Meta decides it shouldn’t pay for new content it doesn’t own

Tech giant Meta wants to have its cake and eat it too. All of it. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

Meta – the parent company of the precocious Facebook – has decided that its treasured child shouldn’t have to pay for something it doesn’t own.

Instead of paying a tiny, tiny fraction of its eye-watering wealth to contribute to the very news organisations that have sustained it over the past two decades, the tech giant wants to have its cake and eat it too. All of it.

Step one: fob off all attempts by Australian news organisations to engage in good-faith discussions on how to cohabit within the media landscape to the betterment of all, including consumers.

Step two: release a self-serving, embarrassingly transparent statement that Metasplains how its decision to walk away from fair payment-for-content deals is “part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most”.

Step three: pull a neat (deceitful?) trick by encouraging (luring?) its millions of consumers to the part of its site that can still offer other people’s content for free.

Step four: shrug your shoulders when others accuse you of being an ugly corporate citizen.

It was only three years ago that the then Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg triumphantly announced that “Facebook has re-friended Australia” after the tech giant reversed its ill-advised and petulant move to remove Australian news from its platform.

But three years on, the friendship is sorely strained, possibly beyond repair.

Ultimately, it’s millions of average Australians who will suffer the most by Meta’s self-serving decision, as the risk of news deserts – especially in the nation’s regional and rural outposts – will become very real.