Google and Facebook’s destructive effect on the media globally is well known. Having denuded it vital source of revenue, while displaying its content for free, these tech giants have literally profited off its work.
Google and Facebook have tried many ways to incorporate news into their operations, including controversially into Facebook’s news feed. Over the years, Big Tech has tried to the convince the media – like it has its own users – that these big firms are somehow performing some kind of help by spreading their news coverage far and wide.
The Fourth Estate, as it is sometimes called for its critical role in society, preforms many useful functions in a society. It informs, it entertains, it educates, and it keeps the other three estates in check.
After a decade of this sham, the media – like everyone else – has finally accepted that Big Tech only has one agenda: make itself bigger, stronger and more profitable.
We now irrefutably know that Facebook doesn’t care about the media, the mental health of teenage girls nor any misinformation not published in English thanks to leaks.
Considering Facebook allocates 93% of its budget for fighting disinformation and hate speech in English, according to whistleblower Frances Haugen, the other billions of users who don’t speak this language be damned.
But Australia did the world a huge favour earlier this year when it enacted legislation to force these tech firms to compensate media houses. Google acquiesced but Facebook, in its typically high-handed and tone-deaf manner, decided to “unfriend Australia,” as prime minister Scott Morrison put it. Attempting to call the Aussie’s bluff, Facebook turned off access to media organisations in that country but also crippled a bunch of legitimate Australian services, including its health department in the middle of a vaccine rollout campaign.
This move encapsulates Facebook’s take-it-or-leave-it attitude and backfired spectacularly on CEO Mark Zuckerberg and co – who are now facing a similar threat from South African publishers.
A new media body called the Publisher Support Services (PSS) is taking Facebook and Google to the Competition Commission to demand compensation. It consists of Media24, Arena Holdings (which owns the FM), Caxton, Independent Media and Mail & Guardian Media.
“Globally, platforms like Google and Meta have been using publishers’ content at no cost to grow their market dominance,” says M&G CEO Hoosain Karjieker and chairs of the PSS.
“Our objective is to get them to compensate us fairly and equitably for our journalistic efforts. Hence, we are making submissions on their behaviour in the local market to the Competition Commission’s market inquiry into online platforms in South Africa.”
The big tech must be aware that these moves are going to be happening in many other markets, but you can expect Facebook to fight it tooth and nail – as is its new aggressive strategy of being with criticism which began before Haugen’s revelation but is getting worse all the time. Caught with its hand in the ethical till by Cambridge Analytica, Facebook has been apologetic and Zuckerberg has repeatedly said he is “responsible”. But Facebook has been going on the offensive for the last few months whenever it is criticised – including by the Federal Trade Commission and several US States suing it. It will also backfire. Nobody likes an arrogant, unrepentant monopolist that abuses it dominance.
This article first appeared in the Daily Maverick.
