Facebook has announced a platform to help writers and journalists monetize their content at a time when news and media are under siege.

This last pandemic-filled year has been particularly difficult for news publishers and the media industry in general. In the midst of those challenges, Big Tech has been under increased scrutiny for how it uses and profits from news and media. Australia passed legislation to force Big Tech companies to pay for the news they use and the US is considering a similar bill.

Facebook has now taken the step of developing a platform designed to make it easier for writers and journalists to self-publish content and monetize it.

As writers, experts and journalists publish more of their work independently, we’re working to better support those efforts and make it easier for those content creators to build businesses online.

In the coming months in the U.S., we’ll introduce a new platform to empower independent writers, helping them reach new audiences and grow their businesses. We will start by partnering with a small subset of independent writers. The platform will include a variety of support focused on content creation and audience growth.

The social media giant hopes its new platform will be especially beneficial to independent journalists.

A large part of this initiative is aimed at supporting independent local journalists who are often the lone voice covering a given community. We’ll work to include them at launch, and build tools and services specific to their needs. Since 2018, we’ve invested $600 million to support journalism and we’re investing $1 billion in news over the next three years. We will continue to support publishers through the Facebook Journalism Project, our existing products and initiatives such as Facebook News, Accelerators, grants, subscriptions tools, Instant Articles and more.

Facebook’s new platform could be a critical game-changer for independent writers, journalists and experts, and may help the company answer its critics.