South Africa to probe Google, Meta over potential anti-competitive practices with the press

The South African Competition Commission is going after tech Goliaths Meta and Google – the aim of the investigation is to determine whether there is unfair competition with news publishers by using their content to generate advertising revenue ( via Reuters).

The scope of the investigation will also include, among other things, market characteristics that may “distort competition for advertising revenue” between news media companies and digital platforms such as Google and Meta – and whether these are affected by imbalances in bargaining power.

“The investigation comes at a critical time for the media industry, as news consumption rapidly shifts online and traditional sources of funding towards print and broadcast advertising decline,” said Commissioner Doris Tshepe. to journalists. Chief Economist and Acting Deputy Commissioner James Hodge said media consumers are increasingly relying on video sharing platforms.

Both Google and Meta have experience with this type of criticism, with Google even recently accepting a large payment to publishers in Germany.

Besides the search engine giant and Facebook’s parent company, many other platforms will be investigated by the South African Competition Commission: X, Bing, YouTube, TikTok and Google Ads will be included in the survey.