Meta Decision on Australian Media Potentially Hinders Jokowi's Publisher Rights Plan

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The decision by Meta to stop paying Australian news publishers for content on Facebook could potentially hinder President Joko Widodo or Jokowi's plan to support Indonesian media. Meta Platforms’ decision set up a fresh battle with Canberra which had led the world with a law that forces internet giants to strike licensing deals.

News publishers and governments like Australia have argued that Facebook and Google unfairly benefit in terms of advertising revenue when links to news articles appear on their platforms. Meta has been scaling back its promotion of news and political content to drive traffic and says news links are now a fraction of users' feeds.

President Jokowi last month inked the publisher rights presidential regulation requiring digital platforms to pay media outlets that provide them with content. 

"Following multiple rounds of consultations with the government, we understand Meta will not be required to pay for news content that publishers voluntarily post to our platforms," said Rafael Frankel, Meta's director of public policy for Southeast Asia.

The law stipulated that digital platforms and news publishers should strike partnerships that could take the form of paid licenses, revenue sharing, or data sharing but much remains unclear about how these new agreements will work in practice.

Governments around the world have long been concerned about what they see as a power imbalance between digital platforms and publishers of news and other content.

Meta will discontinue a tab on Facebook that promotes news in Australia and the United States, it said in a statement, adding that it canceled the news tab last year in the UK, France, and Germany.

As a result, "we will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers," the statement added.

The decision pits Meta against the Australian government and its 2021 law.

"The idea that one company can profit from others' investment, not just investment in capital but investment in people, investment in journalism, is unfair," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters.

"That's not the Australian way," he added.

REUTERS | YUDONO YANUAR

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