In a week when the tectonic plates anchoring big news and big tech seem to be shifting around the world, we take a closer look at Google and Facebook (the Duopoly) and the growing backlash against them.
Facebook yesterday petulantly banned users from sharing news content in Australia. While elsewhere in the world it happily profits from promoting misleading state-backed propaganda.
William Turvill investigates how, despite its promises to restrict political advertising and fake news, Facebook allows news outlets run by the Chinese Communist Party to promote misinformation about the repression of Uyghur Muslims to millions.
Freddy Mayhew charts the growing regulatory backlash against the Duopoly in the world’s leading economies.
The Duopoly are desperate to stop Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code becoming law this month because other jurisdictions (including the UK) look set to follow suit if it works.
And our data journalist Aisha Majid reveals how the Duopoly has begun outspending the entire combined news industry in recent years when it comes to Lobbying the US Congress.
We also have an interview with one of the key figures who first used technology to disrupt the business model of news media: Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.
Today Newmark is interested in stopping the spread of misinformation and using some of his vast wealth to help promote quality journalism.
By the way, you’ll read below how News Corp has struck a cash-for-content deal with Google which I am going to conservatively estimate is worth $100m+.
This comes nearly four years after Press Gazette launched its Duopoly campaign urging Facebook and Google to more fairly reward the producers of the professional content which make their platforms interesting places to return to.
So all I can say is Rupert, you’re welcome!
Scroll on for this week’s six Media Monitor must-reads, some great content from the wider NSMG network and our round-up of Press Gazette links from the last week.
Dominic Ponsford – Editor in chief
‘Facebook is taking money from China to promote “propaganda” playing down the plight of Uyghur Muslims, a Press Gazette investigation has found.
China’s treatment of Uyghur people in the western province of Xinjiang has been widely condemned in the West, with the US government figures and others accusing the Chinese ‘Communist Party (CCP)’ of “genocide”.
US social media giant Facebook has not only allowed state-run outlets like China Daily and CGTN to publish posts that dismiss these concerns as Western “disinformation” – it has accepted advertising payments to help promote this content to millions of people.
Presented with the findings of Press Gazette’s investigation, Imran Ahmed – chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate – said it was “beyond disgusting that Facebook is taking money to promote Chinese state propaganda denying the reality that their state is engaged in crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims”.’
Read more:
1) Profits from propaganda: How Facebook takes cash from China to promote Uyghur disinformation to millions
“It is beyond disgusting that Facebook is taking money to promote Chinese state propaganda denying the reality that their state is engaged in crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims.”
Read more from Press Gazette:
2) Regulation: How the world’s leading economies are planning to tame Facebook and Google
“There are very significant risks of market failure in the area of news.”
3)Craig Newmark interview: Social media’s disinformation pandemic is an ‘all hands on deck’ situation
“I’m very concerned about jobs for journalists, and the future of local journalism, and had always guessed that Craigslist might have an effect.”
4) Facebook blocks news content in Australia to dodge News Media Bargaining Code
“The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content.”
5) News Corp CEO Robert Thomson on the media’s changing relationship with tech giants
“An ambitious, inspired young woman starting a digital news site in Nigeria or in Birmingham, England, or Birmingham, Alabama, now has a far better, a far, far better chance of sustainable success.”
6) How Facebook and Google outspent the entire US news industry lobbying Congress
“The issues that directly affect the media industry – privacy, antitrust laws, content liability – those are what I describe as the third rail of their business.”
This week the Monitor Network and New Statesman are focusing coverage on the global backlash against the world’s biggest tech companies.
Read more here:
- The Army of Big Tech lobbyists targeting Capitol Hill (New Statesman)
- The US bills tech giants targeted in 2020 (Tech Monitor)
- The underwhelming reality of driverless cars (City Monitor)
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