Facebook Says It Doesn’t Need News Stories for Its Business and Won’t Pay to Share Them in Australia

A while back we told you about a law that was coming to Australia that looked at creating a code of conduct which would force the tech giants to pay Australian media companies for using their content.

Google said they don’t make money from this content but will work with published towards a common goal. Now Facebook as responded to the same but they they are rejecting the ACCC proposal, saying they could cut out news completely without any significant impact on its business.

Facebook has rejected a proposal to share advertising revenue with news organisations, saying there would “not be significant” impacts on its business if it stopped sharing news altogether. The social media giant said it supported the idea of a code of conduct between digital platforms and news publishers, but that itself and Google were being “singled out” unfairly.

Facebook said it had sent 2.3bn clicks to Australian news publishers in the five months from January to May 2020, which they estimated to be worth $195.8m to the news organisations.

Facebook said that news represents “only a very small fraction of the content in the average Facebook users’ newsfeed” because Facebook was primarily a service used to connect with family and friends. Despite this, the company said it was still committed to supporting Australian news, and had “invested” in the industry.