Group to lobby for Bajans to earn money from online content

Barbadians may soon be better able to monetise online content if a recently formed lobbying group succeeds in efforts to end current geo-blocking restrictions that prevent locals from earning on major digital platforms.

Executive Director of the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries (BCSI), Michelle Smith-Mayers, recently announced that the BCSI had assembled a dedicated project team to examine the issue, particularly the inability of Barbadians to generate income on the content they create from platforms like Google, Facebook, and TikTok.

She made the announcement during the Coalition’s 3rd Council of Leaders meeting, held Wednesday at their Warrens offices in Baobab Towers.

She explained, “We formed the geo blocking…project team, to look at the fact that Barbadians cannot monetise on several online platforms. For instance Google; you can create as many games as you want, you could upload them to Google, but in Barbados we cannot make money from that. If I was in Saint Lucia or Jamaica… there are several Caribbean countries that can monetise on Google, that can make money from creating games and putting them up online.”

She said, it was not only in the area of content creation but also in digital business and trade, where Barbadians are being left behind.

“And we’re not the only Caribbean country affected on some of the platforms by this, but we have a situation where, as you might see, people on Facebook and TikTok, they’re making a lot of money. There are people that are millionaires because of the content that they post online. We got people that post online significantly, but they don’t make any money from those posts,” she explained.

Smith-Mayers added, “There’s one guy that comes to mind, David Davis, he posts a lot about his mother, some of you might have seen that. He doesn’t make any money from doing that. If

he was in another jurisdiction, he could make money because he got thousands of people that view those posts.”

As part of their efforts, the BCSI project team has prepared a policy paper which it submitted to government officials. The initiative has since gained the attention and support of the Prime Minister and key stakeholders within the public service.

“Long story short, a cabinet paper has been drafted, the PM was made aware of it, and she has expressed her support,” the BCSI head said.

“So we’re in the process of working with Economic Affairs to move it forward and to form a lobbying group that can lobby on Barbados’ behalf. Part of that process is forming a technical team that would advise those who are lobbying on our behalf so that they know what we are lobbying for and what it means.” (SB)