Australia continues to lead the way in regulating big tech.

[markgrieveson@mindly.social]

Australia continues to lead the way in regulating big tech. They plan to tax Meta, Google and TikTok an additional 2.25 per cent of their Australian revenue unless they pay local publishers for news content.

TRT World - Australia seeks to tax tech giants unless they pay news outlets for content

Australia plans to tax Meta, Google and TikTok unless they pay local publishers for news content.

(www.trtworld.com)

#australia #SocialMedia #auspol

[alessandro@cosocial.ca]

@markgrieveson

We tried something similar here and they just blocked all the real news outlets, so the only thing left is random blogs and fake news.

[markgrieveson@mindly.social]

@alessandro

We haven't tried a punitive measure like that yet.

A few years back we enacted the Online News Act. This mandated that tech giants, like Meta, would pay a fee to news media sites that were present on their platforms. The law still exists. But Meta refused to pay the news media sites and instead blocked them.

That Canadian law was based on a law that Australia had enacted, called the News Media Bargaining Code. However, Meta likewise blocked news sites in Australia. But, the government stated it would not "designate" Meta in the law. So Meta then voluntarily agreed to pay a sum to some news media. It's described here:

Australia made a deal to keep news on Facebook. Why couldn't Canada? | CBC News

Meta and Google worked out a deal with the Australia government on a law that would make digital giants pay for journalism. Canada passed its own law, without any such deal. Meta says it has begun ending news availability on its platforms in Canada. Did Ottawa miss an opportunity to avoid this?

CBC (www.cbc.ca)

I'm not sure what's the cause for this recent initiative of the Australian government. Has Meta stopped paying?

But anyway, it sounds like an interesting initiative.