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Meta says Facebook cannot solve media industry’s ‘issues’ as it defends ending payments for news in Australia

May, 2022 - "Australia's Standoff Against Google and Facebook Worked—Sort Of
"Facebook v Australia: Who blinked first?
"'Inevitable' Google and Facebook will pay for Australian news, treasurer says
"Australia is making Google and Facebook pay for news: what difference will the code make?
"Australia Moves to Force Google and Facebook to Compensate Media Outlets """""

Facebook owner repeats its opposition to news media bargaining code and claims just 3% of content in feeds is news-related

Josh Taylor
Thu 14 Mar 2024 16.32 AEDT
Last modified on Thu 14 Mar 2024 17.58 AEDT


Meta says news is ‘highly substitutable’ and when there is less or no news on Facebook, people continue to use the site. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Meta has doubled down on its decision to end payments to news companies in Australia saying global tech companies cannot solve issues facing the news industry.

Nearly two weeks ago the parent company of Facebook and Instagram announced it would not enter into new deals with Australian media companies .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/01/facebook-news-tab-shut-down-end-australia-journalism-funding-deals .. to pay for news, as the three-year contracts struck to avoid being regulated under the news media bargaining code begin to expire.

The announcement prompted a strong response from the Albanese Labor government, with the assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, and the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, stating in an opinion piece this week that it was a “fundamental dereliction of [Meta’s] responsibility to its Australian users” to walk away from the deals.

Misleading clickbait is prevalent on Facebook and Instagram in Canada after Meta’s news ban. Could it happen in Australia?
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/06/misleading-clickbait-is-prevalent-on-facebook-and-instagram-in-canada-after-metas-news-ban-could-it-happen-in-australia

The government is now working through plans to designate Meta under the news media bargaining code, and require the company to negotiate for payments or risk fines of 10% of its Australian revenue.

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[ INSERT: Here’s some news, Meta – you’re defying Australian law
Paul Fletcher
Federal opposition spokesman for government services and the digital economy
March 6, 2024 — 7.30pm
Last week, Meta announced that it will not do further deals with Australian media businesses. Meta is in effect saying: We want to do business in Australia but we do not want to comply with the law of Australia.
P - That law, of course, is the News Media Bargaining Code – a detailed series of provisions added to the Competition and Consumer Act by the Morrison government in 2021. We took this action to deal with the problem of digital platforms such as Facebook (owned by Meta) and Google (owned by Alphabet) using content generated and paid for by Australian news media businesses, without paying for that content.
P - Our action produced the desired result. Both companies entered into commercial deals with Australian news media businesses; by October 2022, Meta had done 13 and Alphabet 23. Under these deals, an estimated $200 million will be paid to Australian news media businesses; many have employed additional journalists as a result.
P - But despite the success we had, it is not at all surprising that Meta is once again seeking to throw its weight around. There has been a consistent pattern of such behaviour from these global digital platforms.
P - Spain, for example, passed a law in 2014 compelling Google to pay local publishers for content. Google responded by shutting down Google News in Spain.
P - So when the Morrison government announced, in April 2020, that we intended to legislate a mandatory code to deal with these issues, we knew there was a rocky road ahead.
P - And so it proved to be. Google threatened to withdraw its search service from Australia .. https://www.smh.com.au/link/follow-20170101-p56w2h . And Facebook, notoriously, shut down the Facebook pages of many Australian news media businesses on February 18, 2021.
[...]
It is clear, then, that the code gives the Albanese government the tools it needs to deal with this problem.
P - Meta’s announcement was predictable given similar announcements in the UK, France and Germany in September last year. The Albanese government will need to respond in a focused and decisive fashion.
P - The code contains the tools needed to maintain a diverse and vibrant media sector. The sustainability of Australia’s media sector will depend in significant measure on the preparedness of the government and sector participants to use those tools.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/here-s-some-news-meta-you-re-defying-australian-law-20240305-p5fa37.html
Note, that article is written by an opposition figure in Australian politics.]
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“The code recognises that these digital platforms have immense market power, and seeks to correct the imbalance in bargaining power to incentivise fair commercial outcomes for Australian publishers – and in turn, the communities they serve,” the ministers said.

The move by Meta had been described as a “war” with the media in The Australian newspaper and the Australian Financial Review, with the former labelling the Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, a “tech tyrant”.

