How much should Facebook have to pay for news? We have a suggestion how to calculate it
Facebook is worried publishers will try to charge as much as they want for their content. But it doesn’t have to be that way, argues Glenn Withers in this crossposting from The Conversation. And he’s figured out how much the digital platforms should be prepared to pay.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s draft news media bargaining code has raised an interesting question: how to put a dollar value on news content?
Under the code, Google and Facebook would be forced to pay for Australian news published on their sites to help fund public interest journalism.
There’s a number of logical leaps in this piece that don’t explain how the writer got to $560m a year (~$22 for every person in Australia). The only explanation is it’s the writer’s “best guess”. As defined here, few outlets on any given day could claim a “public interest journalism” mandate because they publish little but beat-ups, disinformation & misinformation, and partisan attacks on Conservatives’ enemies. If publishers had to prove what they published was in the public interest, they wouldn’t make a dollar a day.
Yes.
I’d like to see a deeper-dive debate on what we define as ‘news’ and ‘public interest journalism’, before attempting to place a value on either. From my experience, much of today’s ‘news’ originates from media releases, celebrity gossip and video clips featuring assorted cats and/or naughty/clever children. With regard to the loftier ideals of ‘public interest journalism’, perhaps some kind of scaled payment system based on actual public interest, rather than an annual blanket payment which effectively rewards and subsidises those news organisations that didn’t have the foresight to plan for today’s plight.
So if it’s $560m in Australia what would be the cost be in US, India and Europe? What about factoring in the costs of Facebook to deliver it’s platforms to Australia? Also the benefits and traffic publishers already get from Facebook and Google. It’s not a viable business model. The argument of the ACCC is news posted on FB brings traffic to Facebook. Paul Fletcher also said FB are monetising publishers news on feed by selling advertising next to it. Both of these points couldn’t be further from the truth.
1. Facebook already reached critical mass before businesses had pages and it had ads – showing people value connection with friends and family more. When news is removed and it has no impact on active users on FB/ IG or their ad revenues this point will be further validated.
2. Facebook is not a contextual ad platform. This was pure misunderstanding of how advertising works in 2020 from people with no experience in the industry. News engagement data is also worthless and not a factor for better consumer profiling (i.e. socioeconomic) for other businesses. FB mainly value transaction data from businesses, including shopping and purchase intent signals to inform algorithms.
So to answer a question on whether the tech giants have killed the media industry, you’ve published the opinion from a tech giant? Is this like the Facebook article the other day? Mumbrella has become a puppet big tech.
The logic here is very bad, Even accepting the dubious figure that people are willing to pay for $560, how is it relevant? For example, I was willing to spend more on my TV then I did, but I managed to get it at a very good price. Does that mean I should have paid more? Even accepting that I should pay more, should google and Facebook be made to pay for my TV?