I think it’s a little easier and less complicated than that.

The government wants to give money, specifically Facebook’s money, to the publishing industry. The industry lobbying the government.

The government has the ability to tax Facebook directly. That’s well established. But the government has a trouble giving money to the publishing industry. That would be a subsidy. People have trouble paying subsidies to failing businesses. From the government. Usually. It’s anyway it’s a very difficult discussion to have in public.

So the government and the publishers got together and are trying to force Facebook to pay the publishers and not the government.

Facebook gracefully said no, they don’t want to pay the publishers.

So now if the government forces them to use the publisher data, they can’t logically also force them to pay a fee to use the thing they’re forced to use… The government could always tax Facebook… But the goal isn’t to tax it’s to give money to publishers…

I think this demonstrates we are not in a post-government age, this particular lobbying attempt to keep the horse and buggy industry irrelevant isn’t working as planned, it’s backfiring in a funny way.