Australia to slap Google, Meta with fees if they don’t pay news companies for content

Australia is planning to pass a new rule forcing major tech conglomerates to continue paying media companies to use their content on their social media platforms, government officials said Thursday.

The News Bargaining Incentive pressures major tech giants like Meta and Google to renew paid partnerships with Australian media companies or face a fine. The exact size of the fine is unclear.

“Digital platforms receive huge financial benefits from Australia, and they have a social and economic responsibility to contribute to Australians’ access to quality journalism,” Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones said in a statement.

The social media platforms and search engines eligible to be hit with the charge are those with an Australian-based revenue of 250 million Australian dollars, or about $160 million, or more, Jones said at a press conference.

Tech companies that willingly enter or renew partnerships with Australian media firms will not have to pay the charge.

In 2021, Australia passed the News Media Bargaining Code – an ultimatum that made social media platforms and search engines form deals with Australian news companies. Tech giants can circumvent this mandate, however, by removing links to Australian news content from their platforms.

And some major tech companies have already announced they will not be renewing these deals after they expire in 2024.

Following the initial government rule, Meta penned deals with a slew of Australian media firms including News Corp Australia and Australian Broadcasting Corp., reportedly worth $70 million. But in March, Meta said it would not renew those deals beyond 2024, arguing that tech companies are not responsible for the issues plaguing the news industry.

“We agree with the government that the current law is flawed and continue to have concerns about charging one industry to subsidise another,” a Meta spokesperson told The Post.

“The proposal fails to account for the realities of how our platforms work, specifically that most people don’t come to our platforms for news content and that news publishers voluntarily choose to post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so,” the spokesperson added.

Danielle Coffey, president and CEO at News Media Alliance, countered that the evidence shows the exact opposite — that Meta reaps “tremendous value” through news-drawn engagement in their platforms.

“Under the law, we own our content and we create it and it’s the fruits of our labor and it’s being stolen,” Coffey said. 

“It shouldn’t be up to the platform to determine whether [and how much] they would like to pay” – because in that case, they won’t pay anything at all, she added.

Coffey said it will be interesting to see the size of the charge in Australia and how that could impact similar actions, like Canada’s Online News Act, which can fine tech companies $10 million per post that includes news from a company it has not compensated.

Australia “should be commended for plugging loopholes that companies like Meta, who benefit from fact-based, fact-checked journalistic content, have exploited to avoid paying up,” Paul Deegan, president and CEO of News Media Canada, told The Post in a statement. 

He said Meta should follow Google’s “more responsible” approach to the new codes.

“I applaud the Australian government for taking the step to ensure that these social media companies who extract value from quality news content compensate those who they benefit from,” Coffey told The Post.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company has also argued that Meta already drives substantial traffic – and the ensuing revenue – to Australian media companies. In 2023, Facebook’s Feed sent more than 2.3 billion clicks to Australian publishers for no charge, worth an estimated 115 million Australian dollars, or $73 million, Meta Australia wrote in a blog post in March.

Google has struck deals with more than 80 Australian news companies since the 2021 code passed and previously committed to renewing those deals.

But the company said it was uncertain about the deals after the new charge was announced on Thursday. 

“The government’s introduction of a targeted tax risks the ongoing viability of commercial deals with news publishers in Australia,” Google said in a statement. “We are reviewing today’s announcement and will have more to say once we’ve assessed the full impact.”

Google did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.