Facebook-owned Meta is considering blocking news content from its platform in Australia if the government asks it to pay a licence fee, a company representative told a parliamentary hearing on Friday.
Meta’s regional policy director Mia Garlick told MPs that “all options are open” when asked if the company would prevent Australians from sharing news content to avoid the fee.
“There are a number of channels through which people can receive news content,” Garlick told the inquiry.
He said Meta was waiting for Canberra to decide whether it would implement untested 2021 legislation that gives the government the power to set the fees paid by US tech giants to media outlets for links.
These comments are the strongest indication yet that Meta will take a similar tough stance in Australia as it did in Canada in 2023 when that country introduced similar laws.
When the law was introduced in Australia, Meta had agreements with Australian media firms including News Corp and Australian Broadcasting Corp, but it has now said it will not renew these agreements after 2024.
It is now up to Australia’s Assistant Treasurer to decide whether to intervene in the matter and force Facebook to pay for news content. The Assistant Treasurer has said that they are still gathering advice, but Meta respects the law only when it suits it.
Asked whether blocking news from Facebook in Australia would be violating the law, Garlick said doing so would be in compliance with the law.
“We work to comply with every other law — tax law, securities law, privacy law –” he said. “If this law is fully implemented, compliance will look a little different.”
Garlick defended Meta’s processes that allowed Australians to complain if they believed the company was spreading harmful misinformation or scams, though he said its content moderation centres were in other countries.
Asked about Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest, who has sued Meta for showing his face in cryptocurrency scam ads, Garlick said the company has processes in place to detect and prevent scams but “there are a lot of challenges”.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked how Meta could call itself an advertising business, when “some ads sell lies”.
“We have policies, systems and tools in place to do everything we can to prevent those ads from appearing,” Garlick responded.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)