Facebook Inc.(FB) said it will spend at least $1 billion over the next three years to license content from news publishers. The tech giants are currently under scrutiny from governments around the world over the issue of paying for news content that appears on their platforms.
In addition to these spending plans, Facebook has signed deals with publishers such as The Guardian and Financial Times since 2018 to promote its Facebook News product in a number of countries, according to a blog post by Nick Clegg, Facebook’s senior director of policy, on Wednesday (Feb. 24). 600 million paid for its Facebook News product.
The social media giant’s new commitment is similar to a plan announced last year by Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOG) Google, which plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next three years to license news content for its Google News Showcase product.
Facebook removed news from its Australian platform last week as the country’s legislature debated a bill that would require Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to pay traditional media companies for their content.
Facebook reached an agreement with the Australian government on Tuesday (Feb. 23) to restore news content to its platform in exchange for, among other measures, additional negotiations with media companies before binding arbitration takes effect. The revised bill cleared the last major parliamentary hurdle on Wednesday (24).
In a blog post, Clegg said the proposed Australian law would require the company to “pay potentially unlimited amounts to global media companies” under the arbitration regime.
Clegg, who served as Britain’s deputy prime minister, said it would be like forcing car makers to pay for radio stations because people might listen to them in their cars and let the stations set the price.
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