Given the current Australian government's cosy relationship with a particular media company that currently dominates the media landscape here, I don't think it is coincidence.
Basically, this law would prevent Facebook from deploying just about any non-trivial change to its product without first doing a detailed analysis of how it would affect the Australian news business, in order to determine whether a notification is required.
See sections 52D and 52W of the bill: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...
Guidelines intentionally kept vague so that some bureaucrat can slap a huge fine and collect the rent?
I wonder if that rent-seeking attitude will accelerate or curb the current brain drain Australia faces.
Honestly, I think that makes sense and it doesn't immediately strike me as a negative for either side. These are articles coming from trusted sources. There's no need to apply the anti-spam parts of the algorithm. News agencies get a more stable algorithm, Google gets to keep their secret sauce.
There is still an advantage to the incumbents. Those carousels are usually in prime real estate. Google would hold the keys to who is in the carousel though, so they could expand it without legislative changes. I like the flexibility, though I don't love handing Google the keys to more kingdoms.
Google and Facebook's algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should demand that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on, that lives are built and destroyed by.
Google and Facebook partially relies on the obscurity to keep the fighting the spam battle. IMO we don't have the technology yet to have fully open ranking algorithms that are not quickly broken.
To think of it - similar to crypto around WW2.
The reason I'm asking is that as these things grow in complexity, it's quite possible that even if you join the team that works on these systems it will probably take you a pretty long time to understand how they really work. Their actual behaviour is likely to still be mysterious a lot of the time because they're driven by data.
Is a high-level description in english OK? Do we need to see pseudocode? The source code code? Do they have to open source it? What parts, if it's tied to internal frameworks? If there is ML, do they have to disclose all their sauce there? The trained network / weights? The training data, if the alg alone is useless without a data set?
What is this company, out of curiosity? My guess is ABC, but I don't know.
I'm not sure the exact online share.
On the other hand, the Liberal party is very hostile to the public service in general and the ABC in particular.
This means you as a business owner may wake up one day to find that you are now classified as a designated digital platform corporation and are on the hook to now negotiate contracts with every registered news business corporation, AND provide each of them with the secret sauce behind your ranking algos. The only thing that needs to be done to do this is for the Treasurer to file a decision in the Federal Register of Legislation[1]. It's a shocking amount of overreach, lack of visibility to the process, and a single point of failure in the system.
Overall I'm very curious to see how this plays out. Facebook took the nuclear option here, and I highly suspect that news corporations will feel quite a sting from the loss of traffic / platform. I truly feel like Facebook "winning" here and having the law dropped is the lesser of two evils.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasurer_of_Australia
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Browse/Results/ByRegDate/Legi...
You're absolutely right and I'm also horrified by the implications, and I would be even more so if the circumstances were more normal. The trouble is that Facebook is anything but a normal player and so is Google. These corporations are not normal given that they've usurped normal business practices when both governments and normal ethical businesses weren't looking and they have deliberately and opportunistically profiteered off the backs of millions—billions—of unsuspecting people who haven't a clue what has happened to their data, let alone their privacy!
This is NOT a normal situation, as these carpetbagger corporations have essentially declared 'war' on us by raiding our data without permission—and no one believes all that malarkey stuff about EULAs actually authorizing them to do so. Instead, they did do by sleight-of-hand and deceit alone, everyone knows that. This means we've little choice but to respond the best we can and in kind—and that means we have to play as dirty as them. We not only have to grovel in the ethical dirt and mud but also play by their rules or they'll retaliate and 'mincemeat' us—no questions asked.
Let's not be fooled: any corporation that can not only rival the two most dreadful corporations in all of history—The Dutch East India Company and the [British] East India Company—in its enormous stock value but also that it make profits even more quickly than they did is more than suspect, for their growth as has far, far exceeded the expectations of any normal lawful business—even the most brilliant of them by orders of magnitude! These companies are either engaged in unethical practices, or they are working in a lawless and unregulated domain, and or it's both of these. I'd contend that it's both.
Moreover, Facebook is now threatening us with blackmail, and without compunction they'll play off users as disposable pawns in this dirty war, as we can clearly see here:
"In response to Australia’s proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content."
It's time we acted, and the Australian Government has taken the first step. I grit my teeth to say it, but it needs our support this time around.
I agree that Facebook and Google need reigning in on their data and privacy invasiveness, as well as their offshore business structures that avoid Australian taxes. But this law is not that.
This law is sponsored by dying dinosaur media company News Corp because they have lots of mates in, and power over, Australian Government.
There's also a danger that, if this fight ends up being essentially lost by the Australian Government, it will vaporise any and all political will to go after Facebook and Google for anything else (eg. Data privacy, tax avoidance).
Don't support stupid laws that don't do the thing you want it to. Just because you (and I) don't like Facebook and Google doesn't mean they're wrong (in this particular case).
Edited to add: News Corp has fucked Australia throughout its history, if you support this Government action then you're tacitly supporting News Corp.
There are no good guys in this fight, so all that's left is the logic (or lack thereof) of the proposed laws. That's the key issue in this case.
Since about 1995, eyeballs have been shifting from all forms of media to the web. Newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, books, etc. have all been disrupted by the web.
Rupert Murdoch has been particularly salty about this and has worked with the coalition government for years to undermine the internet in Australia. News Ltd, with the help of the coalition, fucked the National Broadband Network and now they’re shaking down the most successful internet companies. I have zero sympathy for them.
The proposed law is crafted in such a way that Facebook’s only viable option is to block all news content in Australia and all Australian news content internationally.
