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One hundred cardboard cutouts of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stand outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. during an April 10, 2018 protest. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Press freedom and antitrust advocates on Friday derided both Facebook and corporate media beneficiaries of the tech titan's multimillion dollar spending spree following reporting that the company is rethinking its investments amid increasing regulatory pressures and a shift away from news partnerships.
"For years, Facebook has sucked advertising dollars away from newspapers and news magazines."
The Wall Street Journalreports that Facebook in recent years has annually paid an average of more than $15 million to The Washington Post, as well as $20 million to The New York Times, and over $10 million to the Journal. The Journal deal is part of a larger $20 million agreement.
"For years, Facebook has sucked advertising dollars away from newspapers and news magazines," Barry Lynn, executive director at the anti-monopoly watchdog group Open Markets, said in a statement.
"At the very moment the U.S. government began to seek solutions to this problem, Facebook cut murky, multimillion-dollars deal with America's most influential newspapers, apparently as part of an effort to halt regulation and continue to siphon off advertising dollars unhindered," he added.
\u201cSo Facebook finally realized that paying major publishers 10-20m per year has not made them bash the company less. Publishers should have never accepted this money in the first place though.\n\nhttps://t.co/5XkQD6T2Ev\u201d— Andrey Boborykin (@Andrey Boborykin) 1654867987
According to "people familiar with the matter" interviewed by the Journal, it is not clear whether Facebook will continue its deals with media corporations as Meta, the social platform's parent company, shifts its investments from news to "products that attract creators" and the metaverse.
The Journal also cites Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's disappointment at "regulatory efforts around the world looking to force platforms like Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to pay publishers for any news content available on their platforms."
Facebook was so incensed by a 2021 Australian law compelling large online platforms to pay publishers for linking to local news stories that it temporarily imposed a blackout on Australian news outlets, a move condemned by groups including Access Now and Amnesty International.
\u201c#mustreading on economic inequity when @facebook pads the pockets of 3 pretty dang rich news orgs, leaving little for America's frontline journalists reporting on their communities\u201d— Jody Brannon (@Jody Brannon) 1654887178
Lynn said that "it's not entirely surprising, then, to learn Facebook wants to nix these payments, which clearly haven't delivered the protection from regulation that Facebook expected."
He continued:
It is surprising that the public is only now learning the details of Facebook's payoffs to America's biggest newspapers, three years after the fact. Facebook should absolutely pay for the news it shares on its platform. But the American people also need complete transparency about any and all agreements between the publishers who report the news and the tech giants we expect them to cover honestly and critically.
Open Markets Institute calls on news publishers to immediately disclose the amounts and terms of all their deals with Big Tech, including any renewed deals with Facebook and existing deals with Google. We can't allow our free press to be captured by tech monopolies. They already hold far too much power and pose dire threats to our democracy.
Open Markets also called on the Times, Post, and Journal to "work constructively with Congress to ensure that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act establishes a foundation for a truly fair marketplace designed to ensure robust advertising support for every newspaper in the United States, not only the few dominant players."
Introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in February, the proposed legislation "creates a four-year safe harbor from antitrust laws for print, broadcast, or digital news companies to collectively negotiate with online content distributors (e.g., social media companies) regarding the terms on which the news companies' content may be distributed by online content distributors."
Google and Facebook have also come under fire for throttling traffic to progressive and other independent news sites, many of which are fighting to survive amid incessant corporate consolidation.
Related Content
"This is a classic example of the rich get richer," Jody Brannon, director of the Center for Journalism & Liberty, a program of the Open Markets Institute, said in a statement. "Facebook collects most digital ad dollars from the reporting done by local journalists, so why can't smaller newsrooms reap even fractions of those millions to better cover their communities?"
