Facebook May Ax News in the US If 'Ill-Considered' Media Bill Passes
By: Sawdah Bhaimiya (Business Insider)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Meta, Facebook's parent company, issued a public warning Monday that it could remove all news from its US platform if Congress passed its media-competition bill, which would force Meta and other platforms to compensate publishers and broadcasters.
Andy Stone, Meta's policy-communications director, posted the company's statement on Twitter regarding its position on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The statement said that if Congress passed the "ill-considered journalism bill," Meta "will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether."
The bill was introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar with bipartisan support and would enable publishers to negotiate with social-media platforms like Facebook and Google over how their content is distributed on such platforms. This includes requiring social-media firms to pay for news content.
"The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act fails to recognize the key fact: publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves because it benefits their bottom line — not the other way round," Meta said in the statement.
"No company should be forced to pay for content other users don't want to see and that's not a meaningful source of revenue," it added.
The bill was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, but it has yet to pass the chamber.
Meta has had a long-running battle with similar policies. In 2021, the social-media giant temporarily banned Australian users from viewing, sharing, or interacting with news content on its platform after Australia proposed a similar bill forcing companies like Meta to pay media companies for news content.
The ban even prevented users worldwide from seeing news distributed by Australian media companies. It blocked pages for fire departments, emergency services, food banks, and other critical organizations in the country.
Meta reversed the ban after the bill was amended and struck a deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to pay the media firm to distribute its content across Facebook.
The company issued a similar threat to Canada in October over its Online News Act bill, which would also require the platform to pay for news.
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So with all the so called problems we have congress decides we all need to pay for news...
Curious if it would impact here. What we do is showcase news stories. Would it put NT out of business? Or force us to pay to seed a story....
What I understand (which isn't much...lol) is we are not supposed to copy/paste the complete news story, but put up enough to get those interested to click the link taking them to the publishers site. I could be wrong of course.
As to Facebook/Meta - they can go fuck themselves. The less relevant they are the better.
It won't impact me there as I have never had a facebook account.
I was just curious as to the impact it could have elsewhere.
I use it to post photos for family members to see. Also, I'm part of a couple aquarium groups and one local horror movie group.
Ditto, Twttr
That's a very good question.
Okay, now that sounds kinda fun. Could be romantic too.
who the fuck gets their news off FB? here's the total extent of my FB participation... happy birthday...
I was just asking myself...Face Book has news?????
Never noticed...
Of course! New babies. New meals. New old grudges.
I kid. I don't know. I don't do FB. Don't have a page. I'm old fashioned. Text me if you want me to know, or send an email.
That's a good question. I pay a small subscription to read WaPo. When I want to seed an article I have to copy and paste the entire thing as the "fetch article" doesn't seem to work with sites that have paywalls.
Also sites like MSN. That is what they do is highlight different articles.
If social media doesn't regulate itself regulation will be imposed upon it. Same as any business!
Update:
Odd. Making FB, Twitter, et al pay the NYT every time somebody shares a news article doesn't actually seem like it should have much to do with something called the "National Defense Authorization Act".
Yeahhhh ... that lightbulb will turn on sooner or later.