Facebook: We’ll pull US news content if Congress passes law to pay
Facebook’s parent company Meta has threatened to pull news content from the US if Congress push forward with plans to make the company pay for content.
Meta’s head of policy communications, Andy Stone, tweeted the thread, saying that “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.”
The legislation, known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), gives news organisations greater power to negotiate fees for content shared on Facebook.
Meta’s main argument is that platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, push greater traffic to struggling news outlets. Stone said Facebook “benefits their [news sites] bottom line”.
The proposed regulation comes after Australia passed a similar law mandating digital companies pay for news content in 2021.
Facebook temporarily removed news from its Aussie platform, but later reinstalled it after wide-ranging criticism.