How tech giants can stop behaving like reckless jerks
We should be able to enjoy the benefits of Facebook and Google without the destruction of journalism, and the loss of our privacy, writes Sam Dastyari. Here’s how it can be done.
Tech giants Facebook and Google are not our saviours.
They are not a “new type of corporation”.
Sure they have pretty interfaces on your screen and bean bags in their offices. But you should never forget what they are: profit driven, hungry conglomerates that obliterate their competition, refuse to pay their fair share of tax, rapaciously collect private data and, of course, destroy journalism.
A decade ago, Rolling Stone described the investment bank Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” What we’ve learned recently about the tech giants make Goldman Sachs look like a soft touch by comparison.
For the past decade these behemoths have grown with impunity.
Regulators have struggled to understand them and politicians have been afraid to challenge them, frightened of being deemed Luddites in the digital age. They are rarely, if ever, called into account.
All of which made the report this week from the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) so amazing.
The message to Google and Facebook from Australia’s competition commission was pretty clear: “You are behaving like reckless jerks.”
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Of course, that’s not the language of Rod Sims, the mild-mannered but highly effective head of the ACCC, used. But that was his point.
What he actually said was: “Digital platforms don’t recognise original content and source in ranking.”
The upshot of the ACCC report into Digital Platforms was this: Google and Facebook take the work of others and amalgamate it.
Think journalism, art and video.
They don’t actually create it. They just bring it together.
Then they suck up all the advertising dollars that would otherwise go to those creating the content.
Why?
Because businesses have no choice but to pay the money to Google and Facebook rather than the actual source.
The ACCC identified this as a reality of business that can’t be avoided. The outcome is that the tech giants are getting rich while anyone who produces content goes broke. The model is unfair.
It is also not sustainable.
So far the policy has been to allow these companies to “self regulate”, which is a nice way of saying let them do anything they want, without any oversight. Rod Simms has made it clear that this needs to come to an end.
So how do you fix it? How do you make it fair?
Well the ACCC has made 11 recommendations.
But I had an idea. Well not just me: Nick Xenophon, The Greens Scott Ludlum and I did.
Almost two years ago we launched an inquiry into the future of journalism. It had lofty goals.
Unfortunately the three of us were far better at starting inquiries than surviving in parliament.
Nick left (voluntarily) to pursue an ill-fated career in South Australian politics.
I left (pretty much involuntarily) to pursue a career of depression and irrelevance.
Scott left (constitutionally) when he became the first politician caught in the Section 44 mess, triggering a series of events he certainly didn’t foresee.
Whatever our fates, our idea was this: put a levy on companies like Google and Facebook and use that money to make investment in journalism and content creation tax free.
That was it. Simple. Australia already has tax free exemptions for research and development; why not have the same for journalism and content creation.
Make the big tech companies pay for it. It’s not like they are struggling, after all.
The next (likely) Labor Government is going to have to take the tech giants on. It will get ugly. They will fight any constraint.
Aside from what they are doing to journalism and content; the future of the Australian tax system also sits in the balance. Their ability to offshore their profits has made them some of the world’s most effective tax dodgers.
They will also need to tackle how these companies collect, and then sell, our most private data.
RELATED: Facebook is short-changing Australians on privacy
Some might argue, that the choice is in the hand of the consumer. If you don’t like how the tech giants behave; just don’t use their products. Delete Facebook and don’t use Google.
But that’s a false choice.
As the ACCC has noted, businesses can’t avoid them. And frankly, I love their products, and for good reason too. My Facebook page has a lifetime of friends, from school to university to work that I keep up to date with. I’m obsessed with Twitter to get immediate news. I spend my days Googling childhood shows and obscure articles.
I shouldn’t have to choose. I shouldn’t have to be forced to consider getting rid of them. What we need is regulation that holds these companies in check, allows them to remain profitable, and lets us enjoy their benefits without destroying journalism and content creation.
The ACCC report is definitely worth reading. If you get a chance you should Google it.
Better still, I’ll even post it on my Facebook page.
Sam Dastyari is a former senator for NSW.
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