Meta has openly threatened the new journalism law that the US is about to approve. The company announced that it will completely remove the news from Facebook if the law is passed.
The US is preparing to approve a new law, which is particularly relevant to Meta. “Journalism Competition and Protection ActThe law, titled ”, basically provides for newspapers and other news organizations to get a ‘larger share’ of online advertising revenue.
However, the new law was apparently not received very favorably by Meta. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp directly opposed the adoption of the law. a threat to the US government shared.
“If the law passes, we will completely remove the news”
Facebook Policy Communications Director Andy Stone offered the company’s statement on the law as follows:
“If Congress passes an ill-conceived journalism bill as part of national security legislation, rather than succumbing to government-mandated deliberations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions, We will have to consider removing the news from our platform altogether.”
However, Meta considers the legislative work in question to be the government’s ‘cartel-like formation‘ he compared it to trying to create. However, the company emphasized that no company can be forced to pay for content that users do not want to see.
But why did this bill make so much noise?
Today, publishers only individually negotiate with companies like Google and Meta to monetize their content. But the new law paves the way for publishers to come together and put pressure on companies collectively.
Publishers, on the other hand, have been complaining about their advertising revenues from platforms in recent years. Publishers’ advertising revenue, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, Between 2002 and 2020, it lost 52%.
Of course, this loss of income affected local and small-scale broadcasting organizations the most. Today, many local/small publishers are on the verge of bankruptcy because they cannot generate revenue. So these publishers want the law passed in order to generate revenue.
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Source :
https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-owner-meta-remove-news-its-platform-if-congress-passes-media-bill-2022-12-05/