News fee. Australia looks introduce mandatory charge on social media platforms and search engines to force them to pay local publishers

The Australian government is looking to close a loophole in its legislation and force big name tech firms above a certain size to pay local news publishers.

The Australian government plans to introduce a levy on social media firms and search engines, to force them to pay publishers for journalism and news content, the Financial Times reported.

The Australian move comes after Facebook parent Meta Platforms walked away from an existing arrangement known as the ‘Media Bargaining Law’, which essentially forced tech firms to negotiate with local news publishers.

Publisher payments

Australia had passed the Media Bargaining Law in February 2021 that allowed the government to set fees that large tech companies have to pay media outlets for sharing news links.

The passing of the law, including changes agreed with Facebook, meant that Australia became the first country in the world where a government arbitrator could set prices that tech firms had to pay for local news and content.

For the first time a government arbitrator was in charge of setting the price for online content, if a news licensing fee agreement between the two parties could not be reached.

Prior to the law being passed, Meta had called it a bad piece of legislation and then for a time blocked Australian users from sharing local and international news on its platforms in protest.

After the law was passed, Meta formed licensing deals with News Corp and other news outlets, but warned it would not renew those deals beyond 2024. This is part of Meta’s overall withdrawal from paying media companies as it retreats news feeds globally.

That triggered a furious reaction from the Australian government, which pledged to force the company back to the negotiating table and to close “loopholes” in the law, the FT noted.

Google has also signed similar licensing deals with media companies and publishers around the world, under its ongoing ‘News Showcase’ scheme.

Meta however is not backing down from its retreat from paying for news. For example in August 2023 Meta instituted a news ban in Canada which is still in effect, that blocks users from sharing news links.

Australian ‘charge’

Now according to the Financial Times, in the proposed amendments to the current Australian regulations, any social media platform or search engine that derives more than $250m in revenues a year from Australia would be subject to a “charge”.

That levy would be offset against any payments made directly by tech companies to publishers. The move is intended to encourage them to negotiate with the media industry over commercial deals.

The new measure will be subject to a public consultation next year before details are confirmed, the Financial Times reported.

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

“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.”

TikTok and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the FT reported.