📰 What are the allegations against Google by the NBDA?
Why has the News Broadcasters and Digital Association locked horns with the search-engine giant over revenue sharing? Is the conflict between news publishers and Google unique to India?
•Along with the Indian Newspaper Society in February and the Digital News Publishers Association last year, the News Broadcasters and Digital Association has approached the Competition Commission of India against Google, alleging that the latter had deprived them of their justifiable revenue acquired from news dissemination on the tech-giant’s platforms.
•The central contestation is that the tech-giant has not compensated news publishers for their contribution to Google’s platforms and has engaged in practices to bolster its monopoly in the space.
•The European Publishers Council has also filed an anti-trust complaint against Google with the European Commission, challenging its existing “ad tech stranglehold” over press publishers.
The story so far:
•On October 6, the News Broadcasters and Digital Association (NBDA) approached the Competition Commission of India (CCI) against search-engine operator Google, alleging that the latter had deprived them of their justifiable revenue acquired from news dissemination on the tech-giant’s platforms. The complaint would be clubbed with similar cases filed by the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) in February this year and the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) last year.
Why is Google dominant?
•As per the NBDA, Google’s search engine commands a 94% market share in the country. The number becomes all the more crucial for news publishers with the increased transition toward news consumption online (inclusive of app-based consumption). The traditional newspaper industry in India has sustained itself on a business model wherein advertising accounts for two-third of its total revenue. On similar lines, with online proliferation, there is an increased reliance of news publishers on digital ad revenues, and in turn, tech-based companies. More than half of the total traffic on news websites is routed through Google. The search engine, by way of its algorithms and internal quality vetting, determines which news websites would be prioritised in search queries. Essential to understand here is that search engines are an important determinant in online news consumption. Readers would more often opt for an online web search rather than reaching out to a specific news website by typing its URL in a browser. This has made search-engines the first port of call for information online.
What are the key allegations?
•Google has been found to be dominant in both markets of relevance to digital publishers — online web search services and digital advertising services. A news website sells advertising spaces on its platform through ad-exchanges. In addition to this, Google also operates a platform that manages a publisher’s sale of online ads and tools to purchase display ad space. The central contestation among the parties holds that the tech-giant has not compensated news publishers for their contribution to (Google’s various) platforms and has engaged in practices to bolster its monopoly in the space. The DNPA had put forth that website publishers receive only 51% of the advertisement revenue. It has been alleged that owing to the tech-giant’s dominance in the space, publishers have been “forced” to integrate content on their platforms. They have no other alternative but to trade in the company’s exchanges and use its buying tool, Google Ads/DV 360, to receive bids from advertisers.
What is happening outside India?
•In February this year, the European Publishers Council filed an anti-trust complaint against Google with the European Commission, challenging its existing “ad tech stranglehold” over press publishers. Australia introduced the ‘Media Bargaining Code’ in February to address the imbalance. As reported by Reuters, the code requires news outlets to negotiate commercial deals individually or collectively with Facebook and Google with violations calling for civil penalties of up to $10 million. The tech firms would also have to give media outlets notice when they change search algorithms that may affect publishers’ content.
•According to Google, the revenues accrued are spent towards running “a complex and evolving business” such as maintaining data centres, further technological investments, enabling innovations that increase publisher revenue and maximising advertiser return on investment, among other things.
•A good 17 years after India got the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the transparency regime in the country remains a mirage with nearly 3.15 lakh complaints and appeals pending with 26 information commissions across India.
•According to a report by Satark Nagrik Sangathan, backlog of appeals or complaints is increasing in commissions every year.
•The number of appeals and complaints pending in 2019, from data obtained from 26 information commissions was 2,18,347. In 2020, the number climbed up to 2,33,384 with data obtained from 23 information commissions, in 2021 the number was 2,86,325 with data from 26 commissions and in 2022, it was 3,14,323.
•The highest number of pending cases was in Maharashtra at 99,722, followed by Uttar Pradesh at 44,482, Karnataka at 30,358, the Central Information Commission at 26,724 and Bihar at 21,346.
Commissions in trouble
•The report says two information commissions—Jharkhand and Tripura—out of 29 across the country have been completely defunct for 29 months and 15 months respectively. Manipur, Telangana, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh are without chiefs at the moment. Only 5% of the all positions in commissions are being occupied by women. Also, several information commissions, including the Central Information Commission, are working at reduced capacity with less than the stipulated number of members being in office.
•Under RTI law, information commissions are the final appellate authority and are mandated to safeguard and facilitate people’s right to information.
•An analysis of penalties imposed shows that the commissions did not impose penalties in 95% of the cases where penalties were potentially imposable.
