The Public Interest News Foundation's Jonathan Heawood argues that the tech giants should be compensating publishers. There are two major parts of the argument. First, he argues that "platforms need publishers, just as publishers need platforms." Second, the platforms are earning "the lions's share" of the revenue. Both arguments are highly suspect. The internet was thriving long before publishers got involved, and their involvement led to a world of paywalls, surveillance and tracking, threats of lawsuits, and more. And much of the revenue earned by platforms is derived from people sharing their own content with each other - the publishers' contribution is a small fraction of that. I don't see why the rest of should have to pay a special tax to the publishing sector, particularly when the sector has done so much over the last few decades to prevent the sharing of knowledge and information (I have no sympathy with the platforms either, who have used algorithms indiscriminately to lower the level of discourse on a global scale).
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