Does Google do good, spreading information and knowledge and supporting free expression, as it claims? Or is it a greedy predator, stealing the local news and sucking the local media dry, as many publishers are saying?
These are the questions at the core of the Competition Commission’s inquiry into the media market and digital platforms. It is taking place in a small room in the department of trade, industry & competition’s Pretoria campus, and most of the chatter is highly technical and obscure.
But behind this façade there is tension and anger as local publishers, broadcasters and editors use the stage to confront the global giants.
There is a lot at stake: the survival of our news media, which is shrinking every month as publishers and broadcasters watch the big global tech platforms scoop up the audience, advertising and profits.
And if our news media is in trouble, our democracy and our economy are threatened, because of the central role journalism plays in the information flow that is so important to good governance and citizenship.
We have seen that platforms such as Facebook and Google can do a lot of good. They can open up and democratise public discussions, make available vast amounts of information, and connect families and communities.
The problem is that they can also do a great deal of social and economic harm. They can decide which views to promote and which to play down, just by tweaking their algorithms. Since they make more money if they promote views that stir up passions and keep their audience engaged, they tend to promote views that are shocking, divisive and aggressive.
Social media was a critical tool in the Arab Spring uprising, for example, when protesters used them to co-ordinate their activities. On the other hand, some of them played a role in the January 6 insurrection in Washington.
Facebook and Google have at least been forced by public outcry to make a show of taking responsibility to prevent harm, but Elon Musk’s X has fired all its moderators and allowed hate speech and disinformation to flourish on the platform.
Most important to this week’s hearings is that these platforms can make or break local media, also by tweaking their algorithms to promote some and suppress others. Since the majority of young South Africans get their news from social media, they are the principal gatekeepers that decide what is most important and newsworthy.
Their decisions are not made on the basis of news or social values — on what people need to know — but on what will engage audiences more and thus earn them more. In other words, they tend to promote some of the nastiest click-baiting.
What is infuriating editors, publishers and broadcasters most though, is that they make a huge profit by scooping up and using local news content, and don’t pay for it. To add to it, they do not pay local tax as they hide behind complex corporate structures in low-tax places such as Ireland or the Virgin Islands.
And it is part of a significant case of unequal competition: the local outlets have to spend large amounts of money gathering and processing news, and are struggling to make it pay. The big platforms scoop this up for free and profit enormously from it.
A Swiss economist calculated that if Google shared 50% of the profit it makes from using that country’s news, they owed the media about R1.6bn. In the US, this was calculated at around R40bn.
Our media cannot blame the global platforms for all of their troubles, as at least some of them have been slow to adapt to digital technology. But they do have a case to join the global movement for media to get fair compensation for the exploitation of their material.
Australia led the way in forcing the platforms to negotiate with local media over payment, and Brazil, Canada and Indonesia have followed a similar path. The Europeans have introduced regulation. Increasingly, countries are moving to rein in these corporate giants and make them accountable to local law to try to minimise the harm they can cause.
A key to this process is whether the commission can make the platforms come out of their protective shells of secrecy. They will not tell us anything about their algorithms, even when they make changes that have major social impact. They won’t tell us much about their steps to stop hate and other illegal speech on their platforms. And they won’t give us the information we need to argue what fair compensation might mean. X will not even agree to appear before the hearings, though it has made a submission.
The Campaign for Free Expression has put in a Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) request to push them to provide this kind of public interest information. So far, they have steadfastly refused and the hope is that the commission will use its powers to make them open up and take accountability.
If the commission, armed with this information, opens the door to fair compensation it could be a turning point for our struggling news media.
• Harber is executive director of the Campaign for Free Expression.
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