Meta angers Australia with plan to stop paying for news content

Decision pits Facebook owner against govt and its law on licensing deals with media

- Meta Platforms said it will stop paying Australian news publishers for content that appears on Facebook, setting up a fresh battle with Canberra, which had led the world with a law that forces Internet giants to strike licensing deals.

News publishers and governments like Australia have argued that Facebook and Google unfairly benefit when links to news articles appear on their platforms.

Meta has been scaling back its promotion of news and politics content to drive traffic, and says news links are now a fraction of users' feeds.

Meta will discontinue a tab on Facebook which promotes news in Australia and the United States, it said in a statement, adding that it cancelled the news tab in 2023 in Britain, France, and Germany.

As a result, "we will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers", the statement added.

The decision pits Meta against the Australian government and its 2021 law.

"The idea that one company can profit from others' investment, not just investment in capital but investment in people, investment in journalism, is unfair," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters.

"That's not the Australian way," he added.