On The Different Responses between Google and Facebook to The Australian News Media Bargaining Code, and The Fate of Media

Media may get some money from the tech giants by the government law enforcement, but their fate would not change if they are still dependent.

The responses between Google and Facebook to the legislation process of the Australian News Media Bargaining Code are quite so different.

Google decided not to confront Australians, signed some contracts with large news publishers, buying their news content to show in the Google News Showcase, a new function of the Google News app which is available in some countries like Germany, UK, and Brazil, etc.

On the contrary, Facebook decided to pull the plugs of all links from Australian news media, did not allow them to be shown in users’ news feed, no matter the links are posted by the Australian media themselves, or by users around the globe.

There are so many news and discussions around this ongoing event, and my points here are to find out the future and the fate of media: is this good or bad eventually for the media industry, given the situation that the government and law enforcement to ask tech giants to pay the bills, even the bills itself is arguable.

Is it BAD for Media That Facebook Banned Them? Not Really.

The referral traffic from social platforms to Australian media got a catastrophic impact right after Facebook turned off the faucet, at the time of 5:30 AM, Feb, 18th. According to the observation of Nieman Labs, Facebook still brought over 200K page views per hour to Australian media in the evening before the dooms day, and the traffic went flat right after the ban took into effect.

The traffic even went to almost zero after the end of the life cycle of the previously posted news links. To Australian media, Facebook no longer existed.