Josh Frydenberg
Josh Frydenberg

Australia’s government says it will start forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news content.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had been working to reach a voluntary agreement with the platforms to pay traditional media for their content, but Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that those negotiations have resulted in “no meaningful progress.”

According to an op-ed Frydenberg wrote in the Australian, the code will include provisions for revenue sharing, transparency of ranking algorithms and access to user data, as well as sanctions and penalties for non-compliance.

A draft of the mandatory code is expected to be ready by the end of July, with the final text to be agreed upon by the Australian government soon after that.

A report in the Guardian says that “dozens of regional newspapers” have stopped printing since the onset of the coronavirus crisis due to declines in advertising revenue.