Veteran TV news anchor Campbell Brown will step down as Meta’s head of news partnerships, the company said Tuesday — another sign Facebook’s parent company is pivoting away from promoting news content on its social media platforms.
Brown, who has spent nearly seven years at Meta, circulated a note to staffers indicating that she would be leaving her post in the coming weeks, according to Axios, which first reported her exit.
Her departure comes as Meta moves away from promoting news on its platforms — which include Facebook and Instagram — and focuses resources to its Reels short-video feature to compete with TikTok.
Brown, 56, informed colleagues that she will “remain affiliated with Meta in a new consultant capacity.”
Her team will be shifted over to existing groups that are focused on media and sports partnerships development and operations, according to Variety.
“Media and sports partnerships continue to be a priority for Meta and its apps, and we look forward to working with Campbell in her new capacity as a consultant,” a Meta spokesperson told the outlet.
The Post has sought comment from Meta.
Brown spent 14 years as a news anchor with CNN and NBC News before being hired by Facebook, as it was called then, in 2017 to head a division that was responsible for liaising with news publishers.
Under Brown’s leadership, Meta introduced a News Feed that featured content from publishers while investing heavily in accelerator programs to help local outlets bolster subscription numbers.
She also helped start a fact-checking program that Meta uses to train its artificial intelligence software.
In 2021, Facebook announced that it was changing its algorithm to cut down on political content in users’ news feeds — a move made in response to the social network coming under fire for fueling societal polarization and the spread of misinformation.
Facebook’s de-emphasis of news has led to a dramatic decrease in referral traffic to publishers’ web sites, according to media executives.
Earlier this summer, Meta took a hard line toward governments that tried to force the company to pay media organizations for content.
Meta started removing news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada after the government passed legislation forcing tech companies to negotiate payments to news organizations for hosting their content.
In 2021, Australia passed a similar law that was opposed by Meta and other tech giants, though the companies have since reached deals with publishers in that country.
California was poised to pass a revenue-sharing bill, but backed down after opposition from tech companies.
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