[nirimda]

Apple and Microsoft generally get their pay from licensing fees rather than advertising fees and are therefore not in competition with news media companies. Reddit has generally been a fairly niche player, although if things change it might get covered. I don't know whether Twitter is as important as people have said it is, or if it is niche: it seems both Canada and a few years ago Australia both decided it was niche. And if anything, I gather than Elon Musk's purchase has made it less dependent on its limited advertising revenue and more dependent on subscriptions etc; if so it is even less in competition with news media organisations today than it was when Australia reviewed it.

Remember that even though people misleadingly call Google and Facebook tech companies, they are in fact advertising companies; and although people speak of news companies, they have generally seen news, opinion and analysis as tools for connecting eyeballs to advertising i.e. they're effectively advertising companies. This bill is about the direct competition between the two kinds of advertising companies - traditional, ~domestic companies with close and personal ties to the people who govern vs new, foreign companies who don't have such essential ties to politicians as journalists do.

If it were literally just about the provision of news, then Canada and Australia fund the CBC/RC and the ABC/SBS so why would they be so fussed? There are people who today make a living from podcasts and substacks who could not make money from traditional advertising/media companies. News would be provided.

(In fact, just to bring the point home, the original version of Australia's equivalent bill didn't allow the ABC and SBS to participate, because as government-funded media organisations they didn't suffer from the transition of advertising from news-sponsoring to tech-sponsoring in the same way as private companies.)