Facebook’s parent company Meta has threatened to remove news content from the social media platform over a new journalism bargaining bill in the US.
The strong reaction came in response to reports that US lawmakers are passing a proposal aimed at empowering media organisations to negotiate fees collectively with large tech platforms like Facebook and Google. The legislation, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), would equip media companies with greater power to bargain for a larger share of ad revenue with tech conglomerates.
Meta opposed the bill and threatened to take down news content from Facebook altogether if Congress passed the proposal.
“If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions,” said Meta spokesperson Andy Stone in a statement tweeted on Monday.
Meta statement on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act: pic.twitter.com/kyFqKQw7xs
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) December 5, 2022
Meta dismissed the complaints of media companies that the social media giant generates lofty profits through news articles shared on Facebook. The firm claimed it helps news organisations gain traffic and visibility instead.
“The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act fails to recognize the key fact: publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platforms themselves because it benefits from their bottom line, not the other way around,” said Stone.
No company should be forced to pay for content users do not want to see and it is not a meaningful source of revenue, he added.
According to reports, the lawmakers are being urged to include the JCPA to the annual defence bill by the News Media Alliance, a trade association that represents newspaper publishers in the US and Canada. The association argued that “local papers cannot afford to endure several more years of Big Tech’s use and abuse, and time to take action is dwindling. If Congress does not act soon, we risk allowing social media to become America’s de facto local newspaper.”
At the same time, however, a number of groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, opposed the new bill. They believe it will “create an ill-advised antitrust exemption for publishers and broadcasters” and that the bill does not require “funds gained through negotiation or arbitration will even be paid to journalists”.
Several civil society organisations have disapproved of the bill as well, arguing the JCPA could make mis- and disinformation worse as it would allow media houses to sue social media platforms for limiting the reach of their content and restraining the moderation of offensive or misleading material.
Last year, a similar law was passed in Australia, following which Facebook had briefly removed news content on Facebook.
