Australia will force Meta and Google to pay for news shared on their platforms and threaten to tax them if they refuse to sign deals with local media under a new regime announced on Thursday. .
Traditional media companies around the world are fighting for survival as precious advertising dollars are funneled online.
Australia wants big tech companies to compensate local publishers who share articles that drive traffic on their platforms.
“The rapid growth of digital platforms in recent years is disrupting Australia’s media landscape and threatening the survival of public interest journalism,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland told reporters.
“It’s important that digital platforms play their part. Digital platforms must support access to quality journalism that informs and strengthens our democracy.”
Social media platforms with annual revenues of more than $160 million in Australia will be subject to an undetermined tax to pay for news.
However, voluntary commercial agreements with Australian media companies can offset the tax or avoid paying it altogether.
The Australian government has indicated that the parent companies of Google, Facebook and TikTok will also be subject to the tax, which comes into effect next year.
Officials said Elon Musk’s X was likely to flee because its domestic revenue was too low.
Hundreds of journalists have lost their jobs in Australia in recent years as newspapers close and media companies downsize.
In 2021, Google and Meta signed a series of deals with Australian newsrooms worth a total of $160 million.
But Meta insists that news accounts for only a small portion of its traffic, and has indicated that it will not renew its contract when it expires in March.
The tax is aimed at stopping tech giants from simply removing news from their platforms, as Meta and Google have done overseas in the past.
A Meta spokesperson said on Thursday that Australia was “charging one industry to subsidize another”.
“This proposal fails to account for the reality of how our platform works,” a spokesperson said.
The University of Canberra in Australia found that more than half of the country uses social media as a news source.
Supporters of such laws argue that big tech attracts users with news stories and hogs online advertising dollars that would otherwise flow to struggling newsrooms.
Meta, the owner of Google and Facebook, has pushed back against efforts in other jurisdictions to compensate news organizations.
Google began removing links to some California websites earlier this year after the state announced it would pay for news traffic.
Facebook and Instagram have blocked news content in Canada to avoid paying media companies.
It’s the latest salvo in Australia’s bid to become a tech giant.
Last month, Australia voted in favor of new laws banning under-16s from using social media.
Also on the agenda is imposing fines on companies that fail to stamp out the spread of offensive content and misinformation.
