PARIS: The global news agency AFP has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter over the payment issues.
AFP filed a lawsuit against Twitter in Paris, accusing it of failing to discuss potential payment for the distribution of the news agency’s content. It is to be noted that France enacted a copyright law in 2019 known as “neighbourhood rights” that forces major online platforms to negotiate with publishers to obtain compensation for news.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, criticized the AFP’s lawsuit, saying it was strange. “The news agency wants us to pay them for traffic to their site from which they get advertising revenue and we don’t,” Elon Musk said.
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Recall that in 2021, France’s antitrust watchdog fined Alphabet ( GOOGL.O ) Google 500 million euros for failing to comply with orders on how to communicate with the country’s news publishers.
Google has since pledged to resolve the dispute and announced agreements with several other leading French news organizations, including AFP.
Similarly, Facebook company Meta has also signed agreements with some French publishers for its social media platforms.
