The Autorité de la concurrence claims Meta has abused its dominant market position and must come up with a payment plan to pay back French publishers.
The French competition authority, Autorité de la concurrence, has ordered Meta to t re-enter conversations with media groups and propose a payment plan for unpaid fees for content use.
This case is one of a growing number in which publishers and tech companies butt heads over the use of content published on social media and for AI training, which has triggered litigation.
French media associations DVP and APIG have accused Meta of trying to impose its own method for calculating fees paid for the re-use of published content on its services, but has refused to provide the information needed to evaluate the remuneration, Reuters reported.
The complaint centres on the European Union’s (EU) 2019 Copyright Directive, which has become a key tool in France’s efforts to force US tech giants to negotiate licensing deals with publishers when news content appears on their platforms.
The watchdog has also claimed Meta abused its dominant market position and requested the social media owner put forward the payment plan details within the next 15 days.
Meta told Reuters: “We remain committed to reaching a fair deal with DVP and APIG and we hope these decisions will mean the publishers now engage in good faith.”
This is a continuation of the long-running worldwide dispute between tech platforms and publishers in which media sites and content owners argue they should be compensated for their content being used in AI overviews, LLM answers, and in other content sources.
Considering that two-thirds of Google searches now end without a click, publishers have seen a significant decline in traffic, affecting their ad revenue as well as content engagement. This, partnered with the popularity of chatbots which scrape the internet for information which it then relays onto audiences, has prompted publishers to take action.
In the UK, the Competitions and Market Authority (CMA) has imposed new requirements on Google’s search service to improve transparency and fairer deals for publishers.
