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Australia Will Force Google and Facebook to Pay for News Content (nzherald.co.nz) 149

Posted by EditorDavid from the link-sharing dept.
"Social media giants Facebook and Google will be forced to pay Australian media companies for sharing their content or face sanctions under a landmark decision..." reports the New Zealand Herald: The move comes as the media industry reels from tumbling advertising revenue, already in decline before the Covid 19 coronavirus outbreak collapsed the market. Australia will become the first government to impose a legal regime including financial penalties for digital platforms that profit from content produced by the news media.

The federal Government has instructed competition watchdog, the ACCC, to develop a mandatory code of conduct for the digital giants to adhere to. Writing in the Australian newspaper this morning, treasurer Josh Frydenberg said it was "only fair" that the search engines and social media giants pay for the original news content that they use to drive traffic to their sites.
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Australia Will Force Google and Facebook to Pay for News Content

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  • How about instead (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ludux ( 6308946 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @03:42PM (#59965854)
    these media companies pay Google and Facebook for the the exposure that drives traffic to their sites? Greedy arrogant bastards, and for once in my life I'm not talking about Google or Facebook.
    • The reality is these companies have stopped giving those sites exposures for a long time now, they aggregate enough of the content to ensure you don't need to visit the site.

    • People die of exposure (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @06:12PM (#59966338) Homepage

      [How about instead] these media companies pay Google and Facebook for the the exposure that drives traffic to their sites?.

      Ah, yes, the "exposure" argument! "Do work for free, you'll get exposure! [theoatmeal.com]

      Exposure? You know what, people die of exposure. You want to eat, you'd better want to be paid.

      Newspapers are dying because nobody wants to pay for journalism. Because companies like Google want to take it and use it for free.

      Greedy arrogant bastards, and for once in my life I'm not talking about Google or Facebook.

      You should be. Why in the world do you think Google's taking other peoples' work and spreading it for their profit is anything other than greed?

      • Newspapers are dying because nobody wants to pay for partisan attacks.

        FTFY...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The reality, nobody is interested in bullshit corporate propaganda masquerading as news any more and flooded with advertisements, that;s the news itself and not just the many commercial breaks in-between. Not to forget streaming, nobody ain't watching news when they be watching netflix. For me between the ABC https://www.abc.net.au/news/ [abc.net.au] (for local) and RT https://www.rt.com/ [rt.com] (for international), I am done and the other for profit news services in Australia a pretty crap, straight up corporate propaganda an

      • Because companies like Google want to take it and use it for free.

        If your entire journalistic benefit can be summed up in a single sentence on a Google Now card then your death is probably for the benefit of society. Newspapers are dying because their journalistic benefit is worthless. There are plenty of news organisations doing well and users even paying a subscription fee to read their content.

        Your "exposure" rant is completely off base when it comes to actual publicising and advertisement that directly brings people to your site with a single click.

        Why in the world do you think Google's taking other peoples' work

        If they were doing

    • How about instead these media companies pay Google and Facebook for the exposure that drives traffic to their sites?

      Shouldn't the media companies have the option of being paid for their content that Google and Facebook scrape and aggregate? After all, if the media companies think the exposure is so valuable, they can always decide to charge Google and Facebook zero for it. It's pretty telling that they seem willing to give up the "valuable exposure".

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by micheas ( 231635 )

        They do.

        And google will pay for content if it gives them a significant edge over other search engines.

        If those sites would provide a "google news" API that they were charging google for that delivered a business value for google they might have luck with it.

        Addtionally, if they have substantial original content Google will enter into negotiations. If they are mostly republished wire service feeds that google already subscribes to there isn't much value beyond knowing what news is trending.

        I suspect the prob

  • I don't see why anyone would pay (Score:5, Interesting)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @03:43PM (#59965858) Homepage

    I don't see why anyone would pay for what passes for news nowadays. It's basically opinions, and not even of the journalists' own, but the opinions of the owners. Why would anyone pay for that?

    • what i seen of the news on the internet lately has been one small paragraph of news and four paragraphs of spammy clickbait disguised as news, i disabled the google app and chrome because of it, and considering switching from android to iphone just hoping Apple has enough dignity to not cheat their customers by feeding them spammy clickbait disguised as news

      • When scrolling through a spammy news article, it stutters and stops, and rearranges as ads fill in. I can't tell if this is bloatware by the incompetent, or deliberate to get me to mis-click on an ad jumping around.

