they should not be on Facebook."

- Campbell Brown

The message is loud and clear: Either work with us, or feel free to drop out!