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Fighting digital goliaths
We need to regulate these giant platforms but we cannot compete with them when it comes to advertising.
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ndonesia can learn, to a certain extent, from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison who has opted for a confrontational approach in dealing with economic superpower China and the United States superpower tech companies for the sake of the national interest. Hopefully, there will be win-win solutions to the disputes.
The world was shocked last week, when Facebook moved to punish the Australian people for the country’s plan to force the US tech giant to pay news publishers for the news it uploads on its platform. Facebook threatened to the block news feeds for all Australians.
Facebook’s harsh action is a preemptive move to warn other countries that US big techs are already beyond the power of sovereign nations. The fight perfectly replicates the collision between David and Goliath.
However, no matter how powerful the digital companies are, they cannot take on all the sovereign nations of the world. Facebook clearly intends to prevent Australia from setting a “bad precedent”. US President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, which has control of the Senate and Congress, are eager to reform competition laws governing tech companies and that could lead to the forced breakup of the world’s largest corporations.
Reuters quoted Lisa Davies, editor of the daily Sydney Morning Herald, as tweeting: "Well, that's a tantrum. Facebook has exponentially increased the opportunity for misinformation, dangerous radicalism and conspiracy theories to abound on its platform."
Google prefers a softer approach and has agreed to provide a scheme of payment to news content organizations, such as the arrangement it recently reached with Rupert Murdoch’s publishing companies. With Indonesia Google has also agreed to pay tax, although the amount is much smaller than the country had demanded.
If we wish to get digital platforms under control, we need to ask whether we are prepared for the consequences. We have all come to enjoy the use of these platforms to the extent that we almost cannot live without Google and to a lesser extent Facebook. We are not getting these services for free, as we trade our personal data, which enables the tech giants to predict and later control our behavior.
We need to regulate these giant platforms but we cannot compete with them when it comes to advertising. We should not be so much concerned about media/publishers, even if we succeed in compelling platforms to pay (a pittance). Media companies still need to come up with creative business models away from relying on ads.
As Indonesian traditional news publishers face very serious financial difficulties, the Press Council needs to negotiate with the giant techs on behalf of the media outlets. Any negotiation has to be collective and the Press Council, rather than the government, is probably the best institution to represent the national media industry.
The government has offered assistance given the big techs’ disruptive nature. “The government does not know how severe the impact is, when the media themselves do not inform the government,” Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said.
Indonesia does not necessarily have to follow in Australia’s footsteps. But with more mainstream news publishers dying, the government and media organizations such as the Press Council should be more proactive in negotiating with the big techs.
