The AFR View
Play hardball and make Meta pay fair share for news
Now that Facebook’s owner has thrown the ball back into the government’s court, it must be “designated” in the interests of professional newsrooms and serious public journalism.
The Australian government is set to go head-to-head with one of the world’s most powerful companies in one of the world’s most ubiquitous industries. Last week, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta told the federal government it will no longer pay for the news content that it and other social media like Google had once swept up from Australian news mastheads for free.
Under a world-first News Media Bargaining Code enforced by the federal government in 2021, Meta and Google agreed deals worth $200 million a year to compensate for copyrighted content from Nine Entertainment, News Corp, the ABC, Seven West Media and many others.
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