Facebook restores news in Australia after government compromises
The tactic of removing all Australian news content by social media giant Facebook, in response to a new law it didn’t like, seems to have been vindicated, at least in the short term.
Australia is trying to introduce a law forcing Facebook to pay news publishers for any of their content hosted on the site. Facebook objected to the law because it framed the relationship between it and the media as one that largely benefits the former, despite it being a rich source of traffic for the latter.
In the resulting negotiation the Aussie government overplayed its hand, leading Facebook to decide it needed to demonstrate it wasn’t bluffing when it said it would rather not host any news content at all, than accept the terms of the law. While cutting off news and, clumsily, some other sources of content such as health services, generated bad PR for Facebook, it seems to have fundamentally shifted the negotiation in its favour.
“The Morrison government will today introduce further amendments to the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code,” said an announcement from Josh Frydenberg, the Aussie politician in charge of the negotiations. “These amendments will provide further clarity to digital platforms and news media businesses about the way the Code is intended to operate and strengthen the framework for ensuring news media businesses are fairly remunerated.”
Here are the fresh concessions:
- a decision to designate a platform under the Code must take into account whether a digital platform has made a significant contribution to the sustainability of the Australian news industry through reaching commercial agreements with news media businesses;
- a digital platform will be notified of the Government’s intention to designate prior to any final decision – noting that a final decision on whether or not to designate a digital platform would be made no sooner than one month from the date of notification;
- non-differentiation provisions will not be triggered because commercial agreements resulted in different remuneration amounts or commercial outcomes that arose in the course of usual business practices; and
- final offer arbitration is a last resort where commercial deals cannot be reached by requiring mediation, in good faith, to occur prior to arbitration for no longer than two months.
Essentially Facebook seems to have forced tweaks to the legislation that remove a lot of the previous constraints it would have faced in negotiating compensation deals with publishers. In other words, it’s prepared to pay out, just not under state-mandated terms. “The Government has been advised by Facebook that it intends to restore Australian news pages in the coming days.”
Australian news will be restored to Facebook in the coming days.
Facebook has committed to entering into good faith negotiations with Australian news media businesses to reach agreements to pay for content. @PaulFletcherMP
Moreℹ️ https://t.co/OXTZ2mtyBY pic.twitter.com/ffFJ17JHb0
— Josh Frydenberg (@JoshFrydenberg) February 23, 2021
“We’re pleased that we’ve been able to reach an agreement with the Australian government and appreciate the constructive discussions we’ve had with Treasurer Frydenberg and Minister Fletcher over the past week,” wrote Facebook’s Antipodean boss William Easton. “We have consistently supported a framework that would encourage innovation and collaboration between online platforms and publishers.
“After further discussions, we are satisfied that the Australian government has agreed to a number of changes and guarantees that address our core concerns about allowing commercial deals that recognize the value our platform provides to publishers relative to the value we receive from them. As a result of these changes, we can now work to further our investment in public interest journalism and restore news on Facebook for Australians in the coming days.”
The apparent resolution of this situation has global implications. Clumsy and flawed though the Aussie government’s initiatives have proven, the eventual precedent set will be closely studied by governments and regulators around the world and will likely inform their eventual decisions on the matter. Facebook as shown it’s prepared to pay, but only under certain conditions.
It will also be interesting to see how all this has affected Facebook’s standing in Australia. A US tech giant has once more shown its inclination to act unilaterally, to the detriment of many of its users, which must be causing some of them to seriously consider alternatives. Claire Lehmann is the owner of independent Australian publisher Quillette and she’s not impressed.
“Only a company with monopoly power would treat its users in this way”
After Mark Zuckerberg pulled all news content from Facebook Australia, @Quillette founder @clairlemon has some choice words for the CEO…
? Don’t miss the full interview ? https://t.co/jg4m6M7Zjd pic.twitter.com/rTbOMrfqYH
— UnHerd (@unherd) February 19, 2021
Although Facebook is huge, it still has to be customer-facing. In this situation, it has ignored this fact, and it remains to be seen if this will have a long-term impact upon its business. If a large competitor comes into the marketplace and is not swallowed up by Facebook, then the latter may have a problem in the future.
So…. This demonstrates that an Internet giant is more powerful than a government.
Besides, it is an absolute lie to say that reproducing the media in any social media page is beneficial to the content’s owner, because it generates less visits to the content and the media site loses the advertising revenue (retained by the social media platform)
Let’s this concept of a greedy powerful organization overcoming an entire country’s law system sink in.
What this shows is, the govt might finally realising that media share for free but expect the world and are prepared to put some reigns on it.
nobody made the media share their stuff on the platform, and I seriously doubt anyone outside govt and media and their allies would care if news was there or not, I dont go to facebook for news, I havent seen news on facebook, maybe my adblocker works well, who knows.
Watch out Jack, since I see much more news links on twitter than facebook, especially when media re-tweet there same stuf over and over and over and over… they are acoming for you next…
money for nothing.. or is that money for murdoch. None of these laws affect teh aussie person, only murdochs pocket, and this govt has long done what murdoch tells them to do.
Who cares what Claire Lehmann, the far-right founder of the right-wing race science rag Quillette thinks, except other right-wingers?
Entry-level ad hominem