Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Threatens to Remove News From Facebook if Journalism-Related Bill Passes

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Meta has threatened to remove the news from Facebook if a journalism-related bill passes Congress and becomes law.

Congress could take up the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act and attach it to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, which is the annual blueprint for military spending.

The legislation would enable a four-year exemption from antitrust laws for the journalism industry in which outlets would be able to “collectively negotiate with online content distributors” such as social media companies “regarding the terms on which the news companies’ content may be distributed by online content distributors,” according to an official summary of the bill. The bill comes as newsrooms have been losing revenue and been forced to cease operations.

In a statement on Monday, Meta came out against the legislation:

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 subscriptions. 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. No company should be forced to pay for content users don’t want to see and that’s not a meaningful source of revenue. Put simply: the government creating a cartel-like entity which requires one private company to subsidize other private entities is a terrible precedent for all American businesses.