Similarly, the Canadian government too introduced the Online News Act in April last year, and estimates point to a growth of at least 30% in Canada’s newsrooms, according to Coffey.

Other regions, including Latin America, the U.K., India and New Zealand, are looking to introduce similar legislation.

What is big tech’s stance?

In response to Adweek, Meta shared a statement stating the company will be forced to remove news from its platform if “Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill.”

Meta similarly threatened to pull its news content from Australia but eventually reached voluntary commercial agreements alongside Google for the region’s news organization.

Meanwhile, according to Reuters, Meta is said to pull similar stunts in Canada if the bill goes through. Google, which started testing news censorship for some Canadians earlier in February, confirmed with Reuters that the time-limited tests would impact less than 4% of random users in Canada.

A global report by NERA Economic Consulting that Meta commissioned found that publishers reap “considerable economic benefits” from their use of Facebook, constituting approximately 1% to 1.5% of their revenues. Even so, the proportion of adults using Facebook for news fell by about a third between 2016-2022, from 45% to 30%, according to the report.

What’s next?

The bill sponsors are moving the bill through regular order in the Senate and are hoping the legislation will cross the finish line this time, in the next few months.

“They recognize that there’s a problem,” said Coffey. “And it’s a matter of what we can come up with is a solution that they would be amenable to.”