Meta to cease payment to news publishers in this country for content on Facebook

Meta Platforms announced it would stop paying Australian news publishers for their content on Facebook, launching a new battle with Canberra, which had pioneered a world law forcing internet giants to sign licensing deals.

News publishers and governments like Australia have argued that big tech companies like Facebook and Google benefit unfairly when their platforms include links to news articles. Meta claims that links to news are only a fraction of user feeds, and publishers can still post news content to their own pages on Facebook.

Meta announced on its website that it will end the Facebook tab to market news in Australia and the US, as it did last year in the UK, France and Germany.

As a result, “we will not enter into new commercial agreements for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers,” it said in a statement.

The Australian government quickly hit back, saying it was seeking advice from the Treasury and the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission on its future course of action.

“Meta’s decision to no longer pay for news content in multiple jurisdictions is a lapse in its commitment to the sustainability of Australia’s news media,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland and Deputy Treasurer Stephen Jones said in a joint statement.

The decision aims to remove a key source of income for Australia’s biggest media outlets from News Corp to Australian Broadcasting Corp, which have benefited from a 2021 law that forced Meta and Alphabet into Google licensing deals.

Meta had opposed the law, which led to a brief news blackout on Facebook in Australia in 2021. A similar law passed in Canada in 2023 led to a news blackout that is still in effect there.

Under Australian law, the country’s government must now decide whether to appoint its own arbitrator to determine Meta’s fees under the new round of contracts. The company’s contracts with Australian media were mainly for three years, meaning they were due to expire in 2024.

Google’s media license agreements were mainly valid for five years and will expire in 2026. According to the spokesperson, the company has already started negotiations on renewing the agreements.

Out of Australia’s 26 million population, about 22 million are Facebook users.