The Journal report comes as the digital rights group Fight For the Future kicks off an "Antitrust Summer" campaign aimed at boosting federal legislation to crack down on Big Tech monopolies.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
Press freedom and antitrust advocates on Friday derided both Facebook and corporate media beneficiaries of the tech titan's multimillion dollar spending spree following reporting that the company is rethinking its investments amid increasing regulatory pressures and a shift away from news partnerships.
"For years, Facebook has sucked advertising dollars away from newspapers and news magazines."
The Wall Street Journalreports that Facebook in recent years has annually paid an average of more than $15 million to The Washington Post, as well as $20 million to The New York Times, and over $10 million to the Journal. The Journal deal is part of a larger $20 million agreement.
"For years, Facebook has sucked advertising dollars away from newspapers and news magazines," Barry Lynn, executive director at the anti-monopoly watchdog group Open Markets, said in a statement.
"At the very moment the U.S. government began to seek solutions to this problem, Facebook cut murky, multimillion-dollars deal with America's most influential newspapers, apparently as part of an effort to halt regulation and continue to siphon off advertising dollars unhindered," he added.
\u201cSo Facebook finally realized that paying major publishers 10-20m per year has not made them bash the company less. Publishers should have never accepted this money in the first place though.\n\nhttps://t.co/5XkQD6T2Ev\u201d— Andrey Boborykin (@Andrey Boborykin) 1654867987
According to "people familiar with the matter" interviewed by the Journal, it is not clear whether Facebook will continue its deals with media corporations as Meta, the social platform's parent company, shifts its investments from news to "products that attract creators" and the metaverse.
The Journal also cites Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's disappointment at "regulatory efforts around the world looking to force platforms like Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to pay publishers for any news content available on their platforms."
Facebook was so incensed by a 2021 Australian law compelling large online platforms to pay publishers for linking to local news stories that it temporarily imposed a blackout on Australian news outlets, a move condemned by groups including Access Now and Amnesty International.
\u201c#mustreading on economic inequity when @facebook pads the pockets of 3 pretty dang rich news orgs, leaving little for America's frontline journalists reporting on their communities\u201d— Jody Brannon (@Jody Brannon) 1654887178
Lynn said that "it's not entirely surprising, then, to learn Facebook wants to nix these payments, which clearly haven't delivered the protection from regulation that Facebook expected."
He continued:
It is surprising that the public is only now learning the details of Facebook's payoffs to America's biggest newspapers, three years after the fact. Facebook should absolutely pay for the news it shares on its platform. But the American people also need complete transparency about any and all agreements between the publishers who report the news and the tech giants we expect them to cover honestly and critically.
Open Markets Institute calls on news publishers to immediately disclose the amounts and terms of all their deals with Big Tech, including any renewed deals with Facebook and existing deals with Google. We can't allow our free press to be captured by tech monopolies. They already hold far too much power and pose dire threats to our democracy.
Open Markets also called on the Times, Post, and Journal to "work constructively with Congress to ensure that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act establishes a foundation for a truly fair marketplace designed to ensure robust advertising support for every newspaper in the United States, not only the few dominant players."
Introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in February, the proposed legislation "creates a four-year safe harbor from antitrust laws for print, broadcast, or digital news companies to collectively negotiate with online content distributors (e.g., social media companies) regarding the terms on which the news companies' content may be distributed by online content distributors."
Google and Facebook have also come under fire for throttling traffic to progressive and other independent news sites, many of which are fighting to survive amid incessant corporate consolidation.
Related Content
"This is a classic example of the rich get richer," Jody Brannon, director of the Center for Journalism & Liberty, a program of the Open Markets Institute, said in a statement. "Facebook collects most digital ad dollars from the reporting done by local journalists, so why can't smaller newsrooms reap even fractions of those millions to better cover their communities?"
The Journal report comes as the digital rights group Fight For the Future kicks off an "Antitrust Summer" campaign aimed at boosting federal legislation to crack down on Big Tech monopolies.
