Australia continues to give to limit the power of the technological giants. The Prime Minister’s Labor Government Anthony Albanese approved this Thursday a new tax with which it will force all digital platforms that annually earn more than 250 million Australian dollars (about 152 million euros), including companies such as Google, Meta o ByteDanceowner of TikTokto finance the media national.
In 2021, the oceanic country of media companies. Forced, Google and Meta reached an economic agreement with which they injected the equivalent of around 190 million euros into Australian newspapers, radio and television channels. However, the company that controls Facebook, Instagram y WhatsApp announced in March that he will not renew his contract with the media, which expire at the end of the year.
Avoid chess
Aware that more platforms can take advantage of the fact that News Media Bargaining Code (News Media Negotiation Code) expires in three weeks, the Labor Executive has chosen to establish a rate as an “incentive” that certifies financial compensation to the media. With this, Google, Meta and others will have to choose between paying that fixed rate or signing direct agreements with the information companies.
The size of the tax is yet to be determined, although Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones has said it will be “millions, not billions.” Even so, this amount will be higher than what the platforms would pay through a direct agreement with the media, which incentivizes them to negotiate with the media. editors instead of paying the fee to the Government, which claims to have no intention of collecting income through it.
Meta has denounced that the current law is “defective”, because it does not understand that the majority of Facebook and Instagram users do not search for news. “We remain concerned that one industry is being charged to subsidize another,” he said in a statement. Google, for its part, has assured that it has already committed to renew its agreements with more than 80 journalism companies to finance 218 media outlets.
Promote journalism
With this series of measures, Australia intends to give a boost to journalismwhose business has been hit hard by Google and Meta. Both giants not only profit from the sharing of journalistic content, but have also ended up dividing the pie of the digital advertisingthe business on which the vast majority of media outlets are based. After a year in which around 1,000 workers have been laid off, the media sector has celebrated the Government’s decision.
To avoid that the introduction of the tax could end up hurting smaller publishers, Jones has stressed that the affected digital platforms “cannot offset their liability under this agreement through a large agreement with a single” larger media outlet.
The Government hopes that this will force these companies to give more visibility to the news. “Digital platforms receive enormous economic benefits from Australia, and have a social and economic responsibility to help Australians have access to quality journalism,” the minister said in a statement.
The president of the Australian media union, Karen Percy, has called for more transparency from the media, warning that funds received from platforms must “support the work of journalists” and not “to reward shareholders or for corporate bonuses or inflate corporate profits.”
