Editorial: Make tech giants pay

It costs to produce the news and it’s only fair that tech giants must pay for using the content on their platforms

At a time when revenues for media organisations — both print and digital —have been dwindling rapidly, a compelling moral argument is gaining currency across the world that the technology giants must be made to pay for using the news content on their platforms and to share advertising revenues with the local publishers. The explosion of global digital platforms like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, with their all-pervading impact on our lives, has created an uneven playing field as they piggyback on the content originally created by newsrooms without compensating them. The new draft legislation that seeks to make Big Tech pay news publishers for the content they funnel into their platforms is a welcome development. A fair split of revenue among the creators of news content and aggregators has already been initiated in several countries. In Australia, Facebook and Google are required to negotiate a fee with media organisations to host their content. Last year, the law brought $140 million in fresh revenue to the Australian news industry, providing much-needed resources to invest in quality journalism and credible content. The draft Digital India Bill, which will be released for public consultations later this month, imparts negotiating leverage to news publishers as it addresses the imbalance of dynamics between content creation and its monetisation. Advertising is the main source of revenue for the news industry. But, over the years, publishers have seen their share shrink in the digital space as social media companies are gaining a much larger chunk without creating any original content.

News publishers around the world believe that Facebook and Google benefit from the news that appears on their feeds as it draws several users to the platforms. There is no denying that both the tech giants and publishers need each other. However, the reality is that the tech giants end up grabbing the largest chunk of revenue. It is unfair that big digital platforms like Google and Meta get to host and share local news for free. It costs to produce the news and it’s only fair that they pay. The rise of digital advertising has resulted in a new ecosystem that redirects ad revenue to tech companies. While social media platforms get clicks, engagement and even revenue from the content that is published by media organisations, news organisations, especially the smaller and medium ones, suffer as more advertising goes online. Nearly 85 crore people in India are connected to the internet. By 2025, the number is expected to grow to 120 crore. The draft Bill seeks to address the issues of online safety such as child sexual abuse material, incitement to religious hatred, patent violation and misinformation on social media platforms. The legislation will give the government legal teeth to hold platforms accountable for hosting such content. Also on the agenda is the regulation of artificial intelligence.

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