The part that’s bullshit is this:

> they have to pay the newspaper for sending business to the newspaper

That’s an opinion.

Another way to explain the situation is: they are being forced to pay for content that they’ve monetised at the newspaper’s expense.

There are several other ways to view this situation, but Ben Evans has decided to push this version, which makes it sound like big tech is being somehow generous by sending traffic in the first place.

In fact, Google and Meta in particular have been pushing news producers against the wall for years.