Meta doesn't have to pay for the links. It's the summaries. I suspect the publishers would welcome the links, as they'd drive traffic and ad revenue. Instead, Meta is siphoning the revenue by summarizing the content.
While they cite the summaries as copyright infringement, news organizations have previously rejected removing them as a way to resolve things. They ultimately want money.
Meta's fix has been to try to walk away from the news. They removed the news tab in some regions.
I think Meta walking away from news is doing the second best thing they could here, albeit cowardly.
The best thing, imo would be that Meta has enough dev talent that they could just post the link and not the summary. It isn't for the publishers to decide what information a Meta user's post contains.
In other words (IMO): rev share for summaries seems reasonable; a tax on links does not. It's like the way music handles sampling: there were many lawsuits that resulted in there being a clearing requirement for the cost of using a sample of a song in your music, e.g., Biz Markie vs. Gilbert O'Sullivan (1991).
Meta's fix has been to try to walk away from the news. They removed the news tab in some regions.