Meta threatened to remove news from Facebook in the United States but any confrontation has been avoided. Lawmakers chose to exclude a bill aiming to protect competition within journalism from the defense spending bill released on Tuesday.
At the beginning of this week the authors of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) campaigned for its inclusion in the defense spending bill. If included the otherwise uncertain bill be forced into law. This prompted threats from Meta to remove all news from Facebook in the US, as the law would give publishers more power in fee negotiations.
Meta have long opposed the JCPA, characterising the US government as a “cartel-like entity”.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, JCPA lead author, said: “Allowing the big tech companies to dominate policy decisions in Washington is no longer a viable option when it comes to news compensation, consumer and privacy rights, or the online marketplace.”
Similar legislation was introduced in Australia last year. In response, Facebook made users briefly unable to post or share links to news articles. This decision was reversed after negotiations with the Australian government.