Stephen Jones says governments failed to see social media threat until it was too late

Speaking as he prepares to wrap up 15 years in parliament, Stephen Jones says he’s concerned the attempts to force social media companies to pay for news have come ‘too late’.

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland. Picture: NewsWire / John Appleyard

The Morrison government failed to foresee that Meta would simply walk away from hosting news on its platform, with outgoing Labor Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones warning the tech giants present an ever-growing threat to Australia’s body politic.

Mr Jones, who will leave the parliament at the upcoming election said he was increasingly concerned about the influence of search and social media giants and their capacity to influence elections and public views on issues. He warned that past governments had failed to act to preserve news media.

“(The News Media Bargaining Code), it was a perfectly available tool to put in place, I’m not critical in that respect, it was a world first attempt to level the playing field to make sure you had commercial negotiations going on,” he told The Australian.

“But I would say the big blind spot was that they did not foresee a situation where social media companies would take their bat and ball and go home and block the content from their platform.’

In March last year Facebook owner Meta walked away from its deals with 13 Australian media companies that saw it pay almost $100m in exchange for hosting news content on its platforms. Meta announced it would turn off its news tab in Australia and the US, following similar moves in the UK, Germany, and France, citing the need to “better align our investments to our products and services people value the most”.

Google has continued with several of its deals first inked under the code, which saw it pay in the vicinity of $100m to media companies.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Picture: AFP

Mr Jones was delegated to handle negotiations with the tech giants — as they related to payment-for-content deals — by Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who cited a conflict of interest due to his wife’s role at News Corp Australia, the publisher of The Australian. Mr Jones said the disregard social media and search companies had for the truth, or for stopping lies and falsehoods on their platforms, had been on full display in recent years.

But he noted it was clear they had the capacity to block certain false content.

“I’m pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg’s face and identity are not the subject of the volume and velocity of identity fraud and scams on his own network, as so many other leading identities around the world are,” Mr Jones said. “The reason that doesn’t happen is Mark Zuckerberg protects his own identity and online safety.”

Mr Jones said while media companies had to take some responsibility for their decline, previous governments had failed to see the coming crunch for the news sector or act to address it.

Mr Jones also said successive governments had not contemplated what the collapse of advertising would mean for media companies.

“When you saw Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison scrambling to put together the News Media Bargaining Code, it was almost too late an attempt to address it,” he said. “It was also the consequence of a series of catastrophic decisions from almost every media proprietor.” Mr Jones said the decision by some companies to freely allow access to their news online was a key mistake for the sector, as was the failure to see the end of print classified advertising.

The Australian was the first general news publication in the country to introduce a paywall, in October 2011.

Mr Jones said he was “deeply worried” about the decline of news, coupled with the rise of online actors exploiting social media and search to influence Australians.

“AI will supercharge that,” he said. “We’ve got to jealously guard our sovereignty.”

Originally published as Stephen Jones says governments failed to see social media threat until it was too late