•“The report shows that in several commissions a large backlog of cases has built up, resulting in a long waiting time for disposal, as governments have failed to make appointments of information commissioners in a timely manner,” said Anjali Bharadwaj of Satark Nagarik Sangathan.
•According to a separate report by the Transparency International, one-fourth information commissioner posts are vacant and there are only 5% (only 8) women information commissioners in the country. Out of total 165 posts of information commissioners, 42 are vacant, including two chief State information commissioners.
📰 Solutions by the people, for the people
•Economic science has dominated public policy since the 20th century. Debates have raged between “Keynesian” economists and “Friedman” economists: between “welfarists” who see the need for a government hand in the economy and “monetarists” who want governments out of the way to let private entrepreneurs loose and let an “invisible hand” produce good outcomes for all. Both sides agree that growth in GDP — the size of the economy measured in money terms — is essential.
Need for a shift
•Far-sighted systems thinkers in the Club of Rome gave a wake-up call in 1972. They showed that pursuit of GDP growth was destroying the earth’s capacity to renew itself and provide resources for unbridled economic growth. They introduced the health of the planet into calculations of profit and growth. Meanwhile, economists continue to treat the natural environment as external to the economy. Pleas by communities to protect it are dismissed as impediments to “ease of doing business” and GDP growth.
•By the millennium’s end, advocates of unbridled private enterprise had prevailed. Needs of citizens who earn their livelihoods by work, not investments of money, were relegated in national economic policies wherever the “Thatcher-Reagan-Chicago” model of neo-liberal economics prevailed. The 2008 global financial crisis revealed the fragility of insufficiently regulated markets. Governments of the G7 (later G20) collaborated to stabilise the financial system. They bailed out the “too large to fail” institutions while millions of common citizens, who lost homes and livelihoods, were barely compensated. In fact, some solutions to stabilise the global financial system, such as the austerity package imposed on Greece, harmed common citizens even further.
•While the ideology of “minimum government”, with balanced budgets and low inflation has continued, waves of protest have erupted around the world. Citizens complain that the global financial system is unfair. It protects the interests of large corporations and the wealthiest people while common citizens fall further behind. Demands to include the needs of ‘People’ in economic policy are becoming louder. The “3P” slogan — People, Planet, and Profit — demands a paradigm shift in economics.
Out-of-box economics
•An outline of five systemic solutions for simultaneously improving People, Planet, and Profit is provided in Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity. The guide is produced collaboratively by economists, ecologists, and social scientists. They do not model the economy as a closed system as macro-economists do. Following the Club of Rome, their ‘whole system’ model includes feedback loops between the economy, the natural environment, and social systems. Also, it incorporates empirical data from diverse sources.
•The five tracks for their solutions are: ending poverty; addressing gross inequality; empowering women; making food systems healthy for people and ecosystems; and transitioning to clean energy.
•The report projects outcomes this century if the present pattern of solutions continues. It compares them with an alternative approach that will accelerate systemic change. The present path is called “Too Little Too Late”; the other, “Big Leap”. Business as usual for present gains, with lots of talk of “do-gooding” but insufficient systemic change, is making the world miserable for the next generation. The model reveals it will lead to environmental and societal collapse later this century.
•“Big Leap”, on the other hand, can prevent catastrophe. It does not require new technology breakthroughs. In fact, both, “Too Little Too Late” and “Big Leap”, are based on the use of the same largely known technologies. The difference in the two scenarios is in equitable access to technologies, and in the ways the technologies are incorporated by local actors into solutions fitting their own contexts.
•“Too Little Too Late” preserves the present inequitable distribution of wealth and power. (The model forecasts that by 2050, on its present trajectory, India will be the most unequal society in the world.) On the other hand, “Big Leap” evolves a more equitable distribution of economic wealth and social power; it avoids a need for disruptive political revolutions.
Mistrust in institutions
•Two novelties in the model are the Social Tension Index and the Average Well-Being Index. These, the authors say, “Allowed us to estimate whether policies related to income redistribution might cause social tensions to rise or fall. We believe that if social tensions rise too far, societies may enter a vicious cycle where declining trust causes political destabilization, economies stagnate, and well-being declines. In that situation, governments will struggle to deal with rolling shocks let alone long-term existential challenges like pandemic risk, climate change, or ecological challenge”.
•India will host the G20 in a greatly disordered world. Global governance has broken down. The powerful fix the rules of the game, globally and nationally. They even control the conduct of deliberations: the agenda, who will be included, and retain their power to veto.
