TECH giants may be forced to pay British newspapers for their stories.
New plans being drawn up in Westminster would see Facebook and Google forking out for quality UK journalism.
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Currently US tech giants reap huge profits from millions of clicks driven by news organisations.
But new Government plans would see Google and Facebook pay British publishers.
The plans are modelled on a world-leading Australian system introduced last year – which was met by heavy criticism from tech giants.
These tech giants will be expected to negotiate new payment deals with publishers.
And if the deals fall through, a UK watchdog will set a fair price.
The move is being pushed ahead by Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, amid warnings over Silicon Valley dominance of the online ads market.
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“The new regime will be an important vehicle to tackle the imbalance of power between the largest platforms and publishers,” a Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport source told the Mail on Sunday.
“The measures would give publishers greater transparency over the algorithms that drive traffic and revenue, more control over the presentation and branding of their content.
“As well as greater access to data on how users interact with their content.”
Tech giants will be under the scrutiny of the Digital Markets Unit (DMU).
This watchdog is part of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and was set up to regulate tech giants operating in Britain.
The unit is expected to moderate publishing payment deals.
And it will have powers to hand out fines to tech companies that treat British consumers and businesses unfairly.
The DMU will also scrutinise the algorithms used by Google, Facebook and others to curate news.
Critics have warned that these algorithms prioritise left-of-centre news organisations.
Facebook and Google have repeatedly argued that it already supports news publishers with its platforms and journalism projects.
Australia recently launched a crackdown on tech giants, forcing them to pay for news.
Google is the world’s biggest advertising platform, and claims nearly 30% of global ad spend – rising as high as 70% in Australia, by some measures.
The search engine giant delivers ads on its own websites – including Google.com – as well as to other pages.
Google even threatened to remove its search engine from Australia.
And Facebook actually banned news on its platform in Australia, before reversing the decision shortly after.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
