Meta in Italy zompetta between authorities and politicians
Movements and vicissitudes of the Meta group in Italy. Facts and curiosities
As is known, the EU has forced social platforms to pay "fair contributions" for the journalistic content that the owners of Big Tech transmit online. Italy implemented the community rules in 2021 by mandating AgCom to draw up a reference regulation for our legal system.
THE ITALIAN CONFUSION ON EU RULES
So far everything is linear. But justice in our area knows how to arabesque even simple fees and the TAR of Lazio in December 2023 surprised everyone with sentence number 18790 which, accepting the appeal of Meta (Facebook and Instagram), simultaneously suspended the regulation of 'AgCom. In response, the authority has, predictably, decided to appeal to the Council of State. But let's go in order.
The judges of the TAR of Lazio maintain that the AgCom regulation is contrary to the Treaty of the European Union and call the Court of Justice of the EU into question to resolve the issue. In detail, the magistrates suspect that Italian law has assigned excessive powers to AgCom which in fact can act as a mediator and peacemaker between the Big Internet companies and our local publishers.
EVERYTHING BLOCKED?
AgCom has appealed – the newspaper Repubblica remarked today – to the second and final level of administrative justice, explaining that pending a response from the Court of Justice of the EU (only one for all 27 countries of the Union: for this reason it employs to answer, on average, a year and a half) the negotiations between the publishers and the Web giants are frozen because the AgCom regulation was deprived of its effects by this appeal.
META ENJOYS BETWEEN THE TWO FIGHTERS
The appeal had been made, as already mentioned, by Meta but this suspension paralyzes all negotiations between the publishers and any other Internet company. AgCom for its part, assisted by the State Attorney's Office, reminds the magistrates of the Council of The market capitalization of the company set up by Mark Zuckerberg was: over 1,190 billion dollars.
The fair compensation provided for by EU law would hardly damage it in any way. While the same cannot be said of Italian publishers who, as is known, are not always in good conditions. AgCom also underlines that its regulation certainly does not oblige Internet companies to pay fair compensation.
An all-Italian controversy which, in short, is good for Meta and the entourage of other owners of the major platforms. Which, it is known, obtain the so-called reactions (likes, shares, comments) generally precisely to the circulation of journalistic content. Furthermore, recent Meta algorithm changes aimed at retaining users on its pages are penalizing publishers.
MEETINGS BETWEEN META AND THE POLITICIANS ARE FOLLOWING
Meta, meanwhile, continues his meetings with Italian politicians. After the debate on AI aired in Largo Chigi, the format of The Watcher Post – the newspaper of Utopia – which brought together Alessandro Giglio Vigna (Lega) , president of the European Union Policies Commission of the Chamber, around the same table, Antonio Caso , M5S group leader in the Culture Commission of the Chamber, and Claudia Trivilino , Public Policy Manager Meta (in case you missed it, Start talked about it here ), in recent days in Rome, a conversation went live at Binario F from Facebook – moderated by the director of Formiche, Flavia Giacobbe – on the importance of scientific subjects in which FdI deputies Federico Mollicone , Walter Rizzetto and Marta Schifone participated, the communication, institutional relations and social marketing coordinator of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale Elisa Amorelli , the project coordinator Digital Republic – Department for Digital Transformation Nello Iacono , the content creators Gian Marco D'Eusebi and Amer Nour . Introduced by Angelo Mazzetti (in the photo), Meta's Institutional Relations Manager in Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus, i.e. the host.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/come-zompetta-meta-in-italia-fra-authority-e-politici/ on Wed, 14 Feb 2024 09:55:08 +0000.