Press freedom and antitrust advocates on Friday derided both Facebook and corporate media beneficiaries of the tech titan's multimillion dollar spending spree following reporting that the company is rethinking its investments amid increasing regulatory pressures and a shift away from news partnerships.
"For years, Facebook has sucked advertising dollars away from newspapers and news magazines."
The Wall Street Journalreports that Facebook in recent years has annually paid an average of more than $15 million to The Washington Post, as well as $20 million to The New York Times, and over $10 million to the Journal. The Journal deal is part of a larger $20 million agreement.
"For years, Facebook has sucked advertising dollars away from newspapers and news magazines," Barry Lynn, executive director at the anti-monopoly watchdog group Open Markets, said in a statement.
"At the very moment the U.S. government began to seek solutions to this problem, Facebook cut murky, multimillion-dollars deal with America's most influential newspapers, apparently as part of an effort to halt regulation and continue to siphon off advertising dollars unhindered," he added.
\u201cSo Facebook finally realized that paying major publishers 10-20m per year has not made them bash the company less. Publishers should have never accepted this money in the first place though.\n\nhttps://t.co/5XkQD6T2Ev\u201d— Andrey Boborykin (@Andrey Boborykin) 1654867987
According to "people familiar with the matter" interviewed by the Journal, it is not clear whether Facebook will continue its deals with media corporations as Meta, the social platform's parent company, shifts its investments from news to "products that attract creators" and the metaverse.
The Journal also cites Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's disappointment at "regulatory efforts around the world looking to force platforms like Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to pay publishers for any news content available on their platforms."
Facebook was so incensed by a 2021 Australian law compelling large online platforms to pay publishers for linking to local news stories that it temporarily imposed a blackout on Australian news outlets, a move condemned by groups including Access Now and Amnesty International.
\u201c#mustreading on economic inequity when @facebook pads the pockets of 3 pretty dang rich news orgs, leaving little for America's frontline journalists reporting on their communities\u201d— Jody Brannon (@Jody Brannon) 1654887178
Lynn said that "it's not entirely surprising, then, to learn Facebook wants to nix these payments, which clearly haven't delivered the protection from regulation that Facebook expected."
He continued:
It is surprising that the public is only now learning the details of Facebook's payoffs to America's biggest newspapers, three years after the fact. Facebook should absolutely pay for the news it shares on its platform. But the American people also need complete transparency about any and all agreements between the publishers who report the news and the tech giants we expect them to cover honestly and critically.
Open Markets Institute calls on news publishers to immediately disclose the amounts and terms of all their deals with Big Tech, including any renewed deals with Facebook and existing deals with Google. We can't allow our free press to be captured by tech monopolies. They already hold far too much power and pose dire threats to our democracy.
Open Markets also called on the Times, Post, and Journal to "work constructively with Congress to ensure that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act establishes a foundation for a truly fair marketplace designed to ensure robust advertising support for every newspaper in the United States, not only the few dominant players."
Introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in February, the proposed legislation "creates a four-year safe harbor from antitrust laws for print, broadcast, or digital news companies to collectively negotiate with online content distributors (e.g., social media companies) regarding the terms on which the news companies' content may be distributed by online content distributors."
Google and Facebook have also come under fire for throttling traffic to progressive and other independent news sites, many of which are fighting to survive amid incessant corporate consolidation.
Related Content
"This is a classic example of the rich get richer," Jody Brannon, director of the Center for Journalism & Liberty, a program of the Open Markets Institute, said in a statement. "Facebook collects most digital ad dollars from the reporting done by local journalists, so why can't smaller newsrooms reap even fractions of those millions to better cover their communities?"
The Journal report comes as the digital rights group Fight For the Future kicks off an "Antitrust Summer" campaign aimed at boosting federal legislation to crack down on Big Tech monopolies.
"How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are," said one lawyer.
A U.S. judge on Friday ordered the return of a Maryland resident who the Trump administration mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador last month, according to The Associated Press.
