On Monday, Meta threatened to consider removing news from Facebook, citing objection to a new law currently making its way through Congress.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act strengthens news organizations' abilities to negotiate fees for the content shared on social media, however, Meta has argued that the proposed legislation would do more harm than good to those it seeks to protect.
"If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platforms altogether, rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions," he said.
"The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act fails to recognize the key fact: publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves because it benefits their bottom line — not the other way around.
"No company should be forced to pay for content that users don't want to see and that's not a meaningful source of revenue.
"Put simply, the government creating a cartel-like entity which requires one private company to subsidize other private entities is a terrible precedent for all American businesses."
In 2021, Facebook attempted to quash a similar law in Australia, however, it was eventually passed, and according to a one-year review of the policy, is working as intended.
The company also threatened the Canadian parliament earlier this year, a move which garnered a harsh reaction from MPs.
As the BBC reports, a Meta spokesperson noted that "news makes up less than 4 percent of the content people see in their News Feed," thus the business gain for Facebook is "minimal."
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act was introduced by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar in 2021 and was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar in November. It has since garnered bipartisan support.
It "creates a four-year safe harbor from antitrust laws for print, broadcast, or digital news companies to collectively negotiate with online content distributors (e.g., social media companies) regarding the terms on which the news companies' content may be distributed by online content distributors."
Supporters of the bill argue that it is a necessary part of the plan to chip away at the dominance of big tech.
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