So Facebook doesn't want to pay

for news content provided by other people?

The previous Downunder government tried this one with the "News Media Bargaining Code" and the result has been a $200m benefit to the news media in this country.  They no doubt will tell us that this has been a good thing. I also believe that you should pay to use something belonging to other people. 

But do people actually read the news on Facebook? I have a Facebook "account" but I don't actually read the news on it. I suppose I could look for it there but I can't be bothered. I have a paid subscription for the state newspaper and, because of my work, paid access to a number of other papers. I don't spend hours every day reading "the news" provided by them on line for free. I doubt many people do. There might be a few people who can get behind the various pay walls and other devices but that there might be so many doing this the government can demand Facebook pay for this is something I rather doubt.

I tend to be very cynical about things I read (or hear) on the media. My sources of news, real news, can sometimes be very different. There are journalists I trust to do the best they can but news gathering is a very difficult art, particularly in a war zone or a disaster situation - the sort of thing that makes the headlines all too often. Journalists will be relying on "sources" which are all too often not very reliable.  Even my sources, some of them in the very centre of a situation, are not "reliable" in that all they can give me is their point of view. 

I "pay" for my Facebook account by putting up with the advertising. I could put an "ad blocker" in place but advertisers do pay to put their content up and that is where the revenue to run the service comes from. Ignore the advertising and just read what you want to read is how I approach it.

What I do not want to pay for is government controlled "information". Our taxes are already supposed to pay for that. We have "the ABC" (the almost-equivalent of the BBC) and the various state newspapers. (Ours is actually - and very accurately - called "The Advertiser".) Our national newspaper is slightly different and the standard of journalism is perhaps a little higher. The newspapers are behind pay walls. I was not aware that Facebook was simply taking them and putting them out there for nothing. No, people here are doing that. They are putting things out there because they want us to know something or are trying to convince us of their point of view.  I am absolutely certain that Meta does not have someone sit down every morning and put these papers online. 

Are the governments opposing "free" information really more concerned about having to pay to disseminate propaganda rather than getting paid to disseminate it?