The law's definition of news is broad,[2] including "content that reports, investigates or explains ... current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level.

[6] The Australian government hopes it "will ensure that news media businesses are fairly remunerated for the content they generate, helping to sustain public interest journalism in Australia".

[9] Proponents of the law argue that the profitability of social media companies is partly attributable to the fact that users can receive news updates even when they do not view the ads on the page of the original publisher.

[11][12] The bill also saw support from Microsoft, which issued a statement suggesting that the code would be made to work with its search engine Bing.

[3] Other notable technologists including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee,[15] journalism professor Jeff Jarvis,[16] New York Times technology journalist Kara Swisher[17] and Stratechery writer Ben Thompson[18] criticised the code for being technically unworkable.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is a prominent activist against News Corp,[19] argued that the code was designed to favour the company's properties.

[20] Crikey political editor Bernard Keane criticised Australian mainstream media for allegedly "systematically misleading [their] audiences" over the code and the legislation.

[21] While originally unified in their rejection of NMBC and issuance of threats to remove Australian News from their platforms,[22] Google and Meta ended up with different approaches to the problem.

[3] Due to the confidentiality of the agreements, it is hard to estimate the post-NMBC amounts, although rumors have it that Google is paying more than Meta, provides discounts on its technology and additional revenue-sharing income streams.

[26] Google moved fast, signing more deals for a higher total amount than Meta, but tried to structure the contracts to encourage the production of content for the News Showcase, prioritising the podcasts.

This appears to be a result of Google trying to use the (voluntary) "significant contribution" clauses of NMBC in order to avoid the "mandatory designation" option.

[5] In December 2017, the Turnbull government directed the ACCC to conduct an inquiry into "competition in media and advertising services markets", focusing in large part on Google and Facebook.

[35] In August 2020 Facebook stated that the proposed legislation left them "with a choice of either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits".

[52] In late February, technology companies including Facebook and Google released the final version of an industry code to address the spread of misinformation on their services in Australia.

[56] The evaluation of the NMBC implementation is hampered by its "murky" nature, "with critical details guarded like they're nuclear launch codes".