The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/the-eu-backs-italys-right-to-make-meta-pay-for-news/

by giuliomagnifico • 2 months ago

115 96 2 months ago

niemanlab.org

forestingfisher• 2 months ago

Does this mean HN will have to pay for all the links too? Tired of this overregulation

tekla2• 2 months ago

Why not? We the posters are providing free content and views and exposure for a VC fund worth billions of dollars.

Why are we not getting kickbacks?

notrealyme123• 2 months ago

Sounds ridiculous, but yes. They earn "something" via their exclusive advertisement spots here.

I guess the daily active users are something else though.

Scarblac2• 2 months ago

Because you're doing it voluntarily.

cromka2• 2 months ago

Do you think Meta is asked to pay for the titles?

stephen_g• 2 months ago

They are in Australia, and it’s probably safe to assume this law would be pretty similar to ours. In our version, Part 52B explicitly renders these three things as being exactly the same for the purposes of the law:

(a) the content is reproduced on the service or is otherwise placed on the service; or

(b) a link to the content is provided on the service; or

(c) an extract of the content is provided on the service.

Which quite literally means that they consider a post that only contains hyperlink (b) or a link and only a title (even just the title would fall under (c)) to be as bad as a social media site ripping off the whole article!

This was the same conflation used by the supporters of the law and pretty much every news article about it before it was passed, basically all of which dishonestly claimed that social media sites were doing (a) when they were mostly only posting a title and sentence or two synopsis (that is supplied by the news site itself in its meta tags!!)

bilekas3• 2 months ago

Tired of this overregulation

Why ? When the alternative is to let companies to whatever makes the number go up at the expense of everyone else, regulation is the only thing to protect normal people.

this_user• 2 months ago

You are not protecting "normal people". These types of laws are nothing but attempts at rent seeking by dying legacy media companies that were too incompetent to figure out working digital strategies on their own. And they would already be dead without the traffic that big platforms like Meta and Google are sending their way.

If you send traffic to some e-commerce platform through an affiliate link, you are the one who gets paid. These companies are instead trying to rig the system in such a way that the affiliate would be forced to pay them. It's an absurd and desperate proposal that deserves to be rejected.

buellerbueller5• 2 months ago

Meta doesn't have to pay for the links. It's the summaries. I suspect the publishers would welcome the links, as they'd drive traffic and ad revenue. Instead, Meta is siphoning the revenue by summarizing the content.

nitwit0052• 2 months ago

While they cite the summaries as copyright infringement, news organizations have previously rejected removing them as a way to resolve things. They ultimately want money.

Meta's fix has been to try to walk away from the news. They removed the news tab in some regions.

GenerWork• 2 months ago

Why won't Meta just stop showing Italian news now?

iso1631• 2 months ago

Why do they show Italian news before?

Because it makes them money.

rick_dalton• 2 months ago

Canada passed a similar bill a few years ago causing meta to stop showing Canadian news content on their platforms. It didn’t really impact them financially or user wise. So the same thing will probably happen in Italy.

MattDamonSpace2• 2 months ago

No, ads make them money. Users see the ads because they view their feeds.

It’s been proven in other markets that removing News from the feed doesn’t decrease engagement. Meta will continue to make money, and Italian news sites will see their traffic vanish.

Turns out they’re simply not valuable in the way they used to be, and country after country is learning this

MattDamonSpace2• 2 months ago

Yes

nothinkjustai• 2 months ago

Meta does this in Canada. These same media outlets need to be funded by the government to survive, and as such treats the government with kid gloves, very little criticism, deflection, bias etc.

So I’d say that deal is working well for both the legacy media & the Canadian government.

bilekas3• 2 months ago

It so nice to see megacorps not being allowed to whatever they like as in the US. The EU has regulations and standards. If you don't follow them you can't just try to sue the body. Just follow the rules like you're supposed to. It's quite simply really.

paulddraper• 2 months ago

They already did this with Canada.

