Meta is threatening to ban news organisations from the social network, Facebook if the United States Congress goes ahead and pass the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, stating that publishers and broadcasters are the ones that profit from posting their content on the platform.
Meta’s spokesperson, Andy Stone revealed this in a tweet.
He said: “If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether,” Andy Stone tweeted.
This was in response to a move to pass the journalism bill that will enable news organisations to benefit from posting their content on Facebook.
Facebook parent company said it would disallow posting of news links on its platform rather than “submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions.”
Meta in the statement claimed that publishers and broadcasters were the ones earning money from the distribution of their content on Facebook, and “not the other way around,” a claim that suggested it was not a win-win situation for the social network.
Meta noted that “no company should be forced to pay for content users don’t want to see, and that’s not a meaningful source of revenue.”
New Zealand is also considering a regulation that would mandate technology companies like Google and Facebook to compensate news publishers for their news content to show on their feeds.
“It is critical that those benefiting from their news content actually pay for it,” said New Zealand’s Minister of Broadcasting, Willie Jackson. “New Zealand news media, particularly small regional and community newspapers, are struggling to remain financially afloat as more adverters moves online.”