Socmed companies push back against Aussie government’s revenue sharing scheme

Last year the federal Liberal Party announced a scheme whereby social media companies would pay part of their advertising revenues to media companies. In September, Facebook threatened to pull Australian mainstream media content from its platform. Now, the same company has said that the proposed laws are unprecedented and for that reason should be scrapped before they are introduced. Google, for its part, has made moves to exclude Australian media content from its search results. Both companies have said that Australian media companies benefit from the readers their sites bring to the sites of outfits like the Sydney Morning Herald, the Daily Telegraph, and the Australian.

Nip it in the bud, is the feeling that these tech giants are giving evidence of. Worried that news organisations in other countries might take the lead and push their own governments to try to redress the balance that has been lost since social media became a popular resort for billions of people.

What Facebook and Google have done is like China’s grab for a part of the South China Sea. By quarantining income away from general use, and from a beneficial purpose, the tech giants are saying that they like to benefit from the healthy news ecosystem – which enables liberal democracies to flourish, and enables the laws that give people the money to spend on advertisers’ products – but they don’t want to cultivate that ecosystem. 

They want to have their cake and eat it, too, in an essentially selfish ploy to smear a government that is – refreshingly – trying to do good. Almost despite itself, the Australian conservative administration has hit the nail upon the head. 

I’ve written before about monetising the news, for example in 2013 when I wrote a spoof that envisioned Google voluntarily surrendering part of its massive revenues to the news media. That didn’t happen, though I suggested in the same year that Google Wallet might help news media companies to monetise their products. 

Nothing came of that idea either but things change and people do unexpected things, as the Liberal Party has recently done Down Under. Surprising also – though, in a way, not – was the broader commentariat’s lack of enthusiasm for this issue as a source of outrage. There are many people who get incensed by one marginal idea or another who, in the present case, remain silent. Not totally unexpected, of course, due to that segment of the community being largely wedded to the idea that the mainstream media – which would benefit from the government’s scheme – is incompetent at least, if not criminally involved in a conspiracy.

Despite the rocky road travelled thus far let’s hope that sense prevails and that the stranglehold that the likes of Facebook and Google hold over advertising income is relaxed. If Covid-19 has shown us anything, it’s that we’re all in this together. If you want to enjoy freedom, you’re going to have to pay for it.