Opinion: Can Facebook carry out its threat to exclude news content from its Australian platforms? Possibly, but not without great effort and cost
The ACCC learned from the offshore attempts to make the platforms pay for access to news. Spain and, more recently, France have tried to impose charges on Google for content appearing on Google News. In Germany, the largest publisher, Axel Springer, used legislative changes to opt out of Google News.
The ACCC approach prevents the platforms from dropping Australian publishers from their platforms, or downgrading their prominence by changing their algorithms, by insisting that if it publishes any content from any news publisher – which could mean any publisher anywhere in the world – it has to show all the content of all the publishers registered under the Australian code.
The platforms are trying to resist the ACCC model and enlist/coerce the support of their users – Google has hinted at charging for free services, like YouTube, and claimed Australian search results would be “dramatically worse” if the code were implemented – because they know the rest of the world is watching on.If the code is successfully introduced here and the platforms are forced to pay material amounts for news content they’ll face similar codes in their other markets.
For different reasons, both Republicans and Democrats are critical of the platforms. Proposals to break them up, or make them liable for the content they carry, or provide publishers with anti-trust exemptions to negotiate collectively with them, were aired at the congressional hearings.
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