Australia’s parliament has passed a law requiring large tech platforms to either strike content deals with local news publishers or pay a levy on their Australian revenues. The rule applies to Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, and other companies that generate more than AU $250 million, or roughly $178 million, in local advertising revenue and operate a significant social media service or search engine in the country. Under the new law, firms that fail to reach agreements with at least eight outlets by the end of their annual reporting periods will owe a payment equal to 2.75 percent of their local earnings. Any deals they sign, which must directly support the publishers’ news production, will offset the levy amount.
Revenue collected through these levies will be distributed to news publishers, with the size of each payment tied to the number of journalists, including freelancers, that a given outlet employs. The Australian government’s rationale, as reported by Reuters, is that tech companies benefit from news content through user engagement and ad revenue, making it fair to require compensation. The new framework replaces an earlier set of rules introduced in 2021 that the government said were no longer working effectively.
The previous 2021 measures led to significant pushback from the platforms. After those rules took effect, Meta temporarily blocked Australian publishers and users from sharing news articles on its services. Meta later negotiated individual deals with local outlets, but those agreements expired two years ago, leaving a gap that the new law is designed to close.
The same playbook has played out elsewhere. In Canada, three years ago, Meta blocked Facebook and Instagram users from sharing links to news articles in response to similar legislation. For a US technology audience, the Australian move is part of a broader international trend where governments are pressing American-owned platforms to compensate news organizations, with no equivalent federal mandate currently in place in the United States.
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