{"id":715174,"date":"2026-06-04T17:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T17:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/715174\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T17:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T17:14:10","slug":"grossly-unfair-meta-slams-australias-bid-to-make-platforms-pay-for-news-technology-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/715174\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Grossly unfair\u2019: Meta slams Australia\u2019s bid to make platforms pay for news | Technology News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook parent company says proposals violate Australia\u2019s commitments under its free trade agreement with the US.<\/p>\n

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Published On 4 Jun 20264 Jun 2026<\/p>\n

Social media giant Meta has hit out at Australia\u2019s latest plans to force digital platforms to support media outlets financially, labelling the proposals \u201cpoorly designed\u201d and \u201cgrossly unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, said on Thursday that the government\u2019s News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) would shield news publishers from needing to undertake the innovation necessary for a sustainable media landscape.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe NBI does the opposite: it insulates publishers from the competitive pressure to evolve by guaranteeing revenue regardless of whether they build sustainable business models,\u201d the California-based tech giant said in a submission to the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis entrenches dependency at the very moment when adaptation matters most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meta also said the \u201ceconomically incoherent\u201d proposals would not lead to a sustainable news sector and \u201cplainly\u201d violate Australia\u2019s commitments under its free trade agreement with the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cA strong, independent media cannot be built on punitive taxes, levied on foreign companies, with no connection to the value exchanged,\u201d Meta said.<\/p>\n

Under the centre-left Labor Party government\u2019s plans, social media and search platforms would face a 2.25 percent levy on Australian revenues if they do not make deals to pay Australian outlets for their news content.<\/p>\n

Platforms that reach a set minimum number of commercial agreements would be able to reduce the levy to a rate that in effect would be 1.5 percent.<\/p>\n

Revenues\u00a0from the\u00a0levy would be distributed among media outlets based on\u00a0the number of journalists they employ.<\/p>\n

The proposals specifically target Meta, Google and TikTok owner ByteDance but would not apply to AI developers that also influence search traffic, such as ChatGPT creator OpenAI.<\/p>\n

The initiative is intended to replace the previous government\u2019s News Bargaining Code, which Meta and other tech companies were able to bypass by pulling news content from their platforms.<\/p>\n

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled the plans in April, pledging to \u201cback Australian journalists and Australian news\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cLocal news matters to local communities, and these stories can\u2019t be told without Australian journalists,\u201d Albanese said at the time.<\/p>\n

The government estimated that the new scheme, which has to be approved by parliament, would generate 200 million to 250 million Australian dollars (US$143m to US$178m) for local media outlets.<\/p>\n

Like elsewhere, Australia\u2019s media sector has been hammered by collapsing advertising revenues, which supported a flourishing industry in the heyday of print publications.<\/p>\n

More than 19,500 journalism jobs have been lost since 2008, according to the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Australia\u2019s primary media union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook parent company says proposals violate Australia\u2019s commitments under its free trade agreement with the US. Published On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[77,64,63,164,1685,44,1314,105],"class_list":["post-715174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-asia-pacific","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-economy","tag-media","tag-news","tag-social-media","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}