    • I supply my news exclusively to Slashdot, gratis, and that's working out pretty well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sebby ( 238625 )
      Part of the problem is that (what used to be legitimate) “news” outlets have needed to resort to clickbait articles a la tabloids, because that’s the only thing that “sells” now.
      • interestingly I had a conversation with a former editor(retired) of a very large media group a couple of years ago and voiced my concern about all the click bait they use now. He adamantly said don't blame him, blame the readers. Revenue is based on eyes on articles and normal headlines don't bring eyes whereas ridiculous over exaggerated headlines do, he said his choice was sack most of his staff and possibly shutdown or use clickbait.
    • I don't know what you are reading but for the newspaper that I subscribe to opinions are restricted to the editorial page and the analysis done there is often intelligent and worthwhile even if I don't always agree. Maybe you should investigate some other newspapers?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by melted ( 227442 )

        They still lie by omission. You can lie simply by reporting things that align with your agenda and not reporting on things that do not. Or omitting facts in what you report. Lower IQ readership won't even see anything wrong.

    • There are more good news sources now than in anytime in history. The problem is that there are also more garbage news sources than anytime in history and they are the most read and watched.

      Most people do not seek out good news sources because nuanced and discerning information is, to most people, boring. Conspiracy theories are exciting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Try Reuters and AP if you want really dry, factual news. Those guys are paid by newspapers and TV news to provide unbiased stories that they can put their own spin on, but you can just go to their sites and read them directly.

      Other good sources of mostly unbiased news are the BBC (somewhat right wing bias these days), The Guardian (neutral, perhaps slightly left if you think treating migrants as human beings is leftist), NHK (a little bit too respectful sometimes but rarely biased), and the Financial Times

  • Google just won't give them any exposure at ... getting Australian News in Australia will become much more difficult

    • Why? Will Australian news outlets cease operation or something?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If a news story posts in Australia, and nobody on Google or Facebook hears it, does it make a sound?

      • i agree, its not like google and facebook have a monopoly on content, i am sure australia has a way to deliver news without google and facebook
    • Bullshit.
      I have NEVER used Google or Facebook for news. I have my news sites bookmarked.

      And for most of my searches these days I use DuckDuckGo, not Google.

    • Re:So.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by jonsmirl ( 114798 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @04:26PM (#59965982) Homepage

      Based on my readings of what happened in Spain, when Google left the news market there was a slight uptick in revenue for the newspapers. Small, just a few percent or so. So the newspaper sites simply kept their core readers, who they already had, core readers who read enough to pay for a subscription. What disappeared is millions of casual views. The kind of viewing where a region has a hot story which attracts non-core readers to click on it. This type of viewing simply disappeared.

      I have not seen any studies on this, but I suspect the net result of this was many people who casually read the news simply stopped reading any news. Or these people transitioned to foreign news sources. What certainly did not happen was a significant increase in revenue for the Spanish press. The revenue Google was collecting seems to have evaporated instead of transfering over to the news providers.

      On the US side I have almost stopped using Google news. I used to use it a lot, but now nine out of ten clicks on a headline simply takes me to a paywall at a random newspaper which I have zero interest in subscribing too. So I am falling into the same pattern observed in Spain, I 'm not reading news online anymore. It is just too annoying to click on dozens of links searching for one that will actually show the story. There is plenty of other free content on the Internet, I just read that instead of the newspaper sites. I run through over 500 articles a day on my RSS feed.

      • I haven’t used Google News in a very long time, but I used to love it. It provided good information density, a variety of (non syndicated) stories and sources, and could be easily customized.

        Now I subscribe to three papers, and will likely need to add a fourth. (I can afford to do this now, so my primary disincentive had been the stupid “promo” gimmicks they played, switching from too cheap to too expensive rates, never simply offering a reasonable rate and sticking with it.) I hate most

      • On the US side I have almost stopped using Google news. I used to use it a lot, but now nine out of ten clicks on a headline simply takes me to a paywall at a random newspaper which I have zero interest in subscribing to.

