Penny Mordaunt doesn’t understand the internet

Penny Mordaunt’s flip-flopping over gender self-ID makes it difficult to know where she stands. But on another issue she has made things abundantly clear: Mordaunt doesn’t understand how the internet works. If she makes it to the final round of the leadership contest this afternoon – and indeed to No. 10 – Mordaunt has vowed to make the likes of Facebook and Google pay when news content appears on their sites. This half-baked plan makes a fundamental misunderstanding. Mordaunt says:

‘We will create a news bargaining code, similar to the law that has been passed by the Australian government. This will mean that major online platforms like Google and Facebook will be required to reach a deal with news publishers to compensate them for their content being freely distributed across those services.’

By ‘freely distributed’, Mordaunt appears to be referring to links to news stories. But why should Facebook and Google cough up for this? Here’s a link to the article Mordaunt wrote in City AM setting out this proposal.