Meta now summarizes news articles directly rather than linking to websites

Meta is now going to summarize news stories instead of linking to the websites that produced them, similar to Google, sadly in a very good position to destroy news platforms. Recently, the social media giant has stopped showing news links.

The feature is similar to Google’s AI Overviews. Meta’s platforms are a notable source of news and a ton of publications are using them. Although Meta doesn’t claim to be a primary source of news, it has been showing the links to them so far. But now, this is no longer the case.

Meta’s AI will summarize these articles, and you won’t be led to the news sites themselves.

However, that’s not everything. The Washington Post tested the tool and found that it would reproduce sentences similar to those in the articles, and sometimes it will copy them word-for-word.

Meta does show the websites, but it’s in a section below the results dubbed “View sources”, so at least it did that for news publications.

Although this will be useful for regular users, it’s a direct blow at news publications and websites that count to gain traffic from those social media platforms. Unfortunately though, the news industry will have to find a way to adapt to the new way of doing things, and to AI. But it’s also important that Meta and Google at least acknowledge what they’re doing (probably won’t happen), and ensure they don’t plagiarize content off websites with their AI bots.