        Install the uBlock Origin adblocker. Their latest version includes a button to disable javascript. That eliminates the pesky paywalls which simply hide the article text or remove your ability to scroll (NY Times, LA Times, WaPo, etc). The only paywalls which remain are those that requir

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      www.abc.net.au/news

      Bookmark it. It's not that difficult. All the other "media" websites present tabloid headlines, ads, quizzes, and horoscopes.

      But if this goes ahead, how about removing the "opening page" link of MS Edge - it goes to https://www.msn.com/en-au/ [msn.com] which is full of links to the daily fail. Should MSN pay the daily fail for linking to their articles?

    • They aren't giving them exposure now, or at least not positive exposure. They present the content negating the need to visit the site. Not sure these laws are right but something definitely needs to be done, most jouralism is a joke now and media can't afford to fund real journalism.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Well, that's what happened last time. Perhaps it will be different this time. (I believe it was France last time.)

  • People will use VPNs to access information if the Australian government limits access.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      You're heading in the wrong direction. There not talking about limiting access. It's not necessary to use a VPN to access any Australian media website.

    • I'm not sure what you think Geoblocking has to do with anything. If people are truly desperate for a headline they'll just go to a news site rather than firing up a VPN for the sole purpose of being able to read the summary sentence.

  • They try to fine Google for displaying search and news, Google just simply black holes them. If people search for the site, according to google search results it doesn't exist. Advertising on the web for their sites also gets dropped. Wouldn't want to accidentally display something from the site without permission after all...

    Let's see them whine when traffic really tanks.

  • "It's only fair that..." [Google pay for content that... um... drives people... to the content providers.]

    No, what's fair is that stupid politicians who lie (including our own) should sit down, be quiet, listen to experts in the field -- not lobbyists -- and quit passing stupid edicts which have the situation back-assward.

    GOOGLE does these papers a favor. It takes a small headline or snippet and drives traffic DIRECTLY to the source.
    The papers do no favors to anyone. Whether they have a paywall or are jus

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Daemonik ( 171801 )

      "It's only fair that..." [Google pay for content that... um... drives people... to the content providers.]

      No, what's fair is that stupid politicians who lie (including our own) should sit down, be quiet, listen to experts in the field -- not lobbyists -- and quit passing stupid edicts which have the situation back-assward.

      While I agree with your sentiment I disagree with your target. These politicians wouldn't be doing anything if the news corporations weren't making demands. So blame the corporations, not the politicians, they're the ones who are really behind this kind of obstructionist protectionism.

      Every corporation loves to shout about free markets and less regulations, until those free markets turn against them and suddenly those regulations look really nice.

      • So blame the corporations, not the politicians

        No, blame the politicians. The politicians control the system that gives corporate lobbyists disproportionate power.

        • I blame the voters who elected those stupid, greedy motherfuckers and are too docile to pitchfork their asses out of office.

          • I blame the voters who elected those stupid, greedy motherfuckers and are too docile to pitchfork their asses out of office.

            Part of the problem is that they've got the election systems so rigged that it would take literal pitchforks.

            Another is that they're very adept at heading off the formation crowds with the pitchforks and incarcerating their organizers.

    • I have NEVER used google as a new source.

      So, no, the world will not collapse unless we allow American companies to pillage us.

    • Writing in the Australian newspaper this morning, treasurer Josh Frydenberg said it was "only fair" that the search engines and social media giants pay for the original news content that they use to drive traffic to their sites.

      With the entire original quote to view, it is obvious that the final "their" refers to the news content sites, rather than the social media giants' sites.

  • Not the first government (Score:3)

    by itamihn ( 1213328 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @03:57PM (#59965892) Homepage

    The Spanish government passed a similar law back in 2014, so that if Google wanted to show news in its platform it would have to pay the content providers. Google News is now shut down in Spain, either as a result, or to avoid setting a precedent for other countries.

  • Google and Facebook will be forced to link to media companies as well as paying them. They will not be allowed to simply blacklist them.

    "The mandatory code would force the tech companies to pay for the content they siphon from news media companies, share their consumer data and be subject to rules on the rankings of news on their platforms, the Australian reported."

    • Assuming Google doesn't just stop doing Australian news. As someone else above mentioned, Spain tried this and Google pulled out. Since I'm not in Spain I've no idea how this helped or hindered the process of getting eyeballs to read the news.

