Australia passes law to levy tech giants that fail to pay for local news(www.reuters.com)
29 pointsby thm2 hours ago4 comments
  • bko37 minutes ago
    Didn't Canada try this in 2023?

    > Online News Act (Bill C-18) in June 2023. The law was designed to make large digital platforms compensate Canadian news organizations when news content was made available through their services. It created a bargaining/arbitration framework rather than literally setting a per-link tax.

    > So beginning in August 2023, Meta blocked news on both Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Canadians could no longer view or share links/content from Canadian or foreign news organizations on those platforms... As of 2026, the Canadian government still describes Meta as blocking news sharing on Facebook and Instagram

    Pretty much the worst result for everyone. Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to. Inconvenience to users. Meta mostly unaffected, maybe some marginal loss in time spent on the platform.

    These kinds of things eventually just face reality. Meta and Google know very well how much these things are worth to them in terms of marginal revenue or network value. And the answer is not what publishers want to hear.

    • roryirvine4 minutes ago
      So the reality they must face is that the social media giants will try to circumvent regulation.

      Fine. And the most reasonable response to that is therefore to implement some form of general anti-avoidance rule, of the sort that's used in, for example, tax, company, and employment law.

      For instance, you could say that if a social media company were to change its behaviour to avoid a law of this sort then they should incur a charge equivalent to, say, 10% of its global revenue. That ought to make compliance with the law the more attractive option.

      There's no reason to be defeatist about this - social media companies are not and should not be above the law.

      • realusernamea minute ago
        This is not "circumventing regulation" here but nullifying the argument the newspapers had for bringing the law in the first place.

        They argued that Meta needs them for exposure and that's why they should pay, apparently it's not true and they don't need them.

    • dmix31 minutes ago
      Correct, I remember my dad complaining he can't share Toronto Star articles on Facebook because they block you from posting them. Same with Instagram.

      https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/05/the-behind-the-scenes-bi...

    • antiloper11 minutes ago
      The article doesn't link to the text of the law, but from what the article says the law will make it mandatory for Facebook to enter into agreements with news outlets, whether they want to or not (otherwise they'll be ""fined"" millions of AUD)
      • graeme7 minutes ago
        That is what the Canadian law said. This was "if Meta is showing news content".

        Contrary to the law's assumption, news is worth hardly anything to Meta, so they just stopped showing it.

        Does the Australian law really say:

        1. You must show news, even if you don't want to

        2. You must pay to do so

        3. The rate will be determined by negotiation with the people you are paying

        4. You cannot say no to them in aggregate

        I have my doubts, but if it does I still doubt it will get the results the govt wants. The problem is news is not valuable to Meta.

    • jmclnx21 minutes ago
      >Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to

      Newspapers want to sell subscriptions for their local area, on paper or on their WEB site. I would say getting clicks from non-subscribers has no value for them.

      • pj_mukh10 minutes ago
        What’s the top of the funnel for getting subscriptions?
  • BLKNSLVR14 minutes ago
    It's amusing, in a shameful, 'typical government' rubbing all it's brain cells together to come up with the answer they were lobbied to come up with by the status quo of their era, way.

    Of all the things they could throw at the tech giants, they choose this?

    Fucking SMH (not Sydney Morning Herald in this case, although related).

    Dismantle the collection of data. Enforce advertising standards and rules. Either of those things would benefit humanity.

    This? This is Weekend At Bernie's; one last party with the corpse of a dead old man.

    Fucks sake. Dumb cunts will retire to their gold plated mansions in the middle of dystopia.

  • mc3242 minutes ago
    Unfortunately for them, not publishing news will likely cost the giants less than the payments they'd have to make to keep the news.

    News writers are in a supplicant position. They need the tech giants to disseminate their new way more than the tech giants need them.

    By nature, it's a very asymmetrical relationship.

  • reaperduceran hour ago
    Journalists can work for free when tech people work for free.
    • pelagicAustral13 minutes ago
      The kind of single-sided crap with no rigor, no verification, source "my ass" we get these days I feel like it was journalism that invented hallucinations on AI.
    • andaian hour ago
      Every time I click an archive.ph link, democracy sheds a single tear.