Meta Has Had Enough Of Australia’s Link Tax Shakedown; Says It Will Not Renew Any Deals
It appears that Meta is serious about no longer bribing news orgs to keep corrupt politicians from forcing them to engage in sketchy wealth transfer schemes to news orgs. While it caved in the past in Australia and paid off news orgs there, the company is informing news orgs that they won't be renewing the deal.
Around the globe, there remain ongoing attempts to force Google and Meta (mainly) to hand money over to news organizations. Supporters have no fundamental principle behind this other than Google and Meta are making money, and some news companies are struggling, therefore, they should pay us." As we've discussed at great length, these laws are dangerous on multiple levels. They're an extreme form of crony corruption, forcing one industry to pay off another. They're also an attack on the open web, because they are based on the principle of if your users link to news too much, you have to pay for sending them traffic."
None of this makes sense. If the news companies don't want the traffic, they can block it. But they want the free traffic and they want to be paid for it. It's extraordinarily corrupt.
There have been variations on the link tax model over the past decade or so. Various failed experiments in the EU were followed by Australia's infamous news bargaining code. Mainstream news orgs continue to insist Australia's experiment has been a huge success, but that's because the only ones talking about it are the big media orgs that are getting millions of dollars from Meta and Google. This might cloud their reporting on the law, not that they admit that. About the only Australian news orgs I've seen call out the inherent corruption in these plans are the satirical Juice Media and the irreverent Crikey.
Crikey's summary is dead on:
The logic of the news media bargaining code isn't that of ending a rip-off perpetrated by foreign tech giants. Instead, it's similar to Coles and Woolworths successfully demanding, on the basis of all the great work they've done for the community, that the government forcibly transfer profit from an international competitor that had successfully disrupted their business model.
The fact is, these link taxes have been a disaster wherever they've been implemented, including Australia. The Public Interest Journalism Initiative in Australia tracks changes in the journalism space across the country with laser-like precision. And its data certainly does not suggest a huge grand success for journalism in the country. Rather, it shows a lot of consolidation, and plenty of smaller journalism outlets still struggling, while there's an increase in areas with little to no journalism coverage. However, contractions in the news business greatly outweigh expansions:
Apparently the money flowing in is - as plenty of people predicted - going to the tippy top of the market, making folks like Rupert Murdoch even wealthier. But not doing much to help journalism.
Google has been much more willing to give in and pay the demanded extortion. A decade ago, Google was willing to take a stand in places like Spain, shutting down Google News in that country. But these days, Google has been willing to cave, quickly, in both Australia and, more recently, Canada.
On the other hand, Meta has been much more willing to push back on these laws. It would be nice to think Meta is doing this to protect the open web, but no one's going to fall for that. Meta has spent years trying to wall off the open internet, so it's not like the company magically got a conscience on these issues. But, whether for good reasons or bad, Meta has been way more willing to push back on these laws. In Canada, the company has blocked news links, where it was quickly discovered that news orgs needed traffic from Meta way, way more than Meta needed links from news orgs. Meta has also threatened to take similar steps in the US if various state or federal laws come into effect.
In Australia, you may recall, Meta initially blocked news there, before cutting a few deals with news orgs there. Those deals (and the ones Google did as well) were not technically under the News Bargaining Code. Rather, they were blatant payoffs to avoid the invoking of the code, which would then force the companies into binding arbitration.
But, apparently, Meta has decided enough is enough. It informed the news orgs it paid off a few years ago that it will not be renewing those deals when they finish, and that it's removing its dedicated news tab.
Facebook and Instagram's parent company, Meta, has set itself on a collision course with the Albanese government after announcing it will stop paying Australian publishers for news, and plans to shut down its news tab in Australia and the United States.
Meta informed publishers on Friday that it would not enter new deals when the current contracts expire this year.
The news tab - a dedicated tab for news in the bookmarks section of Facebook - will also shut down in April, after a similar shut down in the UK, Germany and France last year.
Again, it's nearly impossible to get good reporting on this stuff because all the major media sites are biased in that they are recipients of these payoffs. The Guardian report quotes a ton of politicians and news orgs decrying this, and only presents Meta's PR quotes in response - not bothering to speak to any civil society or academics who are willing to speak out as to why these regulatory schemes are so corrupt and problematic.
But, Meta makes a fairly clear point that highlights the absurdity of these laws: what if Meta just doesn't want to be in the news business? The company has made it pretty damn clear over the last few years that focusing on news" as it did for a few years was nothing but a headache. It would rather people just use social media to connect with friends, not argue about the news.
Should it be allowed to do that?
We know that people don't come to Facebook for news and political content - they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests. As we previously shared in 2023, news makes up less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed, and is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people."
Again, the reaction from people who are mad at this move just puts the exclamation point on just how corrupt the whole scheme is. They don't care about the reasons or the problems of having to pay to allow users to link to public news sites. No, they just want cash and are mad that they don't get cash.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told reporters on Friday the decision was not the Australian way".
We know that it's absolutely critical that media is able to function properly and be properly funded. Journalism is important and the idea that research and work done by others can be taken free is simply untenable," he said.
But nothing is being taken free." It is just that users on Facebook decide they want to point people to news stories, thereby sending free traffic to that news organization by posting the link. A little bit of text and an image shows up on Facebook, but that is entirely controllable by the news org since they can set the details for the cards that show up when linked.
So, Prime Minister, what the fuck is taken" and what was taken free"? Because the answer is nothing.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, and assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, called news media companies on Friday following the announcement, advising them the government would be taking all of the steps available under the news media bargaining code.
We're not talking about some plucky little startup, we're talking about one of the world's largest and most profitable companies," Jones said. It has a responsibility to ensure that it pays for the content that ... has been used on its platform, and frankly, that it's making millions and millions of dollars out of it and so the government is adamant it will be backing the code we'll be taking all of the actions that are available to us under the code."
No, it's not a plucky little startup, but it's also not using" the content on their platform. It's allowing its users to link to that content, which is a fundamental part of the open web. And by doing so, they are sending free traffic to that website.
If Albanese and the Australian government are so concerned about things happening without payment, why aren't they making news orgs pay Facebook for the traffic they're getting?
It's like they live in this upside down world.
Either way, it sounds like the end result of this is that the Australian government is likely to try to force Meta to (1) host news it has no interest in hosting, and (2) paying for that news it does not value and which it would prefer not to host.
How does that make any sense at all?