Working the refs: Tech giants’ lobbying against the JCPA should strengthen the resolve of Congress
In the story of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, the hapless creator is destroyed by his hideous creation. At least in Mary Shelley’s classic novel, the monster acknowledged that the good doctor had a hand in its creation, which is more than can be said for Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, which this week absurdly claimed that media sites, including news outlets, have not been crucial to its growth.
In a statement opposing the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, now before Congress, which hopes to level the playing field between monopolistic social media platforms and news platforms, Meta said that “publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves because it benefits their bottom line — not the other way round.”
As if the tech company and its contemporaries hadn’t built their digital hegemony partly around the posting and discussion of millions of news stories, without sharing any of the massive revenues they accrued from selling ads against the engagement news content facilitated. Faced with the prospect of having to negotiate with a unified front of publishers and giving them a slice of the pie, Meta threatened to take news off their platform altogether. No news is definitely not good news.
An accompanying lobbying blitz by the company and fellow tech behemoth Google succeeded in keeping the JCPA out of the must-pass annual defense bill, where its bipartisan sponsors had hoped to include it. It’s ironic that a bill that was engineered in response to the dominance of the tech giants now seems to be at real risk of being felled by their political firepower, with separate pressure groups tailoring messages for both Democrats and Republicans.
The JCPA isn’t totally down and out, and its legislative proponents should use Meta’s obfuscations and pressure not as a deterrent but as proof that they’re on the right path. For too long, the tech giants have coasted along on the backs of publishers of newspapers and magazines and broadcasters while siphoning off advertising and subscription dollars. It’s time for a correction.