      I tend to visit bbc.com and news.yahoo.com regularly and during lunch breaks I sometimes will go down the google suggestions which kicks back quite a decent amount of variety. I'll actually go to cnn.com and fox.com specifically because I found a link on google that I

      • For me, the rule is simple.

        If it is not paid directly by its readers, and *only* by them, it is not independent. It is following whatever the advertisers want. YouTube is proof of this, if there ever was any.
        If it is not independent, it cannot be trusted. It ia fake news.

        If it is directly paid by its readers, it might still be fake news, but at least we can be aware of being in a circle jerk. Even when most will never. As Reddit proves.

        And if it is openly biased (As opposed to secretly biased, aka "the trut

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      Google et al won't be forced to do anything. They'll either comply with a code of conduct, or they'll choose to cease operations in Australia. It won't stop https://www.google.com.au/ [google.com.au] simply being redirected to https://www.google.com/ [google.com] where they can link to whoever they want. Then, Australians will ask the govt why searches are taking longer (because no local caches). And that will leave the market open for a new Australian search engine. We've had a couple in the past, but google simply steamrolled over th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stooo ( 2202012 )

      >>>They will not be allowed to simply blacklist them.
      HHAHAHAHA. Good joke.

  • SO google just needs to drop the companies and countries that think they need to be payed and lets see how long they hold out before they start paying google to put content on there search.

  • "Australia Will Force Google and Facebook to Pay for News Content " ...that they actually put on their page, which will be 0 (zero).

  • Or actually scraping news from these sites? Because there's a big difference. Using Google/Facebook as news aggregators with links is one of the primary methods that people use to find the originating site. Without that, your site loses much of its traffic. On the other hand, scraping content is ass-hattery.

    One thing that news outlets are going to have to come to terms with: People are increasingly unwilling to dig through daily fluff pieces about the local ladies book club to find the stories that interes

  • Opinion (Score:3)

    by Ann Coulter ( 614889 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @04:20PM (#59965962)

    The president of the News Media Alliance recently penned this opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Couldn't you have just copied the text of that article into your post?

      • Couldn't you have just copied the text of that article into your post?

        What you think he's Google or something?

  • after buying a pixel 4 for several hundred bucks i notice the google app and chrome are both full of tidbits of news only to betray my trust by feeding me spammy clickbait, i disabled both those apps, WTF, google you betrayed my trust, i am considering abandoning android because of it

  • Seems fair (Score:3, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @04:26PM (#59965984)

    Google and FB both use someone else's work to make money. There's no reason they can't pay that someone who created that work.

    This is no different than people on here howling how neither Google or FB should be able to use someone's personal information to make money or that they should pay that person for that data.

    After all, it's not their data being used. It's someone else's data.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ludux ( 6308946 )
      What would be fair would be if they had to pay Google and Facebook for access to their networks.

    • There's a weekly that lists local restaurants, reviews of them, their current menu and specials. Should that weekly have to pay restaurants a fee for each person who eats at that restaurant based on the reviews and information found in the weekly?

    • Google and FB both use someone else's work to make money. There's no reason they can't pay that someone who created that work.

      All productivity-generating business transactions result in both sides making money. Hence the saying that business is not a zero-sum game.

      • The mining company sells iron ore to a refinery. The refinery buys the iron ore because they know they can make money from it selling the refined steel for more than they paid for the ore + refining expenses.
      • The refinery sells steel to a too

    • Google and FB both use someone else's work to make money. There's no reason they can't pay that someone who created that work.

      Copyright cases the world over have shown time and time again that no they do not use "someone else's work", and it has nothing to do with personal information which is something not covered under copyright and doesn't result in your direct salary being affected by Google.

      Conflating the two issues shows a clear lack of understanding of one or both of them.

      After all, it's not their data being used. It's someone else's data.

      I just copied the data you made, and no I'm not giving you shit for it. ... Well actually ... I am giving you shit for it. In fact I'm giving you shit for

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It might work if Google just gave them a percentage, the problem is who gets to decide the percentage? The newspapers have an idea of what they think their content is worth, Google knows how much ad revenue it makes from News. If there was an independent body that could arbitrate it might just work, but the newspapers want to set their own rates which is basically suicide.

