Market highs & Meta lows
Today the ASX hit a record high, following Wall Street's lead as AI hype continues to boost markets. There was less good news for some of the local market's biggest news publishers.
Is Meta about to find out that Australia and Canada are very different beasts when it comes to the interplay between media and politics? Or does it know something that we don't?
Shortly after we published John Buckley’s piece this morning about how the social media behemoth’s standoff in the North American market over paying for news is making local publishing executives very nervous, Meta dropped a bombshell: Facebook is shutting down its news tab in Australia and won’t enter into further commercial agreements with media companies.
In other words, the existing deals, worth a collective $70 million annually to the local industry and struck under the federal media bargaining code, won’t be renewed. It‘s hard to think Meta doesn’t know what is coming for it next: there was widespread national uproar when, in response to the introduction of the code in 2021, it shut off news but inadvertently took down pages of public health authorities and charities.
Meta has faced similar condemnation in Canada more recently when its news ban blocked content relating to forest fires during the last northern summer. But it has stood resolute, in part because the concept of social platforms paying the news industry received a relatively cooler response there, particularly from publishers that rely on its traffic.
