By David Hamilton & Rod McGuirk
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --Facebook threatened to block Australian publishers and individuals from sharing news stories on its platform in reaction to an Australian measure that could require it to compensate media organizations for its use of their stories.
The social network said the Australian move would force it to pay arbitrary and theoretically unlimited sums for information that makes up only a small fraction of its service.
The measure would force Facebook to choose between "either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits," the company's managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Will Easton, wrote in a blog post. "No business can operate that way."
Campbell Brown, a former NBC and CNN anchor who is Facebook's vice president of global news partnerships, said the cutoff threat "has nothing to do with our ongoing global commitment to journalism." Brown's post, which cited a variety of individual Facebook programs intended to support news organizations, was titled "Our Continued Commitment to Journalism."
Google, meanwhile, issued an open letter that cast the proposed Australian law as a potential threat to individual privacy and a burden that would degrade the quality of its search and YouTube video services, but did not threaten a cutoff.
"Mark Zuckerberg is happy to let Facebook be a tool to spread misinformation and fake news, but is apparently fine with Facebook dropping real news altogether," John Stanton, co-founder of the Save Journalism Project, said in a statement. "Regulators need to reign in the tech giants' total domination of the online marketplace before it's too late."
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the proposed laws would "create a more sustainable media landscape and see payment for original content."
"Australia makes laws that advance our national interest. We don't respond to coercion or heavy handed threats wherever they come from," Frydenberg said in a statement, referring to the Facebook threat.
The draft legislation that aims to make Australia succeed where other countries have failed in forcing the companies to compensate media businesses for news content was made public in July.
A public consultation period ended last week.
Frydenberg has said he hopes Parliament will pass the legislation this year.
Associated Press journalist Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.
California governor signs law to protect children from social media addiction
California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday.
California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform's algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children's access to social media, but they have faced challenges in court.
The California law will take effect in a state home to some of the largest technology companies in the world. Similar proposals have failed to pass in recent years, but Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law in 2022 barring online platforms from using users' personal information in ways that could harm children. It is part of a growing push in states across the country to try to address the impacts of social media on the well-being of children.
"Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night," Newsom said in a statement. "With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits."
The law bans platforms from sending notifications without permission from parents to minors between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, when children are typically in school. The legislation also makes platforms set children's accounts to private by default.
Opponents of the legislation say it could inadvertently prevent adults from accessing content if they cannot verify their... Read More