But in a blog post on Thursday .. https://medium.com/meta-australia-policy-blog/debunking-claims-about-news-content-on-metas-platforms-b7117945ac87 , Meta repeated its opposition to the code, stating that “global tech companies cannot solve the long standing issues facing the news industry”, and sought to refute some of the claims about how news is consumed on the platform.

Meta said that people’s feeds on Facebook are personalised to their interests and people who are interested in news will likely see more news content. But it repeated the claim that just 3% of content shown in feeds is news-related.

The company said news was “highly substitutable” and when there was less or no news on Facebook, people continue to use the site. Meta pointed to the recent news ban on Facebook in Canada to demonstrate it had not had an impact on the site.

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[ In Canada’s battle with Big Tech, smaller publishers are caught in the crossfire
Independent outlets explain how traffic and engagement have plummeted overnight after Meta blocked news from its platforms
P - When the Canadian government first proposed the Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, their goal was “to ensure fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and for independent local news businesses, including rural and remote news organisations, by ensuring that news media and journalists receive fair compensation for their work.”
[...]While Canadian audiences are undoubtedly harmed by the blocking of journalism, for independent local news business, which the Bill aimed to protect, this new media ecosystem can be a death sentence. To find out how the law is impacting these small news organisations, I spoke with three leaders of small Canadian publications impacted by the Meta blackout as well as with Canadian journalism scholar Alfred Hermida, who’s studied digital media in the country for several decades.
[...]
Since Meta’s rolling blackout just came into effect in August 2023, it is hard to determine exactly how hard local news organisations have been hit, but Hermida estimates that between 20% to 30% of audiences for these organisations that rely so heavily on Facebook in particular have disappeared overnight.
[...]
With a follower count of almost 19,000, Blackburn says their weekly engagement was quite healthy before the Meta blackout. Then, in early August, Blackburn saw their online traffic essentially disappear overnight.
P - “We've seen so many small newspapers and small radio stations and little outlets die horrible deaths before the government finally stepped in,” Blackburn says. “We have a situation where we in the news media have been decimated by the Googles and the Metas of the world and people are blaming the government, but I wish they would start blaming Meta because Meta has been taken [advertising money] out of our communities and never given it back.”
[...]
Hermida points out that there is a two-fold impact of this blackout: people lose valuable sources of news and information, and publishers lose one of the key tools they have in developing and growing their audience.
[...]
Meta’s retaliation against news in Canada comes in a context where Facebook has already been taking a step back on news around the world. They have laid off a number of high-profile employees central to its journalism programmes, they have stopped paying US news publishers .. https://www.axios.com/2022/07/28/meta-publishers-news-funding-cut .. for their content, they have reallocated resources away from the Facebook News project, and they even retired the term ‘news feed’ in favour of ‘feed’. Most recently, they announced that they would be removing their dedicated tab for news content in the UK, France and Germany.
[...]
How did Australia manage to negotiate with Big Tech while Canada has not? According to Hermida, the fundamental difference is that the law in Australia did not technically ‘designate’ who the law applies for.
P - “What happened in Australia is that both Meta and Google haven't been designated and instead they made their own private deals with media groups,” he explains. “Because they made private deals, the Australian government then didn't designate them so they were never covered by the law.”
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/canadas-battle-big-tech-smaller-publishers-are-caught-crossfire
OK, so now it seems that honeymoon period for Google and Facebook could come to an end,
with echoes of the closing down of corner stores world wide.]
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“People still come to Facebook even without news on the platform. Just as the number of people around the world using our technologies continues to grow, the number of daily and monthly active users on Facebook in Canada has increased since ending news availability,” the company said.

One expert who Guardian Australia spoke to said when news was gone it had been replaced by viral, click bait-type content with misleading information.

While the company argued news did not make up much content on the platform, Meta said that in 2023, it sent 2.3bn “free clicks” to Australian news publishers, driving what Meta estimated was A$115m worth of value.

Meta also argued the decision not to renew the payment deals did not mean news content would be replaced by “misinformation or harmful content” given that news publishers can still post on Facebook and Instagram.

The company did not respond to a question on whether it would rule out a Canada-style ban on news should the Australian government designate Meta under the news media bargaining code.

Meta said it would continue to engage with the government on the matter.

Google has recommitted to new deals with news outlets as the current agreements expire, and has commenced talks to renegotiate the agreements closest to expiring. Microsoft also confirmed it is supportive of the code and supporting public interest journalism.

The federal government has also approached TikTok over payment for news under the code in recent months, at the same time as it is rejecting calls to ban the app in Australia.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/14/meta-facebook-news-media-bargaining-code