Michael Markovitz is Director of the Media Leadership Think Tank at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science.

South Africa’s Competition Commission has released the final report of the Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry (MDPMI), a two-year investigation into how search engines, social media platforms and AI firms affect the viability of the country’s media sector. The outcome is a pragmatic, mostly pre-negotiated settlement that delivers enforceable benefits for news organizations while revealing the limits of what a Global South regulator can achieve against global platform design and entrenched structural dominance.

When the inquiry began in 2023, the Commission signaled that it wanted to move beyond a narrow “pay for harm” model. The provisional report in 2025 showed a willingness to stretch competition law toward broader democratic concerns, including media sustainability, algorithmic opacity and the public value of journalism. The final report maintains this wider framing but recognizes the boundaries of national regulatory authority.

Providing support for South African media

Redesigning ranking systems, restructuring digital advertising markets, or altering AI training incentives was always beyond what a Global South competition authority could realistically enforce. The Commission therefore prioritized negotiated, enforceable settlements that take effect immediately rather than adversarial processes and potential litigation that would delay relief while publishers face deepening financial strain.

The centerpiece of the final report is a structured settlement with Google, worth R688 million (about US$40 million), over five years. Although negotiated, it is fully enforceable. The settlement includes R38 million per year for three years for the Digital News Transformation Fund (DNTF) for small and community media, funding already committed last year and not new money, with a further R19 million per year for two years in matching grants tied to the same mechanism.

It also includes R71 million per year for five years for Google News Showcase for national publishers and the SABC, R45 million per year for three years for an AI Innovation Fund for mainstream media, and R11.6 million over three years for industry-wide training, including vernacular-language support with the Media Development and Diversity Agency. These commitments are backed by compliance affidavits and the possibility of escalation to the Competition Tribunal for any breach.

The final report abandons the idea of a single national media fund in favor of several parallel, purpose-built journalism funds: the DNTF, Google’s Showcase and AI programs, the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) proposed Journalism Fund SA and statutory mechanisms through the Media Development and Diversity Agency. This reflects the plurality of South Africa’s media landscape and the complexities surrounding public-interest funding.

The Commission also reached negotiated outcomes with Meta, TikTok and Microsoft, covering monetization tools, analytics support, expanded eligibility for publisher programs and visibility improvements. X was criticized by the Commission for refusing to participate in earlier public hearings. The company was also absent from the Commission’s final negotiation process and now faces imposed remedies that it may appeal. One of the most significant institutional outcomes is the strengthened role of self-regulation. Access to several key remedies, including Google News Showcase and monetization tools, now depends on whether publishers belong to the Press Council or the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. This was a core demand of the SANEF-led alliance, which argued consistently that platform funding should support accountable, ethical journalism. However, the settlement provides no direct funding for these self-regulatory bodies. Their financial fragility remains a structural weakness that could undermine the architecture of the remedies if not addressed in parallel policy processes.

In an attempt to provide for a fairer negotiation, the Commission recommends that the Minister grant a block exemption enabling collective bargaining by South African media organizations. This provides the legal cover necessary for publishers to negotiate jointly with global platforms, though it cannot, on its own, correct the underlying imbalance in bargaining power.

Limitations and structural gaps

On ad-tech and AI, Google must implement EU-equivalent transparency and anti-self-preferencing obligations in South Africa and extend any future EU or US structural remedies within six months of implementation. AI companies must provide South African publishers with the same content-control mechanisms available in the EU, including the ability to block training and summarization. However, the Commission’s remedies do not create a licensing or compensation regime for training data, leaving a structural gap that will have to be taken up in future legislation.

Another notable omission is the provisional proposal to prevent platforms from downranking posts containing news links. Ordering platforms to alter their ranking systems would have required intervention in core technology design and exposed the Commission to almost certain litigation. Its absence highlights the inquiry’s overriding limitation: a national regulator can extract concessions, but it cannot re-engineer global platform architecture.

The provisional report also floated a 5% to 10% digital levy on major platforms if negotiations failed. The final report drops it entirely. Trump-era executive orders threatening retaliation against countries imposing digital taxes, combined with domestic Treasury constraints, made such a measure politically and practically unsustainable.

The MDPMI delivers meaningful gains: enforceable funding, monetization tools, AI controls, ad-tech transparency, a pathway to collective bargaining and a democratic framing of platform power. But the deeper structural problems that weaken journalism, including concentrated, anti-competitive advertising markets, design-driven harms, AI training incentives and algorithmic opacity, remain largely unresolved. The inquiry has opened a door. What happens next will depend on Parliament, Cabinet and the broader South African media sector.

Disclosure: The Media Leadership Think Tank (MLTT) participated in the SANEF-led civil society alliance that made written and oral submissions to the MDPMI. The author is also a member of the SANEF Access to Information and Media Policy subcommittee.