We ask you, the reader, to fall back in love with supporting the products you care about.
The Competition Commission’s provisional findings this week on Google’s industry presence were undeniably sensible.
In a lengthy and wide-ranging rebuke, it articulated precisely why search engines and social media platforms have been such a destructive force in the media landscape.
Inexorably connected to that is a national issue: to undermine the fourth estate is to hack down a pillar of our democracy.
These findings should be cheered. But the celebration must also come with a recognition that the fight is not finished … probably not even close.
The chief contention that media houses have with Google is that it functions as a monopolising force on our knowledge economy. Its algorithms curate news in a way that is, by definition, inherently subjective.
It has inordinate power to direct users where it sees fit — whether that be to sites of a certain political leaning or to legacy Western institutions, throttling local voices in the process.
It essentially piggybacks off the work of sites — media or otherwise — to lure advertisers, in the process discouraging them from advertising on the sites themselves.
The positivity of the Competition Commission ruling notwithstanding, it would be naive to think that it would by itself redress those fundamental digital infrastructure issues.
We are so entrenched in the mire of algorithms that putting the demons back into Pandora’s box will not be a simple task.
That is before we even consider the Trumpian world that we live in. The unabashed American tech oligarchy that Washington has become defies conspiracy. These are not people who are going to be easily compelled to change a system that is working so well for them.
To take back our agency, we must effect change on a societal level; we must re-engineer our norms about reading the news and consuming media.
We ask you, the reader, to fall back in love with supporting the products you care about.
Pick up a magazine, go to your favourite news site during your morning coffee, subscribe to a newsletter, share the articles that intrigue you. Be intentional: don’t go where you’re herded by social media or search engines.
You must then demand from us, the media, that we are equally deliberate. That begins with reworking our lexicon — we have to think twice about optimising for search engines and prioritising content for hits. If we ask you to support uncaptured journalism then that is precisely what we must deliver
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We certainly hope Google will deliver the money it has been suggested it pays. We will also keep pushing for more nuanced legislation to govern the other major players such as Meta and X.
But we cannot ask them for salvation. That will only come from all of us.