DNPA To Meet Tomorrow To Voice Big Tech Monopoly, Antitrust Concerns

Industry body Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) has introduced the inaugural edition of DNPA Dialogues. The DNPA meet will host a dialogue between key digital media players to discuss the emerging changes in Big Tech and their antitrust practices, possible safeguard mechanisms for news agencies and their relationship with big tech companies. The meeting is slated to be held tomorrow.  

Australian economist and a former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Rod Sims will be the keynote speaker at the event. 

DNPA Dialogues will see a host of news publishers and stakeholders from the government, academia and industry learn and understand the experiences of publishers in other countries and how their governments and legislatures intervened to support them.

They will also brainstorm ways to build better, fairer and more fruitful partnerships with tech giants such as Google and Meta.

The DNPA meet will also see participation from Emma McDonald (senior policy adviser at Minderoo Foundation), Peter Lewis (director at The Australia Institute) and James Meese (senior lecturer at Melbourne’s RMIT University).

The DNPA currently comprises the digital wings of 17 media businesses including the Hindu, Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Indian Express, Malayala Manorama, ETV, India Today Group, Times Group, Amar Ujala, Hindustan Times, Zee Media, ABP Network, Lokmat, NDTV, New Indian Express, Mathrubhumi and Network 18.

The self-regulatory industry body was launched in 2018 to define, create and foster the digital news ecosystem in the country. Yet, not a single new-age media company with a special focus on digital media has been part of the founding team.

The inaugural session’s focus on Big Tech comes at a time when stakeholders across the country have cited problems such as Google’s dominance of online news disbursement, Facebook’s effect (political) on the voting behaviour of its users, Amazon’s deep discounting behaviour, Twitter’s reluctance to comply with IT rules, and more.

While the inaugural event will be held on Friday (November 24, 2022), a second meet will be held on December 9, 2022, to focus on European Union and North American issues.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.