The Australian government plans to introduce a levy on social media companies and search engines to force them to pay publishers for journalism after Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, walked away from an existing arrangement. In the proposed amendments to current regulations, any social media platform or search engine that derives more than $250mn in revenues a year from Australia would be subject to a “charge”.
The latter signed a new deal with publishers in July. Meta said the new law did not reflect how people use social media. “We agree with the government that the current law is flawed and continue to have concerns about charging one industry to subsidise another,” it said.