Meta decided to stop showing news links in Canada. [1]

Presumably, it would choose the same thing here.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/sureshsingaratnam/posts/so-meta-is-...

buellerbueller5• 2 months ago

Yes, meta took the salt-the-earth approach. Rather then allow users to post links and meta not summarize the content, meta is now destroying its own value for Canadians.

These hypercorps and their CEOs act like giant fucking children, and rather than abide by a ruling being told to play fair, they just decide to take their ball and go home.

Good riddance. The sooner social media dies, the better off humanity will be.

nradov3• 2 months ago

Yes, that was a great move. I wish Meta would do the same in all countries. I don't go to Facebook to read news.

josefx• 2 months ago

I am not a facebook user, but going by that post they seem to go a step further and outright block any links pointing to news sites. The article mentions some provisions in the Italian law that prohibit restricting visiblity of the news sites, at least during negotiations, so that kind of salted earth move could backfire .

pjc50• 2 months ago

You certainly can sue: "The ruling comes after Meta sued Italy’s national telecommunications regulatory agency (AGCOM) in Italian court in 2023"; that's the normal process for disputing regulatory rulings. Doesn't mean you'll win though.

I'm very much in two minds about this because "news" is not a morally neutral category in itself, such as with similar laws benefiting News Corp in Australia, but it's clear that Meta/FB is a much worse unrestrained actor.

werhf• 2 months ago

I'm also not happy that news organizations get special exceptions. It is very easy to construct cynical motives:

- Politicians need the news so journalists are protected.

- If news organizations get paid, they have no incentive to be AI critical.

The article says that "news are vital". So is open source, films, images, art, and the authors do not get paid by the thieves.

lokar4• 2 months ago

But there is real, broad competition between news outlets.

pcardoso• 2 months ago

If Meta refuses to back down and removes news from the feed, could that actually be a net positive? It might push people to visit newspaper sites or apps deliberately, rather than stumbling across news passively and mistaking that for being informed.

Nasrudith• 2 months ago

Haha no. If the news media were any good they wouldn't be threatened by online rumormills as a replacement. Instead they produce such crap that comments sections on aggregators provide better information.

maxdo• 2 months ago

Good for these news corps , bad for consumers. Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash .

close042• 2 months ago

Isn’t Facebook just as full of ads that can’t even be blocked by uBO? When I log into the FB account I haven’t really been using in more than a decade, it’s 99% “sponsored” stuff, ads and reels. Really I could scroll through pages and pages of things I never chose to have in my feed before I see any post from a friend.

At least on a news website I get to read just the news and can block the ads.

nozzlegear2• 2 months ago

My Facebook feed is like 90% posts from local news and radio stations that I don't follow. I rarely see ads, just people posting ragebait comments under those local news articles.

0rbiter• 2 months ago

What a perverted logic. Like Meta won't bury you in ads and spy the living shit out of you while you're using.

gruez4• 2 months ago

Adding link tax doesn't change any of that.

throw0101c2• 2 months ago

Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash .

Most folks don't want to pay for news, but how do you pay journalists so you have an informed citizenry/electorate?

choo-t2• 2 months ago

Donation.

jpadkins• 2 months ago

In the 90s, the business model was bundle the news with classifieds (classifieds were the main profit source for print newspapers, inline ads only covered the cost of paper, ink and distribution). The web unbundled news and classifieds, and we have been without a working business model ever since.

neksn2• 2 months ago

The demographics of this site have changed so much that people here are applauding… that it is now illegal to embed opengraph information on Facebook? This is deranged. And it only happens because the government is in bed with legacy media. The government being in bed with the media is awful for the common person.

Embedding opengraph data is a clear case of fair use, and it’s sad to see all of this coming from a community that has long been against copyright.

lokar4• 2 months ago

I think they should be able to show the link, and like a normal one sentence link text, but not a large snippet, images, etc

neksn2• 2 months ago

They only show what the website gives them through opengraph tags. If the site doesn’t want to give up that information they can remove the opengraph tags. Even still, fair use should allow Facebook to summarise the contents of the link if they wanted to (but they don’t do that).

miohtama• 2 months ago

They are displaying the snippet and image the website is giving them for a preview.

mcv3• 2 months ago

I don't think it's the demographics that have changed, but the state of the internet, and the awareness that big tech's stranglehold over our media is a problem.

