The Silicon Valley oligarchs are going to war with the Morrison government. At issue is the government’s efforts to force the tech giants to pony up some of their mountains of gold for the content they’ve been scraping for free for years.
While it’s true that the legacy media companies made themselves a bed of nails when they initially allowed companies like Google to filch their content for nothing, the media industry has been bleeding dry from the puncture wounds ever since. The tech companies, on the other hand, have grown fat by sucking the legacy media dry.
The Australian government is moving legislation to force them to pay – and they’re not happy. If other nations start getting ideas off Australia, why, the tech giants might actually have to start paying up some of their trillions.
The world’s most famous lizard-man, Mark Zuckerberg, poised his finger over the button this week.
Facebook’s nuclear threat on Tuesday, that it would effectively ban news from its platform, begs an important question. What would Facebook look like without news?
At its best, perhaps, Facebook is a platform for staying connected, for businesses to reach out to their customers, and so on.
But there’s an ugly side, hiding in plain sight. Facebook is awash with conspiracy theories and downright misinformation, from relatively minor gossip through to dangerous lies about COVID-19. That content has a tendency to go viral, because it elicits excitement and plays on our emotions. You can see it on nearly every news or political post[…]
Despite being a company worth nearly $1 trillion with more than 50,000 employees, Facebook has proven time and time again it’s unable to effectively police fake news on its platform. And yet it says it can turn off real news with the flick of a switch.
It says much about Facebook’s values that it would rather shut down news altogether rather than agree to pay a fair price for it.
Turning off news on its platform, though, will likely be a case of Facebook cutting off its nose to spite its face.
If Facebook somehow follows through on its threats and bans news, it will force the platform to return somewhat to what it originally was – a website to share food photos and stay in touch with friends. Australians will go elsewhere for their news, given that the only ‘news’ therefore allowed on Facebook will be crackpot conspiracy theories and opinions. Well resourced, paywalled publications like The Australian will be fine, given their loyal readership. But other small, independent outlets will suffer. Those companies, which rely on Facebook and Google clicks to drive digital advertising, will be decimated.
In many cases, this might be true – but it is becoming increasingly less so. Especially for conservative news outlets, who’ve been persistently attacked by the tech giants. Part of that has been pulling advertising from conservative news sites. Despite the endless war waged against them by Silicon Valley, though, conservative media have dominated the new media landscape.
But, across the board, digital advertising revenue for small publishers has been plunging for some time. Instead, what is keeping the new media afloat is the same subscriber model the legacy media have belatedly embraced. Whether it be direct subscription or platforms like Patreon, small media companies are working hard to earn the loyalty of their followers – many of whom are switching off the legacy media in droves.
The days of the Internet of Free are ending – and the tech giants know it. This is why they’re pre-emptively declaring war on the Australian government, every bit as much as they have against President Trump.
This kind of reckoning ideally would have happened much sooner. The US tech giants have been too powerful for some time, throwing their weight around and further dividing society with fake news.
The Australian government is to be commended for finally cracking down on the very real market imbalance that has been out of whack for years. Now is a pivotal moment in deciding whether Facebook and Google are more powerful than governments, and for deciding what the point of Facebook and Google actually is.
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