Meta Blasts Australia’s Plan to Force Tech Giants to Pay for News, Calling It ‘Discriminatory Tax’
Tech giant Meta on Thursday launched a blistering attack on Australia’s proposal to make social media companies pay for news, calling the draft law “grossly unfair” and vowing to fight it in a statement that signals an escalating transatlantic battle over how to fund journalism in the digital age.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram said it is “vehemently opposed” to the legislation, which would force platforms like itself, Google, and TikTok to either negotiate content deals with Australian news publishers or face a compulsory levy equal to 2.25 percent of their annual Australian revenue. “Our position is clear: this law is poorly designed, grossly unfair, and will fail to deliver a diverse and sustainable news industry,” Meta said in a statement released Thursday.
Australia has been at the forefront of global efforts to regulate big tech, having already passed a world-first law in 2021 that forced Google and Meta to pay for news links — a move that prompted similar proposals in Canada, the UK, and the European Union. But Meta’s latest broadside comes as the government in Canberra moves to close a loophole that allowed platforms to simply strip news from their services to avoid payment. In 2024, when Australia first floated a similar law, Meta responded by removing the “news” tab from Australian users’ feeds entirely.
The new draft legislation, unveiled earlier this year, specifically targets Meta, Google, and TikTok based on a combination of their Australian revenues and large domestic user bases. Companies that refuse to voluntarily strike deals with local publishers will be hit with a levy that critics say amounts to a tax on foreign digital giants. “It is a discriminatory, retroactive tax targeting a handful of foreign companies while competitors offering comparable services face no equivalent obligation,” Meta said. “Call it what it is.”
Supporters of the measure, including Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, argue that social media platforms attract users with news content and hoover up online advertising revenue that would otherwise sustain struggling newsrooms. “Large digital platforms cannot avoid their obligations under the news media bargaining code,” Albanese said in April. “Journalism needs to have a monetary value attached to it. It shouldn’t be able to be taken by a large multinational corporation and used to generate profits with no compensation.”
Traditional media companies worldwide are fighting for survival as readers increasingly consume news through social media. In Australia, a study from the University of Canberra found that more than half the country uses social media as a primary source of news, underscoring the leverage platforms hold over the news ecosystem. Meta has already announced it will not renew content deals with news publishers in the United States, Britain, France, and Germany — a move that analysts say is part of a broader strategy to resist mandatory payment schemes globally.
The draft law is expected to be introduced in parliament later this year. If passed, it would mark the latest in a series of aggressive Australian tech regulations, including a landmark ban on social media for children under 16 that took effect in December — the world’s first such crackdown designed to protect minors from online bullying and what officials call “predatory algorithms.”