Facebook to Spend $1 Billion on News Content Over Three Years

Facebook said it would spend at least $1 billion to license material from news publishers over the next three years, a pledge that comes as tech giants face scrutiny from governments around the world over paying for news content that appears on their platforms. The spending plans are in addition to $600 million that Facebook paid since 2018 in deals with publishers like the Guardian, Financial Times and others to populate its Facebook News product in some countries. The social-media giant’s new pledge is similar to a plan Alphabet’s Google announced in 2020 to pay more than $1 billion to license news content for its Google News Showcase over a three-year period. Facebook removed news from its platform in Australia recently as the country’s legislature debated a proposal that would have required Facebook and Alphabet’s Google to pay traditional media companies for their content. Facebook reached a deal with the government Feb 23 that would restore news to the platform in exchange for measures like additional negotiation with media companies before binding arbitration kicks in. The revised legislation cleared its last major parliamentary hurdle on Feb 24.