Facebook Shouldn’t Have to Pay Publishers for News
Taxing social media for driving traffic to news sites could hardly be more counterproductive.
It's fine (mostly).
Photographer: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP
With local newspapers ailing, the Australian government has hit on a seemingly simple solution: force Google and Facebook to subsidize them. It’s the latest example of an increasingly global tactic. And it’s hopelessly misguided.
Last month, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released a “mandatory code of conduct” that (if the legislature approves) will establish a bargaining process between digital platforms and local news organizations. The stated goal is to determine how much the latter should be compensated for the snippets of news that the platforms display to their users, on the premise that an imbalance of competition has led to the publishers’ decline. If the two sides fail to agree, an arbitration panel will decide how much the platforms have to cough up.