The French news agency Agence France-Presse announced on Wednesday that it is suing Elon Musk's X, claiming that the social media firm, formerly known as Twitter, has refused to discuss terms of payment for the agency's news product.
The European Union copyright regulations that were implemented by France require social media platforms to pay authors for specific categories of content in 2019. After months of discussions, Google has decided to pay French publishers for news material.
“These rights were established to enable news agencies and publishers to be remunerated by digital platforms which retain most of the monetary value generated by the distribution of news content,” the agency said in its statement.
Musk described the lawsuit as "bizarre" in a tweet on Wednesday.
“They want us to pay *them* for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue and we don’t!?” he said.
The expansion of Google, Facebook, and other online platforms over the past 20 years has reduced the classic advertising revenue that news organizations relied on. Politicians from all around the world have pushed for legislation requiring social media to pay for the news that is posted on their websites to support the crumbling news sector. Companies' reactions to these initiatives, however, have been conflicting.
Due to a new Canadian law requiring social media platforms to compensate local publishers for their news content, Meta said in June that it would prevent Canadians from posting news on Facebook and Instagram.
As California state legislators considered imposing social media companies to pay news publishers for their material, Meta threatened to discourage users from sharing news on its platforms in May.
According to Max Willens, a senior analyst at Insider Intelligence, Twitter has so far avoided such high-profile conflicts since it generates less web traffic than Google and Facebook and, as a result, has a smaller role in the digital advertising ecosystem.
Nonetheless, he stated that, as far as he understands French law, “Twitter should be negotiating in good faith.”
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