•Social tensions are already too high within many countries. Their governments are unable to find fair solutions through conventional “democratic” processes, with elected assemblies, competing political parties, even public referendums. Disillusionment with democratic institutions is increasing, even in democratic U.S. and Europe. Authoritarian governments are coming to power in many countries, often supported by citizens, as alternatives. “The socio-political world will break into more fragments before the planet becomes too hot,” the report points out. “Because the ways in which solutions are being found to global problems is considered unfair. Voices of less powerful people are not listened to.”
•People are not just numbers, nor merely resources for the economy. Policymaking must become more inclusive and less dominated by the powerful and the wealthy on the top. On the economic front, recoupling monetary policy with fiscal policy is necessary but insufficient. GDP must also be recoupled with nature and society.
•A paradigm shift is required in the process of problem solving at global and national levels. From a vertical process of experts at the top trying to understand complex systems through numbers and then imposing solutions on the people, to a lateral process of problem solving by deliberations amongst diverse disciplines and dialogue amongst experts and citizens.
📰 Blaming technology for deaths by suicide is misguided
•Every year, when the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) releases statistics on deaths by suicide in India, the demand to address the issue grows louder. The most recent data for 2021, released on August 30, 2022, shows that suicide claimed 1,64,033 lives during that year.
•Two decades into the 21st century, deaths by suicide remain a major source of social distress and public policy concern in India. Any loss of life is deeply unfortunate, but the notion of suicide is especially disturbing and beyond rationalisation for the affected family.
Blaming technology
•One of the causes of suicide, which has been prevalent in contemporary discussions, is the expanding role of digital technologies. Aggravation of depression and other mental health issues leading to suicide is being repeatedly attributed to technology. Factors such as cyberbullying, loss of self-esteem due to social media, extreme binge-watching of online content or heavy reliance on virtual followers/communities for validation are all said to be contributing to the issue. It is clear that the more technology gains influence over the human condition, the starker will be its role in the best and worst of human experience.
•However, it will serve us well to realise that technology is neither at the core of the problem nor the perfect solution for it. Suicide is a reality which society must respond to in the most sensitive and holistic manner possible. It is not the case that technology has no role to play in adverse mental health conditions or related cases of suicide; the issue is the sensational and misdirected analysis of the causes of suicides. This takes the focus away from a comprehensive understanding of the issue and a more appropriate solution to it.
•For example, no one can deny the link between cyberbullying and suicidal thoughts and attempts. According to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., participants who experienced cyberbullying were more than four times as likely to report thoughts of suicide and attempts as those who did not. However, similar results are true even for those who are bullied in person. The conclusion is that the medium of bullying is not the sole culprit; it is the act of bullying itself that needs to be addressed. Awareness campaigns, sensitisation programmes, community support and counselling services are usually considered good solutions against bullying — cyber or otherwise.
The case of Tamil Nadu
•News reports regarding a spate of suicides, specifically in Tamil Nadu, also illustrate this point. Preliminary news reports associated several suicide incidents with gaming addiction, particularly with online rummy games. These reports elicited a heavy policy response from the Tamil Nadu government in the form of an ordinance, which banned most online games played for money, including rummy and poker. On closer examination, multiple independent studies, such as the one by Rotary’s Rainbow Project, found a high degree of exaggeration in reports associating deaths by suicide in the State with online rummy games.
•The real reasons for these deaths were different from those earlier reported. Moreover, experts researching suicide, including Sandip Shah, Professor of Psychology at Shri Govind Guru University, Gujarat, made a direct representation to the Tamil Nadu government on insufficient data for the correlation between suicide and online gaming.
•Analysis of the data from the NCRB on deaths by suicide in Tamil Nadu makes it evident that the policy response is not adequate to address the magnitude of the crisis in the State. Tamil Nadu has consistently had among the highest shares of reported deaths by suicide in the country, reporting over 11% of total cases for much of the previous decade, and nearly 19,000 cases in 2021 alone.
•According to the NCRB, family problems, illness, substance abuse, and marriage/love-related issues alone contribute to more than two-thirds of the deaths by suicide in India. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the Tamil Nadu government to address these root causes and evolve a holistic policy response to minimise future cases. Rather than top-down policy formulations, focusing only on a few high-profile incidents, an inclusive community-based mental health and suicide-prevention approach may prove to be more effective in saving lives. Further, the State may consider how technological measures from service providers can also become a part of this policy response.
Use of technology
•The Central government, on its part, is already embracing the potential role of technology in improving mental health outcomes for citizens. In February, it announced the National Tele-Mental Health Programme to provide access to free, round-the-clock mental health interventions in remote and underserved areas. Acknowledgement of suicidal thoughts and attempts to address a host of inter-related causes and effects are necessary to design effective and proportionate policy prescriptions. While technology is certainly an agent of this complex matrix, it can neither be seen as a root cause nor as a panacea.
