Meta withdraws Facebook News in Australia
Stuff reports:
Facebook owner Meta has refused to continue paying for news in Australia, announcing it will end its deals with local publishers when they expire this year in a decision that news companies say blatantly ignores the value of their journalism.
The government also blasted the move, describing it as “a dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media”.
The tech behemoth confirmed today it won’t renew its deals with news organisations in Australia and also said it will remove its Facebook News tab next month.
This should kill off the Willie Jackson bill in NZ to try and force tech firms to pay media simply for linking to them.
It has been a disaster in Canada, and now also in Australia. It sees tech giants restricting or downplaying links to new sites, which results in a far far bigger drop in income for the media than for the tech giants.
The whole rationale for the bill is bizarre anyway. Put simply it is:
- Advertisers used to advertise solely with media
- Now most advertisers advertise with Internet companies
- The Internet companies have stolen the advertisers off the media, so they must pay them money for offering a better advertising product
The tech giants do not make significant money (estimated to be below 3%) from linking to news sites. People advertise with them because they provide more eyeballs, better targeted for lower cost. If they stopped linking to media sites, they’d would hardly notice it.
On the other hand, the media make a significant amount of money from social media companies like Meta linking to them. A story shared on Facebook can go viral and get hundreds and thousands of views. and hence advertising income for the media as people then come through to their site.
In Canada Meta blocked news on Facebook and some media outlets have reported a 30% drop in page views, which probably means a 30% drop in revenue.
The bill should die a quick death.