As Mint reported this week, India is weighing a new law aimed at fair compensation for news publishers from Big Tech platforms carrying their content. If enacted, Google and Meta would need to comply. From a news point of view, the rise of Google’s search tool and Meta’s social media services (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) has been a mixed blessing, with content reach and visibility clearly amplified, but with this mix looking bleaker the closer one looks.
At one level, attention spans have been put at the mercy of thumb swipes on handy gadgets, which has given the optics of every event such power that details of fact often seem like a lost cause. If the future of this planet can pivot on a stumble by a leader, as US poll-watchers fear, or even on a hug going viral on the internet, as Cold War II trackers wonder, then this optical turn is a serious cause for anxiety.
At another level, online eyeballs have been affixed by a few winner-takes-all platforms that might possibly be addictive. While this has enriched Big Tech with advertising revenue, creators of quality content have been starved of funds needed to invest in the pursuit of truth—our last line of defence against the risk of an optical takeover by AI-led deepfakery.
Truth-focused publishers deserve a larger slice of Big Tech’s ad-revenue pie than the raw deal they get today. And since truth is a self-evident matter of public interest, a legislative remedy suggests itself.
In 2021, Australia armed local news outlets with a legal code that enabled them to strike better payment bargains with Big Tech platforms conveying their content. Canberra’s move is being studied by India’s government in response to calls for a more equitable equation here too. In 2022, Canberra said over 30 pacts had been signed by local media with Google and Meta.
Last year, transfers from the duo were placed at about $130 million, but Meta jolted recipients this year by saying it wouldn’t renew such contracts. This has cast the idea’s success in doubt, making public interest look weak in its clash with market forces. Canada’s case has shown how unevenly they stack up.
Last June, Ottawa passed the country’s Online News Act aimed at “fairness in the Canadian digital-news marketplace,” and while Google committed some $75 million a year to a state-run fund for local media, Meta did not budge. Instead, the social-media monopoly evidently ran a market test. It opted for a blackout of local news on its platforms, betting that news was too thin a sliver of their content-feed to matter.
Facebook and Instagram barred news website links last August, forcing Canadian users to share local news by posting screen-shots. A recent study of the impact gave Meta a reason to gloat. Its user base held steady and revenues rose, while media outlets lost audiences.
Canada’s case is a reminder that it’s not easy to regulate the social media market. But it also showed people how hard it gets to identify fake news when people’s access to trusted websites is hobbled. The cause of truth took a blow. No wonder a media lobby wants to sue Meta for ‘abuse of dominance.’ Any monopoly with such outsize influence over popular perceptions could potentially wreak havoc.
Given that concentrated power is a sign of market failure, public interest in the fact-focused media’s quest for truth must prevail over the dictates of data demand and supply. As an AI-led blur of reality looms on the internet, how exactly to ensure as much is the policy puzzle we must crack.