Reacting to yesterday’s congressional hearing and testimony by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, former Facebook data scientist Roddy Lindsay agrees with Haugen’s proposed solution to address the problem of big tech platforms spreading harmful misinformation and fake news – make the platforms liable for content they promote via their algorithms.
The News Media Alliance is one of 17 international and national news media associations to sign a joint letter published today calling for countries to prioritize the value of journalistic content on digital platforms and ensure fair compensation from the big tech platforms to the news publishers that produce that content.
After a month of negotiating collectively under authorization from the ACCC, with the looming threat of forced arbitration, Australian news organization Country Press Australia (CPA), which includes over 180 regional and local publications across the country, struck a deal with Google.
In early June, the French competition authority, Autorité de la concurrence, announced that Google had reached an agreement with the authority to settle an antitrust investigation regarding the tech giant’s anticompetitive behavior in the market for online advertising services.
Over the last year, multiple lawsuits, bills and investigations have been introduced to examine the anticompetitive behavior of Big Tech companies, such as Facebook and Google, and how their dominance of the online ecosystem harms news publishers and other creators.
In mid-March, Politico published a powerful piece of investigative reporting titled “How Washington fumbled the future,” detailing the Federal Trade Commission’s 2012 investigation into Google’s anticompetitive conduct and the agency’s failure to bring a case against Google.
Today, the News Media Alliance submitted a Declaration with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to strongly advocate to keep the ad tech antitrust lawsuit against Google – filed by the State of Texas and nine other states in December – in Texas instead of moving it to California, per Google’s request.
Today the News Media Alliance sent a letter to the U.S. Economic Council Director, Brian Deese, and the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)-Designate, Hon. Katherine Tai, to express serious concerns about a recent attempt by the USTR – in the very last days of the Trump Administration – to pressure the Australian government to suspend the country’s planned online platform bargaining code for news.
We applaud all 10 states that have stepped forward to take action to address Google’s flatly anticompetitive ad technology business.
The News Media Alliance commends Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) for the release of her report, “Local Journalism: The Threat to America’s Most Trusted News Source,” outlining how changes in the information marketplace and the dominance of online platforms pose an existential threat to local news publishers
