Giant tech platforms may lose bargaining power
Members of Congress plan to introduce a bill in the coming weeks to make it easier for smaller news organizations to negotiate with giant tech platforms.
The US bill is being introduced at a time when Australia is locked in a fierce battle with Facebook.
The social media giant blocked the news feed and other pages as part of a dispute over a proposed law requiring it to pay news outlets whose links lead to increased visits to their platforms, or to agree on a price through arbitration.
The commission is supposed to pass a series of antitrust bills, and the first allows smaller news organizations to negotiate collectively with giant tech platforms.
Giant tech platforms use news to attract customers, and news publishers have accused them of not sharing enough advertising revenue with them.
The legislation could boost sales in the struggling news sector, and as Facebook fights publishers, Google strikes deals with them in France, Australia and other countries.
And Google announced that it had agreed to a global deal with News Corp, involving large payments to the news organization, in one of the largest deals of its kind.
Young publishers who use Google's ad sales technology have known for years that major competitors are getting more relevant profit-sharing deals from the search giant.
It is undeniable that the news industry is struggling, with US newspaper hiring has halved since 2008 amid declining advertising revenue and changing media habits.
The envisaged legislation is supposed to be similar to the 2019 bill, which would have allowed small publishers to band together to negotiate with giant tech platforms without facing antitrust scrutiny.
This bill stipulated that only small publishers could benefit from group negotiations.
And it's possible that the big publishers have the ability to get their own deals, but if you look at the smaller publishers, the only way to get fair value is if they work together.
The majority of the Antitrust Subcommittee mentioned abuses by tech giants such as Facebook and Google in a report released in October.
One member of Congress said: We wanted the focus to remain on the tech giants. The biggest threat to a free market economy is big technology, and potential legislation should focus heavily on that.