Prior to issuing the ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis called the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia "an illegal act."
The judge, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, gave the Trump administration end of the day of the day on Monday to bring him back to the United States.
Supporters outside the courtroom cheered as the judge handed down her order, according to The Washington Post.
Responding to the ruling on social media, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said: "This is a big win. Now Trump must comply with the judge's order."
Immigration lawyer Ava Benach wrote: "The right decision. How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are."
The right decision. How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are.
[image or embed]
— avabenach.bsky.social (@avabenach.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Abrego Garcia was among hundreds of people the administration expelled in mid-March to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador after targeting them for alleged gang ties.
In a court papers filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting field office director admitted that the removal of Abrego Garcia on March 15 "was an error."
Abrego Garcia was deported despite the fact that in 2019, a U.S. immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to his native El Salvador because he would likely face gang persecution there.
"Corporations get let off the hook, Musk gets insider information, and the American people get hosed."
The latest U.S. agency in the crosshairs of billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is reportedly the Federal Trade Commission, an already-understaffed department tasked with preventing monopolistic practices and shielding consumers from corporate abuses.
Axios reported Friday that at least two DOGE staffers "now have offices at" the FTC. According to The Verge, two DOGE members "were spotted" at the agency's building this week and "are now listed in the FTC's internal directory."
The Verge noted that the FTC is "a fairly lean agency with fewer than 1,200 employees," a number that the Trump administration has already cut into with the firing of some of the department's consumer protection and antitrust staff.
At least two of Musk's companies, Tesla and X, have faced scrutiny in recent years from the FTC, which is now under the leadership of Trump appointee Andrew Ferguson, who previously pledged to roll back former chair Lina Khan's anti-monopoly legacy.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, which referred to the operatives as Musk's "minions," said Friday that "DOGE is yet again raiding a federal watchdog tasked with protecting working Americans from Wall Street and Big Tech."
"The FTC has worked to stop monopolistic mergers that would have led to higher grocery prices and is now gearing up to go to court against Meta's social media monopoly," said Peterson-Cassin. "It's no surprise that at this moment, while the economy is in freefall and fraud is on the rise, DOGE is choosing to raid the federal watchdog that protects everyday Americans and threatens corporate monopolies and grifters."
News of DOGE staffers' infiltration of the FTC came as Trump's sweeping new tariffs continued to cause global economic turmoil and heightened concerns that companies in the U.S. will use the tariffs as a new excuse to jack up prices and pad their bottom lines.
Ferguson pledged in a social media post Thursday that under his leadership, the FTC "will be watching closely" to ensure companies don't view Trump's tariffs "as a green light for price fixing or any other unlawful behavior."
But Trump has hobbled the agency—and prompted yet another legal fight—by firing its two Democratic commissioners, a move that sparked fury and has already impacted the FTC's ability to pursue cases against large corporations.
Peterson-Cassin said Friday that "the only winners" of DOGE's targeting of the FTC "are Trump's billionaire besties like [Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and especially Musk, who now stands to gain access to confidential financial information about every company ever investigated by the FTC, including the auto manufacturers, aerospace firms, internet providers, tech companies, and banks that directly compete with his own companies."
"Corporations get let off the hook, Musk gets insider information, and the American people get hosed," Peterson-Cassin added.
"The president single-handedly wiped out Americans' retirement savings overnight and subjected businesses to intense whiplash with his increasingly erratic and chaotic policies that continue to drive consumer and business uncertainty."
Alarm over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs continues to grow, with stocks plummeting and JPMorgan warning that "the risk of recession in the global economy this year is raised to 60%, up from 40%."
After China announced new 34% tariffs on all American goods beginning next week, The Associated Press reported Friday that "the S&P 500 was down 4.8% in afternoon trading, after earlier dropping more than 5%, following its worst day since Covid wrecked the global economy in 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,719 points, or 4.3%, as of 1:08 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.9% lower."
