Meta will no longer pay publishers in Australia to share articles on Facebook. The company says that the deal that took place a few years ago is no longer relevant today.
The relationship between meta publishers and news has been turbulent around the world for years. Australia was one of the first countries to sign an agreement where Meta will pay publishers to allow users to share their articles on Facebook.
Most of these deals expire this year, and Meta now says they will not be renewed. She says that the promotion of news and political content has been reduced and that news today is only a small part of the content. The company said in a statement to Reuters: “We will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news in these countries, nor will we offer new Facebook products to news publishers.”
Meta is not bound by such a deal per se, but would benefit from potential legislation. When publishers complained about images, headlines and article intros being distributed for free on Facebook, and threatened to pass legislation to regulate this, Facebook decided to block the sharing of news links.
This was later raised in conjunction with the financial agreements. The extent of its scope has not been officially announced, but Australian media estimate the amount at approximately 70 million Australian dollars, or 42 million euros, annually.
But that seems to be over now. Meta says that sharing news on its platform has become less important in many countries. The company is likely to review such agreements elsewhere in the near future.
Google also has similar agreements with publishers, which started a little later and will therefore continue for a while. But this relationship also remains troubled. Both companies particularly dominate online advertising, making them direct competitors to media companies. The fact that media companies invest in content or journalistic work, which their competitors share on their platforms without compensation, poses a problem for media players.
On the sidelines, thirty European media companies, including Data News publisher Rolarta, filed a lawsuit this week seeking 2.1 billion euros against Google and the potential disadvantage of other advertising tools compared to its own platforms.
