Labor dismisses Meta’s news incentive gripe as more Trump tariffs loom
In a scathing statement on Thursday, Meta echoed the White House and blasted the Albanese government’s News Bargaining Incentive as ‘discriminatory’.
Labor has dismissed concerns from Meta over its plans to force social media giants to strike deals with news publishers, potentially putting Australia in the cross hairs of the White House.
Australia’s regulation of big tech has been a major flashpoint for the Trump administration, which blasted the News Bargaining Incentive (NBI), a tax on social media platforms which do not pay for news, as “foreign extortion” in April.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the tech behemoth owner of Facebook and Instagram, has now attacked the plan as “discriminatory” and a violation of the Australia-US free trade agreement in a scathing submission on Thursday.
The intervention came as Labor pushed back against the Trump administration, which announced potential new tariffs on Australia this week after its initial tranche was struck down by the Supreme Court.
