Meta shuts the door on Australian news publishers, putting deals worth $70m at risk
In the three years since it struck lucrative deals with Australian publishers, Meta has made a rapid retreat from news in the country and abroad. On Friday, it took another giant step away from the industry.
The nerves of publishing executives were already fraying about their ability to renew lucrative deals signed with Meta under the government's media bargaining code. Meta executives had been evasive on discussing the deals, which are worth a collective $70 million annually and which expire in a matter of months. And the signs in Canada, where the social media behemoth has been locked in a standoff with publishers and the government since the middle of last year, were not good at all.
Then on Friday, Meta dropped a bombshell, saying it would scrap its Facebook news tab, which aggregates news content from participating outlets but also — and more worryingly for publishers — that it would no longer pay for news in Australia or any other country. "[W]e will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers in the future," it said in a statement.
The move dramatically increases the tensions between Meta and the Australian media establishment. It has already been strongly condemned by Communications Minister Michelle Rowland and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones, who described the move as a "dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media".
But anyone who has been paying close attention to the social media behemoth's rapid retreat from news over the past three years since the code deals were struck would not be surprised.
