Washington tells Britain a trusted-news boost would hand authoritarians a drafting template

This rule is written for someone standing at a bus stop with a thumb on a feed. According to the News Media Association, whose submission Charlotte Tobitt gathered for Press Gazette ^[11], what that person does with a news post is scroll past it, or read the headline in the feed and never click, which leaves whatever value the impression created sitting with the platform ^[14]. That is the behaviour any prominence duty would actually operate on, a different behaviour from the one television prominence rules were built for.

Then there is the list. Whoever ships the boost needs one, and the Green Paper's suggested starting point is the Online Safety Act 2023 test for a recognised news publisher: primary purpose of publishing news, editorial control, a standards code, a complaints mechanism ^[8]. The paper's stated reason for wanting prominence is countering misinformation, especially during unrest or crisis ^[7]. Nothing in the test it proposes to borrow asks whether a particular story is true. A ranker fed that list promotes governance paperwork and hopes accuracy comes bundled.

The Act already makes platforms offer recognised publishers an appeal before removing or moderating their content ^[9]. Washington's specific objection is that prominence stacked on top of that widens the gap between outlets inside the category and everyone else, and it notes that American outlets sit outside ^[10]. So the filing carries two arguments in one envelope. The precedent argument, about a template other governments could invoke ^[4], outlasts this consultation. The market-access argument is a trade complaint, and it is in the same document.

The sharper move is procedural. The submission, dated 2 September and filed 71 days into a consultation that opened on 23 June ^[1], quotes YouTube's own warning that the measures could downgrade visibility and stifle organic growth for creators, independent journalists and outlets not designated trustworthy ^[5], then asks the UK to answer that on the record ^[6]. A company complaint becomes a paragraph a department has to write.

Meanwhile Australia's draft bill, published this week, would make platforms prompt users to switch the algorithm off, with penalties above A$100m ^[17]. Britain wants the same ranking machinery to push chosen publishers up ^[2]. Even the BBC, in its own response, pointed towards the digital markets regime rather than a new prominence rule ^[16]. The News Media Association's speech objection is that the state, or a body accountable to it, would end up deciding which journalism the public sees ^[12].

Any ranking rule defined by category has to answer whether its list describes how an outlet is run or what it published, and whether the promotion changes what a user does or only what a user sees. If the honest answer to the second is "only what they see", the duty produces placements, and placements are a number a publisher cannot bank. The measurement that would settle it is reads per designated publisher rather than slots filled, and the tradeoff is immediate: publisher-level clickthrough reporting is exactly the audit trail a platform does not want a regulator holding. The outlets that will test whichever version ships are the ones just outside the list, and the National Union of Journalists has already named the outcome it expects for them, which is independent publishers who earn money on social platforms going out of business ^[15].</body_markdown> </invoke>