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The federal government has announced plans to force social media and search platforms to pay for Australian news content.
This comes as they are in the process of updating the News Media Bargaining Code, which was established in 2021.
Digital platforms will be required to pay fees which can be offset if they enter into payment agreements with news agencies for content.
Michelle Rowland is the Minister of Communications.
“By creating the News Media Negotiation Incentive, the government is ensuring that major digital platforms are incentivized to consider or enter into commercial deals to compensate Australian media.”
She believes it is important that digital platforms pay their fair share and support access to quality journalism.
“The purpose of the incentive is not to raise funds but to encourage commercial deals. Currently, the code does not incentivize certain platforms to enter into deals and we are working to ensure the incentives are adequate “And we need to convince the parties to come back to the table to make that happen.”
Established in 2021, the code had previously forced some technology companies to negotiate payments, or face fines of up to 10% of their Australian revenue.
For three years, Meta and Google entered into voluntary multimillion-dollar commercial agreements.
Google said it was happy to update the agreements, but Meta announced in May that it would not comply and would stop paying for Australian news altogether from next year.
The company has already removed its news content in Canada.
News Media Bargaining Code report author Bill Grueskin says Meta is trying to avoid responsibilities for providing news content.
“I think there’s a very good chance that Facebook will do to Australian news organizations what it did to Canadian news organizations. They’ll just cancel the news, and I would say they won’t Not only are they harming news organizations by doing this, they are harming citizens.”
He says that Meta believes that information is not as important to their users as other forms of content.
“Facebook insists that the information is not important to their users. Again, whether that’s true or not, I can’t really tell you, but they’ve done everything they can to minimize the information They have done everything they can to ignore everything that is important. There are problems in the information sector and I think it will be very interesting to see how Australia’s new efforts. to extract money from Facebook will succeed.
Dr Sora Park is a professor of communications at the University of Canberra.
She says social media platforms often don’t understand the value of information.
“Social media companies may not think that information is important to them because they offer so much other content that people consume, but for consumers, information is extremely important, even if it is not. It may not be the main thing they see on social media, it’s a very important part of why they’re on social media, so I don’t think social media companies can ignore it.
The government’s new trading incentives mean major digital platforms will be charged whether they provide information or not.
A Meta spokesperson says the proposal ignores the realities of how these platforms operate, particularly that most people don’t access them to get news content.
But Australia’s 2024 Digital News Report suggests that while news is less prevalent on social media, that’s increasingly where consumers are going to get it.
Karen Percy is from the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
“It is absolutely essential that quality, verified public interest journalism is present on these social media accounts. We know that Australians are turning to social media for information, and if only disinformation, if it’s just lies, if it’s just propaganda, and there is no quality and ethically verified news, then it’s a real problem in every way of sight.”
The government should consult stakeholders on the final design of the project.
This, because prices on the platforms should be established by January 2025.
