Facebook's blocking of news sites in Australia, in a battle over paying for media content, has brought into sharp focus several deep fissures in our modern digital media landscape.
Even as Facebook relents, agreeing to slowly unblock news pages and to negotiate payment with primary media players, a deeper problem remains, one virtually absent from the public discussion about this conflict – quality news costs money and people are generally not prepared to pay for it.
Complicating this is the dominance of Facebook and Google, virtual global private monopolies in a field which did not even exist a few years ago which have arguably reached the status of essential public utilities.
Their threats to block news content as pushback to government regulation should be a wake-up call, a classic illustration of the problems of globalisation where international companies have the heft and will to bully national governments. This is a matter of sovereignty.
We all know a sound democracy depends on a well informed public, because people, to cast a meaningful vote, need to know what's going on. So cutting off news to Australians is a body blow to our democracy, especially considering the flood of fake news already believed by far too many people. Facebook effectively blocked verified, fact-checked news (the bit that costs money) while the blathering cowboys of Youtube – where most conspiracy theorists get their 'information' – continued unchecked.
Many Facebook-lite users have graced newspaper letter pages with sentiments such as "Who needs facebook, I can go directly to news platforms." But this harks back to the old days of print news, where most people bought only one newspaper or consumed the highly summarised and curated TV evening news. Far more news is available today.
The same people often remark that Facebook is boring anyway, or just full of crap, and blame this on the medium. They seem unaware that if their experience of Facebook is crap, that's because their online friends post a lot of it. But a network of informed, intelligent people can offer a smorgasbord of new information and thought.
Facebook also offers people the chance to talk back, and they do so on public pages such as the very media sites blocked in this latest move. Vigorous public debates are typically supported by links to other news pages, which also have been blocked. Such users transcend the infamous 'echo-effect' that can isolate the page of an incurious user. The loss of this was a serious blow to town square discussion and information sharing.
Now, even as media pages have returned to the platform, there is nothing stopping the tech giants from again wielding this blunt instrument, and any benefit to smaller players is unclear..
Unless, that is, we had an alternative, a new way of accessing news which also solved the problem of paywalls.
Paywalls are a legacy of old media, each platform standing behind their battlements and trying to compete with all the other platforms for subscribers. This, so far, has failed to replace the advertising 'rivers of gold' that used to support commercial media. But more than that, they disenfranchise all who cannot afford to pay multiple subscriptions. It appears Australia's media giants are wallowing in their own feifdoms, vying for market prominence behind paywalls. In this they make an age-old mistake – a failure to see things from the consumer's point of view. The fact is that most people cannot or will not afford multiple news subscriptions, so they are forever locked out of most information sources while the media companies are denied this revenue.
What's needed is a new platform. Call it 'Ozmedia'. People could subscribe for about the same amount as a single platform but get access to all participating platforms, who get paid per click. It could be owned and set up by existing media platforms, or by the government if it was run at arms-length. The pay per click system would even out the disparity between mega and micro players as, presumably, the Sydney Sentinel or the Eurobodalla Beagle would get far fewer clicks than the big players. The system would also encourage competition between the platforms, where hopefully the attraction of quality content would counter the populist clickbait that already proliferates. The ABC should be included but also available free to the taxpayers who fund it.
Its initial subscriber base could be all the participating media companies' existing subscribers, and the obvious value for money should make promoting further membership relatively easy. After all, a nominal $15 per month or so is less than people used to pay to have the paper delivered every day. Students could enjoy generous discounts or use their parents' accounts.
The platform/app could have rolling headlines searchable by story tags, by title or by keywords. Email alerts would keep people aware. Alerts could be customised by interest area, so people with no interest in sport, for instance, could reduce the spam effect by specifying only news and comment. Or vice versa. All this is basic tech already available on most platforms.
It would be advertising-free, so there would be little need for Ozmedia to collect user data beyond subscription information – promising to not do so would make it more attractive than the data-hungry Facebook and Google. Links to news from those platforms might arrive at the Ozmedia paywall, which would admit subscribers.
Yes it would be a complex negotiation among the media players, and would need to be slick and well designed, but those players have the necessary resources and skill base.
Then, if the global giants try another stunt like this, we could give them the middle finger and go to Ozmedia for our information.
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