It’s unfortunate that the actual submission by Facebook hasn’t been published and the linked article provides little background on the “mandatory code of conduc

It’s unfortunate that the actual submission by Facebook hasn’t been published and the linked article provides little background on the “mandatory code of conduct” proposal Facebook is responding to. This relates to a concepts paper the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released on 19 May [1], following the government’s announcement on 20 April [2] that it had “directed the ACCC to develop a mandatory code of conduct to address bargaining power imbalances between digital platforms and media companies.” [1] https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code/concepts-paper https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... [2] https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/josh-frydenberg-2018/media-releases/accc-mandatory-code-conduct-govern-commercial https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/josh-frydenberg-... The concepts paper seeks feedback on several alternative proposals and says nothing about appropriating 10% of Google and Facebook’s revenue (this suggestion appears to come from another unpublished submission from a news outlet). The ACCC paper highlights a range of problems faced by news publishers seeking to negotiate with digital platforms, including the difficulty of estimating the value to Facebook and Google of linked and embedded news content (especially without access to Facebook and Google’s internal data), the lack of transparency in the algorithms Facebook and Google use to rank and display content, and the inability of small publishers to meaningfully communicate with these companies through automated support systems. The paper also points out that the threat of government intervention appears to have triggered a response from Facebook and Google on some of these issues. Addressing information asymmetry and other market imperfections is part of the ACCC’s purpose of “enhancing the welfare of Australians through the promotion of competition and fair trading” [3]. Let’s not immediately write this off as an anti-competitive attempt to entrench “old media.” [3] https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/caca2010265/s2.html https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/caca20102...