Personally, I'd stop emphasising the role of news sharing on social media, and just institute a levy straight onto Google and Meta to subsidise public service journalism.
@timrichards I would normally be the last to defend Meta, but they’ve made it clear they want nothing to do with news anymore, and fair enough. In that case, why levy them? Why not levy Coles or BHP? Surely a better idea is just some sort of subsidy raised by a levy on everyone, including businesses, ie. tax. (Google might be in a slightly different situation given the existence of Google News, although I have reservations about charging a search engine for displaying the results of searches.)
@bhalla@timrichards Why a levy? It would be an arbitrary value someone makes up and clearly meta won’t agree with that.
Those web services companies know exactly how long an ad is looked at or clicked and so a share of any ad revenue from that post can easily be calculated and paid in commission to the publisher of the article.
If they tell you they can’t they are lying
@pmoeser@bhalla I'd be just as happy with a levy on all businesses, but as Meta and Google have taken away all the ad revenue that's powered journalism it might seem fitting. They can spare it.
@timrichards@pmoeser I don’t think any business has a right to exist (and these media outlets—ex-ABC etc—are businesses first, whatever they say). If something “better” comes along and eats their lunch, then so be it. If we as a society think that a particular business should exist regardless, I think the transparent approach is either to subsidise it through general taxation, or nationalise it. In respect of News Corp, I think I’d greatly enjoy the latter! 🍿
@bhalla@pmoeser The main problem is they're not just businesses - it's impossible to run an effective democracy without functioning news media. Having said that, I don't think any public funding should be directed to specific media companies - more to public interest journalism, perhaps by project. And definitely arms-length from government.
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