Meta has threatened to remove news content from Facebook in the US.
It objects to a new law that would give news organisations greater power to negotiate fees for the content shared on Facebook.
A similar law, passed in Australia, led to news on Facebook being briefly suspended last year.
Meta claims their platform, in fact, provides increased traffic to struggling news outlets.
It says publishers put their content on Facebook because “it benefits their bottom line.”
The legislation, known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) was introduced in Congress by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and has bipartisan support.
It would give publishers and broadcasters greater powers to collectively bargain with social media companies for a larger share of ad revenue.
Media companies argue that Meta generates huge sums of money from news articles shared on the platform.
Local news in particular struggled during the pandemic, as Meta made huge profits.
However Meta argues that this narrative is wrong. Instead, it says, Meta drives traffic to news sources.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone 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”.
Meta also argues that sharing news on Facebook accounts for only a fraction of its revenue.
A similar Australian law, which took effect in March 2021, led to a brief shutdown of Facebook news feeds in the country.
The company quickly reversed the decision after wide-ranging criticism – brokering a deal with the Australian government.
In a statement about Australia’s proposed law last year, a spokesperson for Meta said, “for Facebook, the business gain from news is minimal. News makes up less than 4% of the content people see in their News Feed.”
The US legislation is part of a larger set of laws aimed at tackling the dominance of Big Tech.
Supporters of the JCPA say social media will become America’s “de facto local newspapers” if the act doesn’t pass.
Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project, said media outlets were being “eaten alive” by Meta.
“Meta’s efforts to blackmail Congress prove again why this monopoly is a threat to democracies worldwide,” he said.
Source: BBC
Mark Zuckerberg:
Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, the world’s largest social networking platform. Born in 1984 in White Plains, New York, Zuckerberg attended Harvard University where he studied computer science. It was at Harvard that he and his roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Dustin Moskovitz, developed the initial idea for Facebook.
Zuckerberg launched the first version of Facebook in 2004, initially as a way for students at Harvard to connect with each other. Over the next few years, the site expanded to other colleges and universities, and eventually to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address. Today, Facebook has over 2.7 billion monthly active users and is a major force in the tech industry.
In addition to his work at Facebook, Zuckerberg is also involved in a number of philanthropic efforts. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization that focuses on issues such as education, healthcare, and scientific research. Zuckerberg has also been a vocal advocate for immigration reform and net neutrality.
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