“Anyone and everyone working in the industry knows that we've been advised, pushed, and cajoled to create pieces that get featured in Google News or go viral on Facebook. Such pieces achieve hundreds of thousands to millions of views and make our employers, the publishers, very fat and happy sums of money as a result of the advertising that surrounds our deathless prose. That is, the publishers not only desire but positively lust after the services of the two platforms. They are now demanding to be paid for inclusion in what benefits them so much…

“This has been tried before. Spain passed a law insisting that Google News must pay newspapers. Google News no longer exists in Spain. Germany tried to insist that publishers could ask for payment for inclusion. Google agreed to include only those who did not ask for payment. All publishers took the traffic and not the payments… if there's going to be any money flow at all, it should be from the newspapers to the platform providers.”
Tim Worstall, Washington Examiner

“This is the corporate bosses of news organizations trying to have their cake, eat their cake, and have someone else give them money for both. There is no real basis for saying that letting people share content and links — for free — damages newspapers: it is a bit like saying pub landlords should pay newspapers if their punters discuss a news article at the bar…

“But if that’s the argument publishers are making, they have to stick to it: outlets like Facebook can choose to pay up, or prevent news articles being shared on their turf. Demanding that your stories be shared and that you should be paid for the privilege is nothing more than a shakedown.”
James Ball, Spectator USA

“All in all, it actually doesn’t sound like a bad compromise. Zuckerberg had already demonstrated that he was willing to take his ball and go home, so Australia was going to have to make some concessions. But the government didn’t want to look like they were entirely surrendering and just ditch the legislation because Facebook demanded they do so. This has the look and feel of a free market solution, so we probably shouldn’t be complaining too much. And it will very likely provide a model for Canada and the EU nations presently considering similar moves against Facebook.”
Jazz Shaw, Hot Air

“Is there a better approach? In the U.S., a newspaper lobby calling itself the News Media Alliance, along with friends in Congress, has argued for waiving our indiscriminate and Procrustean antitrust prejudice against cooperative acts by competitors. Let U.S. media outlets join forces to control the terms under which their content is searchable and linkable. If they so choose, let them create their own ad platform to compete with Google and Facebook. The truth is, media companies have always been free to block the internet ad giants from linking to their stories, but it would be suicide to do so.”
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal

Some argue, “It’s correct to be wary of more government regulations because what government bureaucrats come up with is often ineffective, counter-productive, or worse. There is another solution, however, suggested by Stephen Scheeler, the former Facebook CEO for Australia and New Zealand, who’s urging Australians to delete the Facebook app, because ‘for Facebook and Mark [Zuckerberg], it is too much about the money and the power.’…

“As hard as it may be initially, all of us should stop using Facebook, cancel our accounts, and delete the app from our smartphones once and for all. We will have to either find other ways to share news and cat pictures or build new platforms. The only way we can escape Facebook’s control and reject its power over us and our society is to ‘unfriend’ it.”
Helen Raleigh, The Federalist