Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has threatened to remove news from its platform if the United States Congress passes legislation to make it easier for news organizations to negotiate collectively with companies like Google and Facebook.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) in Congress, and it has bipartisan support. It would give publishers and broadcasters more bargaining power with social media companies for a larger share of ad revenue. This is due to media companies claiming that Meta generates large sums of money from news articles shared on the platform and that Google is unfairly abusing its dominance to deny news publishers their fair share of ad revenue.
In a tweet, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated that if the law was passed, the company would be forced to consider removing news. His words: “rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions.”
He added that the proposal fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters contribute content to the platform saying “it benefits their bottom line – not the other way around.”
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.