The Australian government plans to introduce a levy on social media companies and search engines to force them to pay publishers for journalism after Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, walked away from an existing arrangement.

In the proposed amendments to current regulations, any social media platform or search engine that derives more than $250mn in revenues a year from Australia would be subject to a “charge”. That levy would be offset against any payments made directly by tech companies to publishers. The move is intended to encourage them to negotiate with the media industry over commercial deals.

It is the latest move by Canberra to tackle the tech sector’s power after introducing a law last month that would ban anyone under 16 from using social media services. It also took X to court this year in an attempt to block violent videos being carried on its platform and has proposed laws on online scams and misinformation in the past year.