Meta Threatens to Block News Content on Facebook in the US

Facebook owner Meta has warned Congress that The Journalism and Preservation Act of 2022 could result in news being removed from Facebook.

Andy Stone, Communications Director at Meta, took to Twitter(Opens in a new window) late yesterday threatening to “remove news from our platform” if the journalism bill passes.

Stone said removing news from Facebook would be Meta’s preferred option because the alternative means submitting to “government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions.” Stone also points out news content benefits the bottom line of publishers and broadcasters, not Facebook. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Meta put forward similar arguments in Canada over Bill C-18 back in October.

Tweet(Opens in a new window)

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2022(Opens in a new window) is described by Congress as a bill that “creates a four-year safe harbor from antitrust laws for print, broadcast, or digital news companies to collectively negotiate with online content distributors (e.g., social media companies) regarding the terms on which the news companies’ content may be distributed by online content distributors.”

Essentially, the bill means social media companies would need to pay news publishers for the content they use. It’s a system already being used in Australia and France, and under consideration in New Zealand. In fact, Meta is already striking deals to pay for news content in France(Opens in a new window), which makes this latest threat in the US sound quite hollow.

The other problem Meta faces by making this threat is, what happens if the bill passes through Congress unchanged? Would it really remove all news posts from Facebook? If it didn’t, then any future X threats to do so would surely be ignored. Perhaps Meta is hopeful it can get the bill tweaked in a similar way to the tweaks made in Australia?