Australian government has announced last week that tech giants, such as Google and Facebook would have to pay for media content shared through search and social media. This strategy is part of an emerging global effort to rescue local publishers. This move comes in the backdrop COVID-19, and it was more significant when the Australian government realized that Facebook and Google were taking a large share of online advertising revenue, even though much of their content came from a media organization.
"This will help to create a level playing field”, said Josh Frydenberg. In many countries, smaller publishers have suspended printing or shuttered completely in recent weeks while coronavirus continues to spread causing countries to take action to preserve local news.
Australian government particularly tries to fix this problem by making a law that will force Facebook and Google to share its advertising revenue with the local media organizations.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) was working on developing a voluntary “code of conduct” as part of a series of recommendations from its 2019 digital platforms inquiry. This voluntary code would force companies to negotiate with news media about how they will pay for their content and advise those companies of the changes it implies that might affect online content rankings.
Rod Sims, from the ACCC; affirmed that the ACCC had “no meaningful progress” on payment content in negotiation for a voluntary code. He has also explained that they first expected the code to be realized in November, but according to the limited negotiations between news companies and platforms, now they are expecting to have the code by July. While the code process is finalizing, Google and Facebook will be legally forced to pay for their content.
Since the Australian government announced its purpose to protect local business, France and Spain had also demanded Google and Facebook to start paying a part of their revenue or a portion for the news content to media organizations to share their content. Both companies refused to pay for French users clicking through their news sites.
Recent studies show that in Australia, more than 17 million of people use Facebook, spending an estimate of 30 minutes per day on the platform and 98% of Australian mobile searches use Google. If this law is approved, Australia will be the first country in the whole world where digital companies will have to pay in order to share content on their platforms.
