Meta will either reduce the amount of news people see or block it entirely on Facebook and Instagram, experts and publishers warn, as the government faces pressure to require Meta to show news content and pay for it.
Meta informed publishers nearly a month ago that it would not enter new multimillion-dollar deals for content when contracts expire this year. Since then the Albanese government has kicked off a process to potentially designate the tech company under the news media bargaining code.
Publishers received letters from the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, and assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, two weeks ago asking for information on whether Meta should be designated under NMBC, which would require Meta to negotiate with news publishers for payment for content shared on its platform or face fines worth 10% of its Australian revenue.
Axel Bruns, a professor of communication and media studies at Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre, studied the impact of the six-day 2021 news ban in Australia, and told Guardian Australia it was likely Meta would stick with a ban, as it had in Canada since August.
“The absence of news from their services that this produces would give them a pretty good argument to challenge any NMBC requirements to share ad revenue with Australian news publishers in court,” he said.
Instagram last week introduced a change that opts users out of having political content recommended to them unless they opt into it. Meta has said it plans to make the change for Facebook too. Bruns said if Meta were not designated under the news media bargaining code, it would probably just continue to reduce the amount of news seen on the platforms.
“In fact doing so gives them a good argument against designation too: the less news content plays any significant role [or] has any significant visibility on their platforms, the less there is an argument for sharing ad revenue with news publishers via the NMBC mechanism,” he said.
Smaller news publishers, many of whom did not make a deal with Meta when the NMBC was brought in back in 2021, agreed it was likely Meta would remove news. Tim Duggan, the chair of the Digital Publishers Alliance, a group of more than 100 smaller publishers such as Private Media, Broadsheet, Man of Many and others, said in an opinion piece this month that it was likely Meta would do what it did in Canada and block news.
He said this disproportionately affected the smaller publishers that were more reliant on social media for traffic and revenue compared with larger news outlets, forcing staff cuts or closures.
The alliance is reportedly calling for a “must carry” law that would require Meta to take news on its platforms. The publishers have an ally in News Corp, with the company’s Australian head, Michael Miller, telling Mi3 last week that designating Meta under the code carried risks, and including a “must carry” obligation should be considered.
Labor, Liberal and Greens politicians have also sided against Meta since the announcement. Rowland told ABC radio on Wednesday that Meta has “such large revenues and market power and wealth that exceeds the GDP of some nations” and should be complying with the NMBC.
“This is a pattern of behaviour by Meta and we are very well aware of some of the other issues that involve Meta at the moment in terms of their lack of responsibility, lack of transparency and accountability, which is only capable of being exercised when you do have that market power,” she said.
Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah, the Labor MP for the Victorian electorate of Higgins, told parliament on Tuesday Meta “should have been strangled at birth” due “to the litany of social harms, from extremism, scams and the weakening of democracies we can add the deteriorating mental health of our children”.
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The Liberal MP David Coleman told Sky News on Monday that Meta’s conduct had been “appalling” and “disgraceful” and called on the government to get the company to pay.
“Well, they have got to get it done. I mean, we got it done, that’s the bottom line. All that matters is the outcome.”
Rowland said the government was following the process to designate under the code for a “very strong reason”.
“This is a highly litigious organisation with deep pockets. We need to follow this very closely, but of course the government is well aware and is examining a range of issues involving Meta and their lack of good corporate citizenship when it comes to online harms.”
The Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown said last week Meta should not be allowed to “bully users, journalists and democratically elected governments by deciding which laws of the land they will choose to comply with” and Meta should be designated.
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. This month the company defended its decision, stating it should not be the role of global tech companies to solve the issues facing news media, and people were not coming to Facebook for news content.