Just because Facebook is big tech doesn't mean it was wrong to withdraw media supply
Many of us write blogs and articles which we launch onto the limitless InterWeb ocean knowing that anyone from Sydney to Timbuktu may read it. Some of us even do that for a living, in which case we will often launch a subscription model, payment for a regular newsletter for example.
Either way we know what we are getting into. If we just publish our content on the open seas, we know we have no expectation for pecuniary return. If we want to restrict readership, we need to set up some form of barrier via a username and password for example. Many newspapers do this and I’m sure many of us have clicked a link to an article only to come across a “please login to read the full article” or similar. This is often known as “clickbait”.
If newspapers want to keep all their information proprietary, they can just ensure that everything remains behind a paywall. One of the major tenets of the Internet is that nobody owns it. I subscribe to several Australian newspapers and several foreign ones as well. But the truth of the matter is, if I didn’t use Google, Facebook, LinkedIn (other social media platforms are available) I would probably read a lot less Australian content than I do now. Social media probably increases Australian newspaper readership, not reduces it, and for those articles that are not paywall protected the papers still display their own advertising in the body of the articles, hence increasing the volume of people who see it.
Certainly, for foreign news, I hardly ever go the Australian newspapers as my first port of call unless I’m ‘directed’. Australian foreign news is nearly always behind the foreign press and Australian media often implicitly acknowledges this by regularly syndicating articles from well-known and respected foreign publications.
The truth is that the traditional newspaper model is in secular decline. However, this does not mean newspapers have any more right than you or I to assume anyone has an obligation to pay for our views and content if we freely publish it. The uncomfortable truth is no one goes to the South Adelaide Bugle as a first port of call (apologies if there is a South Adelaide Bugle).
If you want people to pay for all your content or restrict it, then just put it all behind a paywall. Don’t carve-out the internet. Media has no more right than any of us to rent seek or pork barrel for special privileges. Otherwise, we all should entitled to some return for anything we publish freely. As Harry Bosch would say “Everyone should get paid or no one should get paid.” (Actually, he didn’t quite say that.)