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Facebook and governments are very experienced at spinning news in a way that makes them look good. The Australian government was looking for mandatory negotiat

Facebook and governments are very experienced at spinning news in a way that makes them look good. The Australian government was looking for mandatory negotiations with media companies, forcing them to pay for content. They relaxed that "mandatory" clause a bit and added longer periods for notification and negotiation. In the past year, Facebook has signed revenue-sharing deals with most of the major news platforms in Australia (ongoing) and on Monday of this week, they announced they would be investing $15 million in regional news media. https://www.fool.com.au/2021/05/10/facebook-to-invest-15-million-into-regional-australian-news-media/ https://www.fool.com.au/2021/05/10/facebook-to-invest-15-mil... Google has also signed contracts with some of the major media companies.

chii 5y ago
which is, imho, a loss for journalism integrity in australia. The media law was instigated by the incumbent media conglomerate in australia, to prevent revenue leakage to google, but still allow the utilization to bring in traffic etc. Google, and the other tech companies should've strong armed, and threaten to quit (and perhaps, actually do) displaying _any_ australian media outlets in their search engines. I think google didn't want to play chicken because the fees they are asked to pay is relatively small (given their size), and a fight with the aus gov't would've been a bit ugly (because it's an indirect fight that the media conglomerate has managed to strong arm the gov't to fight for them). Alas, it wasn't meant to be, and Google (and others) deemed it a small price to pay - what a letdown for ordinary australians and a huge win for the entrenched media conglomerate in australia.