Social media czar Facebook now too shall follow the steps of tech giant Google. Facebook's news media investment move is a facsimile of a similar initiative by Google after it capitulated to the Australian government's demands to negotiate a revenue sharing deal with the local news media outlets.
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Like Google, Facebook's $1 billion pledge to the news industry is also global in nature. The company will separately negotiate revenue sharing deals with Australian news providers. Both Google and Facebook had been engaged in a Mexican standoff with the Australian government over the news media code that would mandate the tech giants to pay Australian news media outlets for using their content on their platforms.
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Both companies had threatened to cut off news services on their platforms for the country, but Facebook actually went ahead with its threat. While enforcing the promised news ban in the country, Facebook also nuked several pages belonging to essential services such as suicide prevention agencies and COVID-19 information channels.
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However, Facebook relented after it reached a compromise with the authorities on the contentious aspect of government arbitration between Facebook and the news outlets. The company now has a choice as to which publishers it can support. Australia isn't the only country forcing social media to pay news media houses for their content. Google had already signed a similar deal with France last month. Google's deal requires it to pay publications based on variables, such as news volume and readership metrics.
