Overview
- The final Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry confirms a R688 million package from Google and YouTube to fund content licensing, innovation grants and capacity-building for national, community and non‑English outlets.
- Google will add tools that let users prioritise local news, provide technical assistance and enhanced audience data, and establish an African News Innovation Forum, while YouTube expands access to monetisation.
- Meta will offer ad credits, training and a South Africa media liaison office; TikTok will roll out publisher monetisation and analytics tools; Microsoft will extend MSN contracts to five more national publishers.
- X, which did not cooperate with the process, has been ordered to make all monetisation programmes available in South Africa and to provide training workshops.
- The inquiry found algorithms have favoured foreign outlets, referral traffic has fallen and AI firms have scraped news without compensation, prompting EU‑style AdTech transparency commitments, opt‑out controls for AI, and a recommendation to enable collective bargaining.