SYDNEY: Facebook Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Australian lawmakers to discuss rules that would make internet giants pay news outlets for content but failed to convince them to change policy.
According to the country’s Treasurer, Zuckerberg “reached out to talk about the policy and the impact on Facebook” and a constructive discussion followed last week between the social media billionaire, Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and communications minister Paul Fletcher.
“No, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t persuade me to back off if that’s what you’re asking,” Frydenberg told the Australian Broadcasting Corp, without giving further information of the meeting.
The company’s executives regularly meet with government stakeholders on a range of topics, a Facebook spokeswoman in Australia said.
“We’re keenly engaging with the Australian authorities with the objective of landing on a practical framework to assists Australia’s news ecosystem,” the spokeswoman added.
Australia plans to instigate a law that would force Facebook, and internet search giant Google Inc to discuss payments to media corporations whose content drives traffic to their websites. If the parties cannot concur on payments, a government-appointed mediator will fix the payments for them.
Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, and Google defer the “News Media Bargaining policy” and have mounted public movements against it. Google has warned to take out its search engine from Australia while Facebook has threatened it would end Australians sharing news content on its site if the laws go ahead.
The proposed regulations – a world-first – aims to deal with the inequity in bargaining power between the news media and tech giants. Google and Facebook would have to pay for displaying news content and supply media companies with information on changes that might affect their traffic – such as alterations to news rankings or the search algorithm. If they unsuccessful to comply, they could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
