Australian government said Tech giants Google and Facebook have to pay by sharing the revenue for news content in the country. The Australian government is facing unprecedented losses in advertising revenue across platforms due to COVID-19 and now officials want tech giants to pay for original journalistic content.
Which is consumed across their platforms. After all, content created by media outlets is shared and consumed across platforms like Google and Facebook extensively. And tech tycoons end up taking a large share of online advertising revenue.
Now Australia will force Google and Facebook to pay media outlets for news content.
Australia’s Treasurer is calling for a Level Playing Field and wants Facebook and Google to pay media companies for Content. A report of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on digital platforms published in June last year showed.
That Facebook and Google are getting 33% of money spent on online advertising in Australia.The ACCC has been ordered by the government to create a code of conduct for these tech giants in December 2019.
As a part of this code, these tech tycoons, Facebook and Google have to share data that includes ranking and display of news content and sharing revenue generated from news original content.
The rest of the world has been hit hard by the economic fallout of the pandemic. Small publishers have had to shut down temporarily or permanently to avoid incurring long-term losses.
From newspapers to TV channels , the media industry is facing a financial crunch and now the government is demanding transparency in content sharing.
Will Easton, the managing director of Facebook Australia and New Zealand said that it’s a disappointing announcement by the government. Facebook had invested big money to support local publishers through content arrangements and partnerships.
Google spokesperson said Google would continue to cooperate with plans for the media code of conduct.