Meta avoids showdown over news content in US after journalism bargaining bill shelved

Key Facts

Zuckerberg critical of Apple and App Store practices 04:04 - Source: CNN Washington CNN Business — A threat by Facebook owner Meta to remove news content from its platforms appears to have been averted — for now — after US lawmakers omitted an antitrust bill it opposed from the text of an annual defense spending bill released late Tuesday evening.
Meta had warned on Monday that if Congress passed the competition bill as part of the larger legislation — temporarily allowing digital news publishers to negotiate collectively against tech platforms for a larger share of ad revenues — then the social media giant “will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether.”
Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a key architect of the news media bill, has argued that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is necessary to help small, local journalism outlets survive in the face of Google and Facebook’s advertising dominance.
Fight for the Future, a digital rights group opposed to the JCPA, applauded the bill’s omission from the NDAA on Wednesday and called on congressional leaders to advance the remaining tech antitrust legislation, which would erect new barriers between tech giants’ various lines of business and force Apple to allow iOS users to download apps from any source.