Google, and (particularly) Facebook, decided to tell the ACCC to go jump. And all just because the regulators came up with a plan that was going to cripple their business model - it wants the tech behemoths to pay when news content is used or republished on their servers. The only people who could possibly be surprised by such a turn-up are exactly the careful, slow-moving, suit-wearing bureaucrats who came up with such a plan to begin with.

These are exactly the opposite personality types of the tech-giants DNA. Perhaps none of the regulators had actually noticed (because, if they did, they certainly hadn't understood) Facebook's early, bold motto - move fast and break things.

So are you really surprised that the quick-moving, casually-dressed techies are really just ignoring the suggestion from the regulators that actually, please sir, if you don't mind too much, we'd sort-of now like you to now pay for something you've just been helping yourself to for free? What, exactly, did they expect? That Facebook, which routinely ignores US Congress' calls for better self-regulation; which smashed the last vestiges of responsible news reporting in the Philippines and propagated messages of murders in Myanmar; which steals copyright and sells user data off wholesale; did our sweet, naive administrators really think the techies would simply say, "yes, sir, fair cop, of course we'll dismantle our entire business model simply to please you".

Of course not. And why should they?

Most news companies (and individual journalists, like myself) have been only too happy to give away content free for years. That worked while people still purchased copies of the (physical) paper to read or paid the price of subscription and while the proprietors of journals were prepared to swap revenue for readership. The unfortunate thing about business models is, though, that they depend on not giving away your product for free. The obvious thing to do was to block anyone sharing our stories and start charging for our product. But journalists (like me) aren't very clever. We kept telling ourselves that, eventually, because our comment pieces were so wonderfully incisive and cleverly written, people would rush to pay us lots of money to read them. Who would have guessed that it wouldn't work out that way and readers preferred to get their copy for free?

All the tech companies had to do was keep trading on the gullibility of journalists. Because what we did was so exciting and wonderful, we didn't understand we were were working. Secure in our innocence we continued hopefully believing the big pay-day would, eventually, arrive.

That's why there was so much invested in the ACCC investigation into news. Its "findings" were self-evident.

This is not a radical organisation given to deep introspection to discover the deep meaning of life and how society actually works. When it's given a task it investigates an issue but what's always there, in the back of everyone's mind, is what sort of deal it will eventually attempt to broker between the different interested parties.

Its suggested solution - paying news outlets for individual stories - offers no solution to the real problem. This simply means that sensational stories, the type that get widely shared on social media, would become even more desirable. News would become even more skewed, favouring lurid scandal-mongering with click-bait headlines.

The ACCC's proposal would further destabilise journalism precisely because it privileges the individual "story" over the broader, deeper issue of "reporting the world".

These are the sort of choices a young journalist on the courts round makes every morning. How do they cover the gruesome rape trial or drug bust? Exciting and interesting reading, no doubt, but not advancing an understanding of what's really happening or deeper reflection. The journalist attempts to not just exclusively focus on the sensational and shocking, but to provide insight that allows the reader visibility of the broader causes of crime and how specific initiatives may reduce it? The word describing our work - reporting - sounds, somehow, value free, as if it's merely collecting facts to be re-told. The reality is vastly different. Every decision, from what to cover to where to place it, is indelibly stamped by editorial judgement.

Considered reflection would vanish. Instead of brilliant, theoretically insightful op-ed analysis (such as this one) the race to the bottom; the competition for viewer eyeballs would intensify. The breaking down of society into ever smaller groups, defined only by their status as Facebook "friends", would continue.

This is why the ACCC's suggested deal solves nothing. It's an ersatz solution, an attempt to broker a transaction where agreement can never be found. That's because the interests of the tech businesses are diametrically opposed to those of the open society. What we've ended up with is the equivalent of what might happen if the NSW Department of Motor Transport was asked to regulate the airline business: a series of well meaning suggestions that have no relationship to the underlying issues involved; a patch-work solution that sounds plausible but falls apart under detailed analysis.

By definition, regulation is a way of patching up problems to make sure things work. It can't (and doesn't) seek to create a new world, it simply wants to give the current one a tune-up to make the old jalopy run better. The ACCC, if you will, the car mechanic, but the difference is the internet's put a new jet engine under the bonnet. It's no wonder the mechanics are scratching their heads attempting to work out what to do.

That's because the way we communicate with one another defines our society and, as such, is an essentially political issue. It can't be shoved off to a regulator to "solve". We need to find a new way to bypass the tech monopolies.

Surely some of our bright Aussie tech gurus - and I'm looking at you, Mike Cannon-Brooks - can find a way to solve this problem.