South Africa's Competition Commission has done something that would have seemed improbable three years ago: it forced Google to commit R688 million to local media without passing a single piece of new legislation. The November 2025 final report of the Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry (MDPMI) is the most substantive Global South challenge to platform power yet. It is also an object lesson in what competition law can achieve — and where its limits lie.
What the Inquiry Found
Launched in March 2023 under Section 43B(1)(a) of the Competition Act, the MDPMI examined how Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, X, and OpenAI affected South African news publishers after five rounds of information requests and months of public hearings.
The findings were systematic, not anecdotal. Google's search algorithm consistently overrepresented international outlets while underrepresenting local South African and vernacular-language media. Zero-click search results — where users consumed headline content without ever visiting a publisher's website — effectively extracted content value without compensation. The Commission estimated that Google took between R300 million and R500 million from South African publishers in 2023 alone through advertising displacement and reduced traffic. Meta's Facebook had algorithmically deprioritised news content, slashing referral traffic that publishers depended on. YouTube was paying SABC, the public broadcaster, only 55% of lower-value programmatic advertising revenue — well below the 70% minimum the Commission ultimately required. AI companies had scraped South African news content for model training under an opt-out framework that placed the burden on publishers, not platforms.
The Commission applied a lower evidentiary threshold than conventional competition enforcement: it needed only to show an "adverse effect on competition," not the "substantial prevention or lessening" required in merger cases. That distinction mattered. It made harm tractable to prove and the case possible to conclude in a reasonable timeframe.
The Remedy Package
The strongest argument for the Commission's approach is that it delivered concrete, enforceable outcomes without waiting for legislation.
The centrepiece is the R688 million Media Support Package from Google and YouTube, funding content licensing agreements, newsroom innovation grants, capacity-building through the Digital News Transformation Fund, and vernacular-language training via the Media Development and Diversity Agency. YouTube granted automatic Partner Programme access to all South African media outlets — including smaller publishers previously below eligibility thresholds — and extended direct ad sales support to SABC.
Meta agreed to establish a Media Liaison Office in South Africa and removed the follower thresholds that had locked smaller publishers out of in-stream ad revenue. Microsoft extended MSN news contracts to five additional national publishers. TikTok launched a Publisher Support Suite with analytics and monetisation tools. X made all its monetisation programmes available domestically with training support. AI companies, including OpenAI, offered South African publishers the same content controls and opt-out mechanisms available under the EU framework.
As Werksmans Attorneys noted in their analysis, this constitutes a comprehensive digital markets regime "living inside competition law" — no new statute required, no years-long legislative process, no uncertainty about transposition into domestic law.
Where the Model Falls Short
The case for stronger intervention is equally legitimate and deserves to be stated clearly: South Africa's news industry is in structural distress, community media outlets face closure, and the R688 million from Google represents roughly one to two years' worth of estimated annual extraction before any structural change in traffic flows. The Commission's remedies address symptoms; the underlying market structure — platforms as unavoidable intermediaries between publishers and audiences — remains intact.
The more acute gap is Meta's treatment. Unlike Google, Meta received no comparable financial package: a liaison office, workshops, and algorithmic pledges. Publishers challenging Meta's remedial framework at the Competition Tribunal discovered that their appeal documents were unpublished, with disclosure pending approval from the involved parties. Analyst Michael Markovitz observed that "there is no clear rule requiring that appeal papers following a market inquiry be published as a matter of course" — a transparency deficit that prevents any public assessment of whether Meta's commitments are proportionate to the harm documented.
Two structural remedies that would meaningfully shift bargaining power — a block exemption enabling collective bargaining by media organisations, and content-moderation regulations under the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act — were recommended by the Commission but require separate government action. Both now sit in a legislative queue with uncertain timelines.
The Guidance Note Layer
Running parallel to the MDPMI, the Commission released its Online Intermediation Platforms Guidance Note on February 6, 2026, extending platform scrutiny beyond media into e-commerce, retail, logistics, and financial services. The Guidance Note targets platforms with market power and identifies six conduct categories as likely competition concerns: price parity restrictions, interoperability blocks, self-preferencing, misuse of business-user data, differentiated trading terms favouring large over small businesses, and unfair treatment of SMEs and historically disadvantaged enterprises.
The Guidance Note is non-binding — it signals enforcement intent rather than imposing rules — but the signal is unambiguous. Efficiency justifications must now be substantiated with financial evidence, not merely asserted. That standard is harder to meet than it sounds.
The Signal to Other Regulators
South Africa's approach matters beyond its borders. Most African jurisdictions lack standalone digital market legislation but have competition frameworks. If the MDPMI model holds — meaning remedies are genuinely implemented over the coming years — it becomes a replicable template for regulators from Kenya to Indonesia who cannot wait for new digital laws.
The Commission has proved that Global South regulators can challenge platform power using instruments they already hold. Whether that challenge produces durable change depends entirely on enforcement stamina: whether Google's R688 million actually flows to the publishers it was designed to reach, whether Meta's liaison office produces measurable outcomes, and whether the block exemption ever passes. A model that negotiates well but enforces weakly will, in time, be read as a template for regulatory capture. The next two years will settle which reading is correct.