Australia’s regulatory plan to impose a “code of conduct” on the tech firms was rightly opposed by Facebook and Google. As
Under the revised deal, it appears, the collective bargaining aspect has been scrapped. Facebook can negotiate with individual media corporations — a compromise one BloombergCampbell Brown, Facebook’s vice-president of Global News Partnerships, emphasized that Facebook “will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation.” In other words, Facebook can pull the plug on Australian media if the government threatens action.
That “true value exchange” reflects Facebook’s legitimate argument that the company is not stealing news content from the media conglomerates. Instead, argues Facebook, the media companies benefit from having their news products flagged on Facebook and Google. It will, however, take some time before the new Australian news compensation model is fully and clearly understood. At this point it does not appear to be a model that Canada’s Heritage Minister, Steven Guilbeault, should be rushing to duplicate. Nor is it a model that Canadian news consumers should embrace. If anything, the model seems to increase the influence of the tech giants over content.
As a consumer, I am more likely to read digital news if it is free or cheap. I’m not willing to pay $20 a month for a subscription. That is where news providers are failing their writers and reporters. I don’t mind a pop up ad for revenue.