Labor will force big tech companies to pay for Australian news after Facebook’s owner refused to continue deals delivering about $200 million annually to the media.
Labor will force big tech companies to pay for Australian journalism under a new scheme that seeks to punish platforms like Facebook for refusing to sign content deals, raising the prospect of a financial penalty if they do not contribute to local news.
The approach is expected to mandate financial costs on the platforms if they do not negotiate in good faith with news providers struggling in a hard advertising market and pay for articles shared with their social media customers. Meta’s refusal to continue its roughly $200 million in annual agreements with publishers, which expired earlier this year, sparked the need for a fresh policy to fund media. Google, whose search function relies heavily on news, still has time to run on its first round of agreements but has not committed to renewing them at the same level.after then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg acted on concerns that social media had stripped journalism of a huge volume of advertisement revenue.
The media industry has speculated for months about a federal levy on the big tech companies to raise revenue that could be used to invest in media outlets, but ministers rejected that approach. Meta slammed the prospect of a levy or other financial cost being imposed on the firm in Australia in October.
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