The Australian government has announced it will create new rules to force big tech companies to pay local publishers for their news.
The long-awaited ruling follows a world-first law passed by Australia in 2021, designed to make giants like Meta and Google pay for hosting news on their platforms.
Earlier this year, Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – announced it would not renew payment deals it had with Australian news organizations, creating an impasse with lawmakers.
The new rules, announced on Thursday, will force companies that earn more than A$250 million ($160 million; £125 million) in annual revenue to enter into commercial deals with media organizations or face having to pay higher taxes.
The design of the system is not yet finalized, but it will apply to sites such as Facebook, Google and TikTok.
In a statement, Meta said he was concerned that the government was “making one industry pay to subsidize another.”
Unlike the previous model, the new framework – called the News Bargaining Incentive – will force tech companies to pay even if they don't strike deals with publishers.
“Digital platforms receive enormous financial benefits from Australia and they have a social and economic responsibility to contribute to Australians’ access to quality journalism,” Deputy Treasurer Stephen Jones said on Thursday.
The previous News Media Bargaining Code saw news organizations negotiate commercial deals with tech giants, while also committing companies like Facebook and Google to invest millions of dollars in local digital content.
This code aimed to address what the government called an imbalance of power between publishers and technology companies, while also offsetting some of the losses suffered by traditional media due to the rise of digital platforms.
As the deals negotiated under this deal neared their expiration, Meta said it would not renew them, resulting in about A$200 million in lost revenue for Australian publishers.
Instead, Meta announced it would phase out its dedicated news tab – which highlights articles – on Facebook in Australia and reinvest the money elsewhere.
“We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content… news represents less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed,” he said in a statement in February.
The announcement sparked a strong reaction from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government, which described the move as “a fundamental failure” of Meta's “responsibility to its Australian users”.
“The risk is that disinformation fills the void created by the absence of information on the platform,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said at the time.
The new tax model comes into force in January 2025 and will be enshrined in law when Parliament returns in February.
The government says its focus will be on forcing tech companies to fund Australian journalism in return for tax deductions, not to generate revenue.
