Platforms vs Publishers: The Forever War

Much like Joe Haldeman's sci-fi classic, the period from 1997 to 2024 seems like a time dilation that only lasted a few years, and another round of unnecessary conflict seems upon us again.  

by Denis Haman

Published: 15:32, 12 September 2024

Last updated: 04:46, 13 September 2024

Earlier this week I caught up with the insightful Ricky Sutton, who is currently consuming a gargantuan amount of information to make sense of the US Department of Justice vs Google: Round 3. 

Having worked together at News Corp back in the 1990s, we have a lot of shared experiences, the largest arc of which is having lived through the purposeful and systematic dismantling of publishing and its associated commercial structures by Big Tech over the last 25 years. Sometimes we had ringside seats, and sometimes we were in the ring, being punched by both the opponent and the referee, and sometimes even by our own corner.

For both of us, the fire still burns strong. We care about the well-being of the industry. We care about the thousands of publications shut, about the morphing of "proper" journalism into algorithm-feeding churnalism.  For clarity, I am not some snob. I love a good tabloid story, as much as a well-considered and carefully researched magazine long read. What I don't love is having to scan 1,500 words of waffle to answer the question of when the particular football match is on, because that is what Google's algorithm has decided is "good quality".

It isn't. It is a tragic and unnecessary waste of human energy.

My catch-up with Ricky was useful and informative, both because our views aligned on Big Tech vs Publishers so readily after all this time, but also because I have kindly been invited to a Future of Media Technology conference panel on the topic of Platforms vs Publishers, by the excellent people from UK Press Gazette.

My first thought was that, well, this is a bit of an overwhelming topic to fit into a 20 minute panel alongside some very clever people who will have important thoughts on it. As for me, I could go for 20 minutes straight without catching a breath as to the state that media and publishing finds itself in thanks to platforms.

What to say? Or more importantly, what not to say?

Sorry to say, we were to blame

To start at the very beginning, it is important to be honest and say that in the mid-to-late 1990s and a long time after, we, the media, were slow off the mark. Yes, we did some stuff, set up websites, tried some other products to a greater or lesser success, and we watched as classified advertising and its associated revenue disappeared. We bought into the "open web" concept while trying to withhold newspaper and magazine content in order not to cannibalise existing revenues. We let Big Tech take our content and our audiences and audience data. We let them dismantle our sales teams on the promise of "efficiencies" while they built ad sales monopolies and trillion dollar businesses. 

We didn't believe our eyes, we fought against each other, while Big Tech emptied our pockets.

That in turn created a downward spiral that we have been trying to break out of for the last 25 years, while being at the mercy of Meta and Google algorithms, to name the two chief offenders. 

Sure, this was an incredibly disruptive era, and we didn't adapt that well. There were casualties. Thousands of newspapers have shut down. Tens of thousands of journalists have lost their jobs. Local media in particular has paid the price. However, we are resilient and new business models have emerged. An uneasy truce broke out. Words like frenemies entered service to define our relationship with the tech gatekeepers.

Fourth Estate

Speaking to an ex-Googler last week, he recalled how he spoke to his friend at Facebook, who said that Facebook "turned the news off because it wasn't making them money and it was never of any use to them".

Really? 

I distinctly remember Facebook courting publishers and having specialised roles to work with publishers in order to stimulate engagement and have something interesting for people to share and engage over. Yet once they had honed their algorithms for maximum profit and minimum mental health well-being, publishers found themselves discarded. We were used and then cast aside and didn't really see it coming, because we believed that what we do is important. It is now clear that they don't share that view. Meta has clearly demonstrated it over the last few years in Australia and Canada in particular.

Except what we do is important. The Fourth Estate plays a role in society that a YouTube Fortnite streamer doesn't, even though my nine-year-old would disagree. 

From the Belfast News Letter publishing the US Declaration of Independence before the British monarchy had seen it, to Watergate, Iran-Contra, Cash for Questions, FIFA Corruption, Lance Armstrong's Doping, MPs expenses, Wikileaks, the Panama papers, the OxyContin scandal and countless other global points of fact, from the big to the small, planted into the public discourse by journalists every year, the Fourth Estate plays a role in society which is unique. This is why we do not have the protection of Section 230 in the USA and equivalents elsewhere, and we have higher bars to clear in every aspect of what we do than Big Tech enjoys. 

This is why we are prepared to work harder for less money. Because it ultimately matters that society has a vibrant and healthy media landscape, where important stories can be told, regardless of whether they are human interest or political corruption.

The reality is that none of that matters to Big Tech. And we are at the very start of the new cycle with a new crop of Big Tech (GenAI) companies as well as existing behemoths scrambling for more content, which they also tell us is not that important or valuable.

What now?

You may have seen that Ilya Sutskever of OpenAI fame (the actual brains) has just raised $1 billion dollars, and in this grossly accelerated financial timeline, that means his new business Safe Superintelligence, with 10 employees, is immediately valued at $5 billion. The market cap of News Corp? $15 billion. OpenAI's current valuation? $80 billion and set to rise further.

A friend who is also an industry veteran said to me recently, "sure, at least these new guys want to pay for content, a bit like OpenAI's deal with News Corp". My view is that OpenAI wouldn't have the money to pay News Corp, if it hadn't already stolen content from News Corp as well as others. Which is why the New York Times is taking a firm position with them.

OpenAI - and the rest - have taken your content without permission, built their businesses on it, extracted more value from the content than you will ever do, and are now chucking metaphorical peanuts back at you if you are big enough and make enough noise. 

I am not equipped to comment on the deals that have been struck so far, but they will of course not be available to everyone. There is no intention to make good on the industrial scale theft. The biggest and most powerful publishers will get something but what about smaller ones? Where do you even start if you want to be compensated?

So, what is to do?

The course of action could and should be really simple - an industry-wide initiative with suitable pressure on governments to both stop the ongoing theft and compensate the victims, followed by a framework for a fair value exchange. Industry and regulators need to come together, which is obviously easier said than done.

My worry is that we will be fighting each other again, while our pockets get emptied some more. 

It feels like the 1990s all over again, but the music isn't as good.