  • A very good explainer for why this won't help (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @05:19PM (#59966168)

    https://baekdal.com/trends/wha... [baekdal.com]

    In short:

    • * traditionally, newspapers were based around random browsing: people opened a newspaper, browsed through all/most of it, and in the process were exposed to random/unrelated ads
    • * with the internet, a new market emerged: a market for people that don't want to browse, but are looking for specific things. At the same time, advertisers could now also target people that look for those specific things. Few advertisers want to target people that are looking for a story about corruption, an important political debate, or war crimes
    • * Google gets ad revenue from targeted searches & sponsored search results. Facebook gets ad revenue by selling access to advertisement profiles voluntarily created and maintained by their own users. Newspapers? They still get some money from the "random advertising money" pot, and perhaps some targeted advertising related to certain stories or themes, but the advertising market has mostly moved on to different pastures, and for the most part they haven't found a way to survive without that money (exceptions are Mediapart [mediapart.fr], De Correspondent [decorrespondent.nl] and possibly their English-language offshoot The Correspondent [thecorrespondent.com], and the like)

    The main point is that a lot of the ad money is now spent on non-media, and no amount of reducing the influence/power of Google and Facebook is going to change that.

    • I guess the question is if the media sources themselves are able to do something about this. Are they just slow to figure it out or is there actually no real solution? Without subscriber profiles (or some involuntary tracking) I'm not sure they'll be able to provide advertisers with what they want and can get so easily from Google or Facebook. There is a limited market and now most of it is flowing to the aggergators. So do we accept all of this as if and just let the media sources die because they're on th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Halo1 ( 136547 )

        I fully agree with everything you wrote, and the author of that article also mentions this. However, I think that trend of getting more click-bait as news will only accelerate if news organisations will get remuneration from Google and Facebook, since that most likely will also be based on clicks, likes and views. And that in turn will make it even harder for the actual quality outlets, or quality journalists within larger organisations, to thrive or even survive.

        I see the solution more in the direction of

        • This is why, living in Australia, I am so hugely appreciative of the ABC. It gets plenty of criticism from some corners but for me it is a brilliant source of reliable news and it's one of the most trusted institutions we have in this country. Now more than ever it looks like the use of taxpayer money for a media organisation is completely justified. It's just one part of the puzzle but it means I can happily ignore the Newscorp drivel that for so long used to be all we had.

  • First, FB isn't a news outlet, they're a propaganda-pusher, so there's no incentive for them to push news that they have to pay for, and propagandists will likely provide "news" content for free to FB knowing their propaganda will get pushed. Moreover, if FB has to pay media outlets for news, and that news would actually counter the free propaganda propagandists are likely to submit, then, again, FB has no incentive to pay for news; the propaganda hits doubly hard because there's nothing countering it.

  • "Australia Will Force Google and Facebook to Pay for News Content..." ...for the first week or so, then when Google and FB's delinking algorithms have a had a chance to implement, when suddenly no Australian media organization is linked in any google search (even local ones), then they won't be paying anything.

    Who wins this, again?

  • Seriously, does Bing, Duck duck go, all pay? How about the Chinese social media? Lots there.
    Will all of these, including the small search engines have to pay? [webalive.com.au]

  • Why doesn't Google (and Facebook) do what they did in Spain? Just delist them. Each goes their own way and nobody loses, so everyone wins.

  • SUE (Score:2)

    by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

    They should counter-sue and then the newspapers should counter-sue and they should all appeal as many times as possible.

    Hopefully they'll all go bust, looks like a win-win situation to me.

  • Google did it wrong (Score:3)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday April 19, 2020 @11:54PM (#59967278)
    They tried to make Google News free and automatic. When do something for someone for free, most are grateful, but some feel entitled.

    What they should've done is offered to include news organizations' content on Google News for a nominal fee. A gentle reminder that they're doing the news services a favor by providing this service. The stubborn big-name news organizations stuck in the past would've refused to participate both on principle and because of pride. Smaller up and coming and modern news organizations would've recognized the opportunity having your article show up on Google News represented, and gladly paid. And after a few years the smaller news organizations would've become big, and the stubborn big-name news organizations would've become small.
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