Facebook owner Meta angers Australia with plan to stop paying for news content

SYDNEY - Meta Platforms said it will stop paying Australian news publishers for content that appears on Facebook, setting up a fresh battle with Canberra, which had led the world with a law that forces Internet giants to strike licencing deals.

News publishers and governments like Australia have argued that Facebook and Google unfairly benefit when links to news articles appear on their platforms.

Meta has been scaling back its promotion of news and politics content to drive traffic, and says news links are now a fraction of users’ feeds.

Meta will discontinue a tab on Facebook which promotes news in Australia and the United States, it said in a statement, adding that it cancelled the news tab in 2023 in UK, France and Germany.

As a result, “we will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers”, the statement added.

The decision pits Meta against the Australian government and its 2021 law.

“The idea that one company can profit from others’ investment, not just investment in capital but investment in people, investment in journalism, is unfair,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters.

“That’s not the Australian way,” he added.

The government is seeking advice from the treasury department and antitrust regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), about its next steps.

Mr Rod Sims, the former ACCC chair who oversaw the design of the law, called Meta’s reversal selfish, and he was concerned about the impact on society as the decision undermined the quality of journalism which appears on social media.

“This is Meta thumbing its nose at the Australian Parliament,” he said.

Under the 2021 law, the country’s government must decide whether it will appoint a mediator to set Meta’s fees and potentially fine Meta if it fails to cooperate.

Most of Meta’s deals with Australian media ran for three years and are set to expire in 2024.

Meta is, however, not obligated to pay news publishers if it blocks users from reposting news articles, as it did briefly in 2021.

It has done the same in Canada since 2023 when the country passed similar laws.

Meta said on March 1 that publishers could continue posting news content on Facebook.

Professor Tama Leaver, an Internet studies professor at Curtin University, said Meta will be reluctant to escalate the dispute by stopping its users from posting news links in Australia and will more likely challenge the government in court if it intervenes.

“Meta is going ‘what are you going to do?’ and the Australian government has a real decision to make,” he said.

Australia’s biggest media outlets lambasted the decision, calling it an attack on the industry.

“Meta is using its immense market power to refuse to negotiate, and the government is right to explore every option for how the Media Bargaining Code’s powers can be used,” said News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller.

“Meta is attempting to mislead Australians by saying its decision is about the closure of its news tab product (and its) decision will directly impact the viability of Australia’s many small and regional publishers,” Miller added.

Nine Entertainment chief executive Mike Sneesby said the decision failed to acknowledge the value that the media firm, which owns the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review mastheads and a free-to-air television channel, created for Meta.

While no deal values have been disclosed, Australian media outlets have reported Facebook’s deals are worth A$70 million (S$61 million) a year to the industry.

Google’s Australian media licencing deals mostly ran for five years, expiring in 2026. A spokesperson said the company has already started negotiations for deal renewals.

Many governments around the world remain keen on protecting their local news industries from being elbowed out of the online advertising market.

Indonesia said in February it also plans to make large tech firms pay for news content.

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