Perth Voice Interactive

THERE’S a simple way governments across Australia can support traditional media organisations and counter the power of Meta.

It’s simply to stop shovelling billions of advertising dollars to its US-based owner Mark Zuckerberg each year, and instead spend that money with local publishers, big and small.

There’s something perverse about the federal government’s handwringing over Meta, when it has been one of that company’s biggest benefactors. In fact, its advertising spend has all the hallmarks of a social media junkie, ballooning year after year until the notion it’s saving money has become a mere fallacy.

Its digital advertising budget is now hundreds of millions of dollars bigger than what it was when the traditional route was traditional media.

And it’s not alone; state and local governments have increasingly gone down this route, particularly gutting regional and suburban newsrooms until far too many communities have been left with no locally-produced news at all.

This behaviour turns a blind eye to the noxious influence of social media on communities.

Governments have a responsibility to be messaging their community through safe and inclusive avenues, and while legacy media wasn’t without its issues, does Facebook really stand up to the pub test given its legacy of scandals, bullying, misinformation and data misuse?

It’s a simple equation; support democracy by supporting local, independent media, or continue down the rabbit hole that gave the likes of Donald Trump a leg-up.