Noting the state of Wall Street this week, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens declared in a Friday statement that "Trump has officially brought the economy to its knees."
"The president single-handedly wiped out Americans' retirement savings overnight and subjected businesses to intense whiplash with his increasingly erratic and chaotic policies that continue to drive consumer and business uncertainty," she said. "To call this an economic downturn is an understatement; Trump is marching us straight into a depression."
Political and economic observers have been publicly wondering for weeks if Trump is intentionally crashing the economy. Further fueling those fears, he ramped up his trade war on Wednesday by announcing a minimum 10% tariff for imports, with higher levies for dozens of countries. Although he claimed those steeper duties are "reciprocal," his math "horrified" economists and has been called "crazy."
Responding in a Thursday note titled, There Will Be Blood, head of global economic research Bruce Kasman and other experts at JPMorgan wrote that "if sustained, this year's ~22%-point tariff increase would be the largest U.S. tax hike since 1968."
"The effect of this tax hike is likely to be magnified—through retaliation, a slide in U.S. business sentiment, and supply chain disruptions," states the note, which came before China's announcement.
As Bloomberg reported:
Several Wall Street firms on Thursday warned of a U.S. recession, with some making it their base case, after... Trump announced major levies on goods imported from countries around the world. Other economists, including those at JPMorgan, said the hit could be big, though they are taking a wait-and-see approach before revising their projections.
The announcement rocked global financial markets, and the S&P 500 suffered its worst day since 2020. Trump, speaking on Air Force One on Thursday afternoon, said he was open to reducing tariffs if trading partners were able to offer something "phenomenal."
"We are not making immediate changes to our forecasts and want to see the initial implementation and negotiation process that takes hold," the JPMorgan note says. "However, we view the full implementation of announced policies as a substantial macroeconomic shock not currently incorporated in our forecasts. We thus emphasize that these policies, if sustained, would likely push the U.S. and possibly global economy into recession this year."
The team also pointed out that the United States is in potential danger no matter how other countries are ultimately impacted, calling a "scenario where rest of world muddles through a U.S. recession possible but less likely than global downturn."
As Common Dreams reported last week, in anticipation of Trump's tariff announcement, Goldman Sachs published a research note projecting that the odds of a recession in the next year are 35%, up from 20%.
Other financial industry research firms that have recently warned of a possible recession include Barclays, BofA Global Research, Deutsche Bank, RBC Capital Markets, and UBS Global Wealth Management, according to Reuters.
"This is a game-changer, not only for the U.S. economy, but for the global economy. Many countries will likely end up in a recession," Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research at Fitch Ratings, said in a late Wednesday note about the levies. "You can throw most forecasts out the door, if this tariff rate stays on for an extended period of time."
Experts have made similar comments to the press in the wake of the president's Rose Garden remarks on Wednesday. Time on Friday shared some from Brian Bethune, a Boston College economics professor:
"[Consumers] are not even going to the grocery store and paying more for vegetables because there's none available from Mexico, or going to Whole Foods, for example, and finding the big sections of fresh fruit are being shut down. They haven't really felt the full impact [yet], and they're already saying something isn't right," Bethune says.
However, while some economists... are more cautious in their discussion about a possible recession, Bethune says it's "inevitable." The question, he says, is just how long until it happens and for how long will it occur? He sees Trump's admission of there being " some pain" on the horizon as only proof of the inevitability.
"At least they [the Trump administration] are not pretending that it's not disruptive, but they're basically soft-selling it, reflecting their ignorance about the way business operates," Bethune claims.
Also on Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest U.S. jobs data. Although the unemployment rate rose from 4.1% to 4.2% in March, the economy added 228,000 jobs, which was better than expected.
However, economists warn of what lies ahead. As University of Michican economics professor Betsey Stevenson put it, "Today's jobs report is like looking at your vacation photos after you had a horrible car crash on the way home."