Reported End to Facebook’s ‘Murky’ Deals With News Giants Sparks Call for ‘Truly Fair Marketplace’

Press freedom and antitrust advocates on Friday derided both Facebook and corporate media beneficiaries of the tech titan’s multimillion-dollar spending spree following reporting that the company is rethinking its investments amid increasing regulatory pressures and a shift away from news partnerships.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook in recent years has annually paid an average of more than $15 million to The Washington Post, as well as $20 million to The New York Times, and over $10 million to the Journal. The Journal deal is part of a larger $20 million agreement.

“For years, Facebook has sucked advertising dollars away from newspapers and news magazines,” Barry Lynn, executive director at the anti-monopoly watchdog group Open Markets, said in a statement.

“At the very moment the U.S. government began to seek solutions to this problem, Facebook cut murky, multimillion-dollars deal with America’s most influential newspapers, apparently as part of an effort to halt regulation and continue to siphon off advertising dollars unhindered,” he added.

According to “people familiar with the matter” interviewed by the Journal, it is not clear whether Facebook will continue its deals with media corporations as Meta, the social platform’s parent company, shifts its investments from news to “products that attract creators” and the metaverse.

The Journal also cites Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s disappointment at “regulatory efforts around the world looking to force platforms like Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to pay publishers for any news content available on their platforms.”

Facebook was so incensed by a 2021 Australian law compelling large online platforms to pay publishers for linking to local news stories that it temporarily imposed a blackout on Australian news outlets, a move condemned by groups including Access Now and Amnesty International.

Lynn said that “it’s not entirely surprising, then, to learn Facebook wants to nix these payments, which clearly haven’t delivered the protection from regulation that Facebook expected.”

Open Markets also called on the Times, Post, and Journal to “work  constructively with Congress to ensure that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act establishes a foundation for a truly fair marketplace designed to ensure robust advertising support for every newspaper in the United States, not only the few dominant players.”

Introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in February, the proposed legislation “creates a four-year safe harbor from antitrust laws for print, broadcast, or digital news companies to collectively negotiate with online content distributors (e.g., social media companies) regarding the terms on which the news companies’ content may be distributed by online content distributors.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Brett Wilkins.