Big Tech / The News Media
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Three years ago, when Australian politicians took on the titans of Big Tech — crafting legislation to force Google and Facebook to pay for news articles they share on their sites — Google threatened to pull out of the country.
If the News Media Bargaining Code became law, Google Australia Managing Director Mel Silva said in a Senate hearing, the company would have “no real choice” but to stop making Google Search available in Australia.
Facebook’s parent went further. After the bill passed the lower house of parliament, Meta blocked Australian news outlets from posting content on Facebook and prevented users across Australia from linking to news sites for six days.
But Google and Facebook did not carry through with their threats in Australia.
By the time the bill became law, the government had made a key concession: It allowed digital platforms to bypass regulation if they volunteered to make private deals with media companies. The result: Google and Facebook rushed to negotiate agreements with most major news outlets to get around regulations in the law.
Ultimately, Australian officials estimate, Facebook and Google doled out $166 million a year to Australian newsrooms — a tiny fraction of Alphabet and Meta’s combined value of more than $3 trillion, but substantial payments for many ailing media groups.
The Australian law is now a model for legislators in Sacramento who are proposing the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that would require tech giants to compensate media companies for accessing their news content.
The California legislation, which would be a first for the United States, comes as news outlets large and small struggle with a precipitous decline, laying off staff as digital platforms commandeer increasing chunks of advertising revenue. While the fate of the bill is still unclear, Australia’s pioneering move to hold Google and Facebook accountable — along with a similar law passed last year in Canada — offers some early clues as to how things might fare in the Golden State.
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Yesterday was indeed not a great day.
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