Traditional content publishers in India should get compensation from tech giants like Facebook, Google and X
He called upon online platforms and Big Tech to deal with misinformation and protect democracy. He said, 'The rapid spread of fake news is not only a big threat to the media as it undermines trust but it is also a big threat to democracy.'
The Union Minister advocated proper compensation for traditional media i.e. conventional content publishers. If big companies sharing content share their earnings with content publishers, then the financial loss of traditional publishers will be reduced or they may also make profits, in such a situation the news industry will get financial help and thousands and lakhs of jobs will be saved from being lost.
The Union Minister said that today content and news consumption has rapidly shifted to digital media i.e. social media like Facebook-X. Due to such changes, traditional media is suffering financial losses. Conventional content publishers have to spend a lot of time and money to produce content, but in terms of bargaining power, digital media has a big advantage over conventional media.
🚨 Social media platforms do not verify information posted online, because of which “false and misleading information” floods all platforms: Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. pic.twitter.com/rvjXoiCsEK
— Indian Tech & Infra (@IndianTechGuide) November 18, 2024
At present, only a few companies dominate the internet traffic of news content. More than 80% of the external traffic of news websites comes from Google and Facebook. News content is a big source for the traffic received by both these companies. About 40% of the trending queries on Google are related to news content. On the basis of their dominance over internet traffic, 70-80% of the advertising revenue from the digital use of news goes to the account of big companies like Google and Facebook, due to which the original publishers of the content are suffering huge losses. With the increasing digital use of news, publishers' earnings from other sources are decreasing day by day.
If Google and Facebook share the earnings from news content with publishers, then the government can also earn a decent amount of tax, because it is easier for the government to collect tax from domestic content publishing companies than to collect tax from multinational companies. Under this formula, Australia has made laws to make global tech companies share a part of the earnings from news content.
The dominance of Google and Facebook in the field of internet news is a big threat especially for those publishers who have established themselves as a big brand through decades of hard work and reliable news service. Due to the monopoly of these two big companies, their business model has suddenly started becoming unstable. In such a situation, if something untoward happens in the news industry, then there can be a crisis on the broadcast of reliable news and it is sure to have a long-term impact on democracy as well.
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