Google and Meta would never learn to value news content unless legislation mandating the two platforms to negotiate with Taiwanese news media over the pricing of content is passed, media experts said yesterday.
Taiwan’s print and broadcast news media outlets have negotiated with Google and Meta in four meetings in December last year and this week.
Following negotiations in December, Google on March 8 launched a Taiwan News Digital Co-Prosperity Fund, in which it pledged to spend NT$300 million (US$9.85 million) in the next three years to facilitate the digital transformation of Taiwan’s news industry.
Photo: Reuters
However, at a negotiation meeting on Monday, Google claimed that it does not generate profits from news content and merely offers links that bring online traffic to news Web sites.
On Tuesday, Meta told a negotiation meeting that it would not offer a similar co-prosperity plan and argued that it does not post news links on Facebook. Less than 3 percent of Facebook posts contains links to news, it said.
“Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang (唐鳳) has repeatedly said that offering co-prosperity plans and stipulating laws requiring platforms to negotiate with news media over the pricing of the content are not mutually exclusive,” National Taiwan University Graduate Institute of Journalism professor Lin Chao-chen (林照真) said.
“Since Meta rejected any co-prosperity plan and Google refused to acknowledge that news has value, it is time to seriously consider making negotiations over news content mandatory through legislation,” she said.
Google’s claim that it does not generate profits through news content is incorrect, Lin said.
“Google does not produce any content, and yet it has created the brand ‘Google News,’ in which it presents content from different news media. In its search results, it shows headlines, photographs and links to news stories, but Google has never paid to use any of these materials. That is a fact,” she said.
National Cheng Kung University law professor Hsu Hsiao-feng (許曉芬) said that Google’s claim downplayed the “indirect profits” it generates by displaying news content.
“Google can draw users to the platform by showing news headlines and photographs. The traffic has enabled it to gather all sorts of user data, which in turn become incentives for advertisers to place advertisements,” Hsu said, adding that lawsuits between the French Competition Authority and online platforms have all taken their indirect profits into account.
Indirect profits include advertising revenue generated from content on search engines, gathering user data and commission that platforms can collect as intermediaries, Hsu said, adding that one can only accurately gauge profits that a platform earns by taking all these sources of income into consideration.
“Google’s co-prosperity plan requires media outlets to submit proposals, and mandates that each outlet can receive funding for only one project each year. The funding that each outlet receives is no match for the indirect profits that Google earns by posting news headlines and photographs on its platform,” Hsu said.
“The plan looks more like a subsidy program to compensate for the costs that news media spend on digital transformation. Whether the fund can be distributed in an objective, fair, transparent and nondiscriminatory manner remains to be seen,” she added.
National Chengchi University law professor Richard Wang (王立達) has drafted a bill requiring news media and digital platforms to undergo mandatory arbitration if they fail to reach an agreement over the pricing of news content published on digital platforms.
He said he was glad that similar bills have been proposed by Democratic Progressive Party legislators Lin Chu-yin (林楚茵) and Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅), and that the legislature’s Transportation Committee would soon review these bills.
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