Facebook and Google vs Australian government

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 Facebook and Google vs Australian government

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1. FB shocks Australia: On February 18th, the world’s largest social network Faebook blocked the sharing of all news articles, Australian or otherwise, as well as banned the sharing worldwide of any articles that originated in Australia. This was a first-of-its-kind blackout, in a long-running battle over who should pay for news online.
2. Australian law: Rather than pay media companies in return for linking to their stories, as a forthcoming Australian law would require, FB opted to block all such links on its platform! Just prior to this, Google, the other big tech firm targeted by the new law, made the opposite decision, signing a deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to carry on linking to stories.
3. Nature of the battle: The new media barons of Silicon Valley are pitted against the old ones of television and the press. Australia’s “news media bargaining code” has been in development for three years, but the argument is older. A decade ago offline media controlled more than 80% of the advertising market in Australia. But advertisers found that digital media are better at reaching their audiences. In the past ten years offline media’s share of the market has fallen by half. The lion’s share has gone to Facebook, which dominates display ads, and Google, which has cornered the search market.
4. Blaming tech giants: Media companies claim that, by showing ads alongside links to their articles—sometimes including short summaries and photos—the tech platforms are in effect monetising content that is not theirs. The platforms retort that, on the contrary, the media firms do better out of the exchange. Facebook says that in Australia in 2020, it sent 5.1 bn clicks to Australian publishers, which it claims were worth A$407m ($317m). If publishers feel they are getting a bad deal, it asks, why don’t they simply stop publishing on Facebook?
5. Let's try this: Under the Australian government’s proposed solution, these tech platforms would be expected to negotiate payments to publishers. In the event that the two parties could not agree, an official arbiter would decide whose suggested payment was fairer (splitting the difference would not be an option). The new rules would also require tech firms to advise publishers in advance of any changes to their ranking algorithm that would affect them. That has left tech giants aghast.
6. French case: In Jan 2021, Google agreed to compensate French ones for linking to their stories. Both companies have recently launched “curated” news products — Google News Showcase and Facebook News — in which payments are made to the creators of content. But Australia’s winner-takes-all arbitration regime is a more alarming prospect than the system in France, where disputes are expected to be settled by the courts. So whereas Facebook walked away, Google blinked. Its three-year deal with News Corp will see it hand over an unspecified amount of money to include content from the publisher’s titles, including in America the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, and in Britain the Times and the Sun, in its News Showcase.
7. Botching it up: Facebook botched the blackout, accidentally banning not just news sites but links to health departments, fire services, a women’s shelter and a project for children with cancer, among others. These mistakes were quickly corrected, but it was a demonstration of the power wielded by the company. PM Scott Morrison wrote in a post on Facebook that the company’s actions to “unfriend Australia” would “only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behaviour of BigTech companies who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them”. 

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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