Self deprecating and inconsistent
In February, Meta announced it was ‘deprecating’ its Facebook News Tab. To translate that into plain English: Meta was saying it would not renew the deals it had made with Australian news media businesses under the news media bargaining code. These deals were worth an estimated $70million annually. Meta said that people no longer use its services to access news, so why should it pay?
News media businesses were outraged, pointing to research showing that nearly half of Australians use social media to access news. The government was outraged too, calling the abandonment of these deals a ‘dereliction of [Meta’s] commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media.’
And now? Funny you should ask.
Last week news broke that Meta had struck a deal with a news media business to use its content. As Axios reported, the multi-year deal was to use Reuters content to provide real-time answers to queries from US users of Meta’s AI chatbot, which is integrated into various features on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. And as Reuters itself reported: ‘It comes at a time when the Facebook parent has been reducing news content on its services after criticism from regulators and publishers over misinformation and disagreement about revenue-sharing.’
The details of the deal have not been disclosed. That is, we don’t know how much money changed hands. And note that Meta also has a fact-checking deal with Reuters. But last Friday, US users of Meta’s chatbot were given access to real-time news from Reuters. Which means that Meta is paying to use journalism in the US, but not in Australia.
Meanwhile, two related developments. First, new research reveals that AI companies including Meta, Google and OpenAI use more news content to train their large language models than they admit. Second, the latest advertising figures from Meta, Google and other digital platforms show that ad revenue is booming. Meta ad sales are up 19 per cent year on year, with profits ballooning 35 per cent in the same period.
Australia’s news media bargaining code was a response to a fundamental unfairness identified by the competition regulator. News media creates content, but digital platforms profit from that content by hosting it and selling advertising against it. What’s more, news is a public good. News and journalism serve the public interest, which makes this unfairness particularly egregious.
Lately, the news media bargaining code has copped a lot of flak. One less common criticism is that it prompted deals specifically for the use of news by Facebook News Tab and Google News Showcase, rather than by Meta and Google as a whole. This arrangement was something of a sleight of hand. It meant Meta could walk away from its commitments simply by ‘deprecating’, or killing off, its News Tab.
If news is valuable for Meta, that value surely stems from what news brings across all Meta’s services, whether that be a specific social media service or an AI chatbot that functions across several of its services. After all, its services are interlinked, relying upon the flow of data (including user data) between them. This means that governments should look holistically at the benefits gained from news by these companies – be they Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon or any other digital platform.
What we need now is a long-lasting solution for the relationship between platforms and news media that is fair and that serves public interest journalism. Perhaps that involves keeping and updating the news media bargaining code. Or perhaps, as Hal Crawford writes, it could involve must-carry obligations and a public interest journalism levy. Indeed, CMT has been researching these options, and we’ll publish a report soon.
Yesterday, the PM announced that under-16s will be banned from social media. Perhaps we’re looking at a social media future where kids are banned and news is mandated, and where large digital platforms are all obligated to fund news that’s in the public interest.
Sacha Molitorisz, Senior Lecturer - UTS Law
