Meta, the company that owns Facebook, publicly warned on Monday that it would remove all news from its US platform if Congress approved a bill regulating the media industry and required Meta and other platforms to pay publishers and broadcasters.
The statement Meta made addressing its stance on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act was shared on Twitter. It was shared by Meta’s policy communications director, Andy Stone (JCPA.) According to the statement, Meta “will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether” if Congress passes the “ill-considered journalism bill.”
Bipartisan support was received for Senator Amy Klobuchar’s introduction of the JCPA, which allows publishers to bargain with social media giants like Facebook and Google about how their material is delivered on such platforms. Making social media companies pay for news material is part of this.
According to Meta, “The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act fails to recognize the key fact: publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves because it benefits their bottom line — not the other way round.”
“No company should be forced to pay for content other users don’t want to see, and that’s not a meaningful source of revenue.” The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the JCPA in September 2022, but it is yet to pass through the full senate.
Meta has had a long-running battle with other similar policies before. After Australia proposed a similar bill requiring sites like Meta to pay media companies for their news content. The social networking behemoth briefly prohibited Australian users from seeing, sharing, or interacting with news items on its platform in 2021.
The embargo even stopped users from viewing global news published by Australian media businesses. In addition, it restricted access to pages for Australian fire departments, emergency services, food banks, and other vital institutions.
Meta agreed to pay News Corp
After the legislation was changed, Meta finally dropped the prohibition and agreed to pay News Corp. News Corp is a company owned by Rupert Murdoch, to publish its material on Facebook. If Canada passed its Online News Act, which would also force the platform to pay for news. Meta threatened to deliver a similar threat to that country in October.
An internal mechanism that exempted prominent users, like former U.S. President Donald Trump, from some or all of its content moderation guidelines needs a fundamental revamp, Facebook parent company Meta’s quasi-independent monitoring board stated on December 6.
The Oversight Board’s assessment, which took almost a year or more to complete. It stated that the system “is flawed in key areas the company must address.” The board began its investigation after a revelation that many of its elite users were abusing it. They were abusing by posting content that would trigger fines for regular people, such as harassment and instigation of violence.
According to a Journal article, at least 5.8 million users were exempt from Facebook’s regulations as of 2020. However, some VIP users appeared to be immune from them. While others were subject to reviews of rule-breaking posts that never occurred.