After months of threats, Facebook finally hit the big red off button on the server labeled Australia and Google is making big backroom deals with media barons like Rupert Murdoch. To help us parse through the policy debates and online discourse about the Australian news media bargaining code, we’re joined by J.R. Hennessy (http://twitter.com/jrhennessy), editor of Business Insider Australia. Henno gives us a bigger picture of how the Internet has long left behind those heady days of a free and open utopia as we discuss the changing relationship between Big Tech and Big Media and the role of government regulation.

Read Henno’s great piece on his substack: http://jrhennessy.substack.com/p/zucked

Some other stuff we reference:
• The trouble with the media bargaining code, by Lizzie O'Shea: http://overland.org.au/2020/12/the-trouble-with-the-media-bargaining-code/
• A pox on Facebook, but also on the media bargaining code, by Samantha Floreani: http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-pox-on-facebook-but-also-on-the-media-bargaining-code-20210218-p573qb.html
• Big Tech versus journalism: publishers watch Australia fight with bated breath, by Richard Waters et al.: http://www.ft.com/content/2fed6b2a-01ba-4c7e-8e95-d50f74c316bf

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Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).