The Guardian reports that Facebook and Google will be forced to share advertising revenue with Australian media companies after Australia's treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, instructed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to develop a mandatory code of conduct for the digital giants amid a steep decline in advertising brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
The code will seek to create a level playing field by requiring Google, Facebook and other media platforms that share news content to negotiate in good faith on how to pay news media for use of their content, advise news media in advance of algorithm changes that would affect content rankings, favor original source news content in search page results, and share data with media companies.