Competition Commission invites comments on investigation into Google, Facebook, and Apple
The Competition Commission is inviting comments on its Further Statement of Issues (FSOI) regarding its investigation into disparities between South African media publishers and large platforms like Apple, Facebook, and Google.
It originally released a Statement of Issues (SOI), and after receiving responses from media, digital platforms, publishers, broadcasters, and associations, it addressed them through the FSOI.
Included in the FSOI are the following themes:
- Incorporation of Constitutional interpretation into the inquiry
- The impact of mis- and disinformation
- The emphasis on radio and TV broadcast news media (especially the public broadcaster)
- The measurement of news and its benefit to search and social media platforms
- Revenue share arrangements between news media and digital platforms
- The role and importance of transparency in platforms and Advertising Technology (Adtech) markets
Icasa’s deadline for further submissions is 17:00 on 22 January 2024.
To enhance the strength of the submissions, Icasa encouraged interested parties to include corresponding evidence to support their views.
Investigating major platforms
The Competition Commission previously explained that although large search and social media platforms are funded through advertising revenue driven by traffic, engagement, and data collection, a significant portion of this comes from content produced by news publications.
“The growth of digital platforms in recent years has significantly impacted traditional news media organisations and their traditional revenue streams,” the Competition Commission said.
“The transition to digital news consumption and advertising has resulted in publishers seeing a massive decline in advertising revenue and an increase in costs, as newsrooms need to devote resources to their digital presence.”
“The commission has reason to believe that there exist market features in digital platforms that distribute news media content which impede, distort or restrict competition,” it added.
Among the imbalances between large digital platforms and news publications include the following:
- News publications face a barrier in the form of high costs to compete in the digital space and compete with players like Apple News, Facebook, and Google News, which they rely on to drive traffic.
- Apple News, Facebook, Google News, and others have become barriers to reaching readers while generating revenue through their user engagement.
- The platforms also use copyrighted content from publications to drive engagement.
- Readers have transitioned to reading news through the summaries posted on these platforms rather than navigating to the source. This restricts revenue for media publications while the platforms benefit.
“In addition, the lack of transparency on algorithms and any changes to the algorithms relating to display and referral links of news content may significantly impact on news business’ ability to operate,” the Competition Commission added.
The Competition Commission has also acknowledged concerns relating to AI and large language models like ChatGPT, which pull information from sources like news publishers without their permission.
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