Of course the likely end result is going to be that legitimate news will disappear from Facebook and there will only be misinformation left. I'd rather see them address the spread of misinformation instead of the spread of quality news.

akersten• 2 months ago

awareness that big tech's stranglehold over our media is a problem.

The legacy consolidated news organizations getting a sweet free new revenue stream are glad that they've been able to convince so many people that big tech linking to them is actually a "stranglehold" and a problem!

gruez4• 2 months ago

I don't think it's the demographics that have changed, but the state of the internet, and the awareness that big tech's stranglehold over our media is a problem.

The less charitable interpretation is that interest groups are just harnessing the current kneejerk reaction for anything anti-"big tech" to serve their own interests. See also: people being theoretically in favor of affordable housing, but are also against "greedy developers" and "luxury condos" so nothing gets built.

ksec• 2 months ago

The demographics of this site have changed so much that people here are applauding

I don't think it has. Meta has been pretty much hated on HN since the beginning. And has only gotten worse and peaked during 2020. It is not about linking information, it is about Facebook.

Manuel_D2• 2 months ago

What's changed is that people are so focused on harming Meta that they're willing to set a precedence for a link tax.

strictnein• 2 months ago

The commenters here used to be able to separate their disdain for Company X from the actual subject of importance.

Disliking Facebook shouldn't have you supporting government overreach. Defending people or groups you don't like is how you know you have actual convictions.

SllX• 2 months ago

The article is talking about a link tax, or put another way: Italy forcing a website to pay for the privilege of referring traffic to the referees who benefit from the additional traffic when their mutual users link to news sites.

The only reason this is getting applauded by anyone is because the enforcement target is Facebook and years of the news media using their voice to complain loudly and religiously about their business competition (social media) has primed the pump for bad laws like this.

4g• 2 months ago

You can go back and view the threads on Bill C-18 and see the change in attitude

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37353770

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35134751

keeganpoppen2• 2 months ago

nah facebook definitely was not hated on since the beginning… if you mean “meta” specifically, then yes, i actually agree. kinda like a “prince turning his name into a symbol” jump-discontinuous moment that marked the changing of the tides.

nadermx• 2 months ago

Its because the rightsholders instead of treating copyright to advance the arts and sciences and acknowledging that fair use exists, instead use it to nurf creativity under guise of drowning you in a hypotheitical neuanced multi year litigation that will cost millions, if you feel your use is within your right.

People are now upset because since that was the status quoe for so long it got people to believe that they if they made a song, and all they saw was copyright, and copyright sues for everything and wins, and someone heard that song in the background while inventing a microwave they are entitled to all the microwaves earnings, and before if you said no thats absurd, you had to spend millions to see if the system didnt fail you.

And now people are spending millions to prove that it is absurd, and everyone is up in arms that someome called their bluff with resources.

layer8• 2 months ago

Reading the article and the court ruling, it seems to me that the reference to Open Graph here is beside the point.

keeganpoppen2• 2 months ago

yeah somehow it is a minority opinion to shout “this is obviously stupid” from the rooftops… i guess meta has gone from startup to … utility(?) over the course of the last decade, but i have yet to see anything in this equivalence class of decision that isn’t just obviously idiotic… gl to italy, i guess. wish them all the best.

tardedmeme3• 2 months ago

Meta was not a startup in 2016. 2006, probably. Two decades.

stavros• 2 months ago

If they're only showing OpenGraph tags, then yeah, that's a bizarre ban. I can understand banning showing entire stories, which makes people not click through, but OG tags? The site can just change those.

greatgib• 2 months ago

Sadly, nowadays most eu country officials are corrupted by money or influence... And most media are owned by billionaires that are good friends with officials.

The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

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