Facebook to End Australia News Blackout

In News: Australian PM sought global diplomatic support for Australia’s proposed law to force Internet giants Facebook and Google to pay media companies.

Facebook-Australian Government Tussle:

• News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code Bill 2020: It mandates a bargaining code that aims to force Google and Facebook to compensate media companies for using their content.
  • The legislation sets a precedent in regulating social media across geographies and is being closely watched the world over.
• Google in response decided to sign a deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
• Facebook, which has 17 million users in Australia, retaliated with a news blackout, blocking all news links on its platform beginning Thursday.
  • In the process, it also ended up silencing some emergency services and removed posts from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, state health departments, fire and rescue services, charities, and emergency and crisis services.
• The Australian Government decided not to give COVID vaccination advertisements to Facebook.
• Later both softened their approach.
  • Facebook announced its first proposed deal with an Australian media company, Seven West right after the Australian government tweaked its law.
  • Facebook has decided to invest 1 billion USD to support news and public interest journalism.

Importance of these Developments

• With the expanse of technology, multiple challenges have also emerged. A few of the challenges which got recently highlighted areas listed below.
• National Sovereignty v/s Technological Giants: The prime question was that if a democratically elected government has the right to regulate an MNC working within its boundary or not.
  • Social Media Giants have also been found in manipulating election campaigns by data mining. Eg. Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
  • Further, there are instances where Technological giants have misused their power to forward their interest in a biased manner. Like in Delhi Riots Case, Farmers Protests in India (Tweeter Case), etc.
  • The right to privacy has been violated by these giants.
• Traditional Media v/s Emerging Technology
  • Traditional Media is suffering huge losses due to the free sharing of links and news on Social Media Platforms.
  • There are virtually Zero Regulations on Social Media in comparison to multiple policy compliances faced by Print Media. It increases regular media’s operating cost.
  • Traditional Media has been relatively more responsible with respect to the issue of Fake News.
• Issue of IPR Rights: The authors of books and news articles do hard work to produce quality books, articles that are freely shared on Social Media.
  • It discourages quality authors and promotes poor writings, fake, radicalised, and sensitive news.
• Radicalisation Drives: The modus operandi of many terror organisations is to spread propaganda and recruit using Social media.
  • Social Harmony in diverse nations like India gets tattered due to communally charged posts.
  • The law agencies have reported less cooperation shown by Social Media which delays justice.
• The whole world is watching these developments and outcomes to plan its own regulatory framework in order to solve the aforementioned fallacies of Social Media.

Strategies of Big Techs in Other Countries

• News Feed as a separate tab: This feature has been either already rolled out or under consideration by both Facebook and Google in countries like US, UK, Spain, France, etc.
  • Both these platforms aim to formalise payment pacts with news outlets.
• Follow Copyright rules: Google also responded to pleas in France adopting the EU copyright rules by stopping the display of news snippets.

Lessons for India

• Proper and Serious Debate is the need of the hour: Till now, India has focussed on the dominance of intermediaries such as Google and Facebook.
  • They are positioned in a way that service providers cannot reach customers except through these platforms.
  • Now the focus of debates should be the impact of Tech Giants on the health of News Media Outlets.
• Huge Size and Potential of the Indian Market: Indian Government has a leverage of a huge market and hence can bring tech giants to the negotiating table.
  • FICCI-EY report for 2020  has found that there are 300 million users of online news sites, portals and aggregators in India.
    • They make up approximately 46% of Internet users and 77% of smartphone users in India at the end of 2019.
    • With 282 million unique visitors, India is the second-largest online news consuming nation after China.
    • In India, digital advertising spends in 2019 grew 24% year-on-year to Rs 27,900 crore and are expected to grow to Rs 51,340 crore by 2022.
• Local Industries: Dailyhunt and InShorts are the other major news aggregators in India.
  •  According to a January 2020 report by Harvard University’s Nieman Lab, publishers were initially paid Rs 5-6 lakh monthly for content hosted on Dailyhunt but retracted later.
  • Even without the payment related norms, startups such as Dailyhunt and InShorts are yet to find a sustainable revenue model.

Source: IE