• As regulators look to give its publishers greater power with online platforms, there has been significant pushback from Facebook and Google.
• The latest threat comes as Facebook says it will remove news from its platform should a new bill be passed in the US.
• It is a move that the company pulled in Australia, and then Canada, with the bills needing to be amended to appease all parties.

It looks like Facebook is once again threatening to remove news, or the access thereof, over a pending journalism bill in the United States.

As we have seen in Australia and Canada, the proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would see publishers and media houses given greater power when dealing with online platforms over the distribution of content.

The journalism bill received bi-partisan support when it was presented last year, according to The Verge, and in September this year was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 15 to seven. The bill still needs to pass fully with the US Senate, although a precise date on when that vote will happen remains unclear at the time of writing.

In the interim, Meta (formerly Facebook) head of policy communications, Andy Stone, took to Twitter to share a statement on the bill and what it could mean for news on the social media platform.

“If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscription,” Stone’s statement threatens.

The Meta executive did not mince his words either when it came to explaining which entity wields the power in the dynamic between online platforms and news publishers.

“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,” he pointed out.

Meta statement on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act: pic.twitter.com/kyFqKQw7xs

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) December 5, 2022

How this will play out remains to be seen, but as mentioned, this is not the first time in recent years that Facebook has squared off with lawmakers and regulators. Its standoff with Australia saw content and pages of official government organisations being removed from Facebook, which resulted in that country’s Act being amended to better suit Facebook’s requirements.

Whether the US government will be forced into negotiations should news start to be removed if the journalism bill is passed, is unclear, but it would not be the first time that Facebook and the US government have butted heads over the content on the former’s platform.

[Image – Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash]