Australia Wants Google, Facebook to Pay Media for the News

The Australian government wants platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay the media for the news they publish, authorities reported Monday.

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The Australian government has ordered the creation of a mandatory code of conduct that should cover issues such as data exchange, classification, and display of news, payment and exchange of income generated, the Head of the Treasury Josh Frydemberg said in a statement.

The measure, which will be prepared by the Australian Competition and Consumption Commission, will establish measures related to compliance with the provisions, sanctions, as well as binding dispute resolution mechanisms read the statement, also signed by Communications Minister Paul Fletcher.

The move comes in response to the commission’s recommendations, outlined in a final report released in December, on the impact of search engines and social media on the advertising and media market.

The report highlights that digital platforms in Australia concentrated 51 percent of advertising spending in 2017 after doubling their share in the previous five years at the expense of print publications, which in the same period went from 33 percent to 12 percent of spending.

Facebook, the most popular social network in Australia, has 17 million monthly users in the country, 68 percent of its population, while Instagram – the second with most followers and owned by Facebook – has 11 million more.

Google accumulated 90 percent of search traffic from computers in Australia in 2017 and 98 percent from mobile phones.