News Ltd has failed to innovate on the web for 25+ years while internet startups have gone from idea to almost trillion dollar market caps. News bought MySpace for $580m then sold it for $35m because they are clueless idiots.
It makes me sick that people would side with our overtly corrupt federal government.
This isn't blackmail any more than I'm blackmailing my local coffee shop when I go elsewhere when they jack up the prices. Increase the cost of doing business and people are less likely to want to do business. What is surprising or nefarious about this?
Couldn't this be a viewed as a criminal act by the Australian government? Could they arrest FB employees in Australia for FB HQ blocking their pages, especially with the vital COVID-19 information?
People don't want to pay for news. They don't like ads, but will tolerate them to a point, and most definitely don't want to pay for subscriptions. Laws can change behavior short term but long term the better product and platform will win.
I'm sure I'm not the only person here who subscribes to LWN. People with a special interest in a particular topic are willing to pay subscriptions to specialist news outfits covering that topic. Not enough for them to grow rich but enough for many of them to survive. The real struggle is retaining subscribers to mass-market generalist news as opposed to niche speciality news sources.
You have a global network of individuals and companies producing news. If you offer good news for $5 but someone else is offering acceptable news for $0 that acceptable news is going to win every time.
The two I'm looking at paying for in the near future are https://thebrowser.com/ and https://www.slow-journalism.com/, but I'd pay a lot more than that for some kind of Realpolitik executive summary which gave overviews of the most important trends, including the most common mainstream opinions and an analysis of any available evidence.
So, arguing that “these politicians don’t understand economics” is like saying “laws against theft don’t understand how easy it is to break a window”.
> "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-en...
He was certainly one of the more forward-thinking, progressive PMs we've had. As just one example, he actually believes climate change is real.
Like, what you see on television or gets printed in a newspaper needs to go through an editorial cycle, fact checked etc?
The legislation is effectively giving actual journalists the ability to continue creating what we've historically considered news and protecting that form of occupation.
There's a lot of misinformation going on on the web and things can spread like wildfire.
No-one seems to care about this fact and instead focus on the wrong bits of this legislation.
Would you mind explaining how exactly does it do that? Maybe I am focusing on the wrong thing, but I haven't seen the side you've mentioned at all.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56101859
The Australian government's approach is working.
Google can afford to pay for the right to link to publishers. New startups can't.
Australia has strengthened Google's monopoly, all in the guise of "taking on" big tech.
I'm kinda excited to see how this pans out. I don't use FB for news, that's not what a "social network" is for. It's for keeping in touch with friends, sharing photos, etc etc.
Because I don't interact with news on FB, I already see very little of it, but I'm hoping this change makes FB the place for sharing our lives again, as opposed to just sharing links to media that I can find through other sources.
I somewhat wonder if FB is looking at this as a test subject of what happens if they were to block links to external content? What if FB only shared stuff from FB. Would that be so bad?
FB has worked hard to make itself the walled garden of “internet”. It tries to encourage people to use the FB search box to find news agencies, brands, etc. rather than the URL box.
The monopoly positions of tech giants and their efforts to build walled gardens is the real problem. The fact that they’re where everyone consumes news media is a byproduct of that. We’ve seen the harmful damage it does to democracy and to society in general.
This legislation is stupid, and attempts to place stupid demands on the tech giants such as sharing algorithms. It’s a blatant attempt to kowtow to Uncle Rupert, with some funds also regrettably going to those dirty socialists at the government-owned news media organisations on the side to make it a little less obviously on the nose.
However, I think FB was more stupid to not just follow the Google approach and negotiate it down to a dilute bother, in effect paying a chump change tax to retain that monopoly position. Aussies are notoriously apathetic about any issue which doesn’t directly affect them. FB has made a tactical misstep here by making the issue affect everyone.
I hope this is a step towards smashing that walled garden. I hope it just ends up teaching Aussies to go to the actual websites of organisations whose content they want to view. I hope FB withers back down to being the place you check a few times a day max to see what your friends are doing and to see some memes, rather than where people endlessly doomscroll and never leave.
The Aussie government does not have the clout to challenge these monopolies directly, but but this legislation starts that process then they will have Steven Bradburyed [1] their way to a fantastic outcome.
The reduction of these all-encompassing walled gardens will be to the betterment of society as a whole.
Now we have to start dismantling the NewsCorp behemoth as well.
If removing news reduces Facebook’s revenue by 4%, it would be reasonable to wonder why they didn’t remove news globally years ago, given all the time, money and effort they invest in it and all the drama and existential threats that come with it.
The reality is that news is a massive driver of engagement on Facebook. Their 4% stat is grossly misleading. I’m 100% against this proposed law, but it’s hard to maintain this position in the face of lies and gross misrepresentations by Facebook and Google.
Unfortunately, the people who like that stuff also buy stuff from online ads. It’s the same reason why TLC and The History Channel now only show reality TV; because people who watch those shows buy the things they see advertised.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337269 - "An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia", 2020-09-01, 158 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24347676 - "Facebook to block news on Australian sites after new law, riling lawmakers", 2020-09-01, 78 comments
The big threads about this issue include:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111783 - "Australia to introduce Google, Facebook legislation to parliament next week", 2021-02-12, 269 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26030135 - "Google News Showcase Launches in Australia", 2021-02-04, 54 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25999799 - "Australia’s PM suggests Bing adequate if Google blocks searches", 2021-02-02, 175 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25987671 - "Communications Minister touts the opportunities of a Google-less Australia", 2021-02-01, 49 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903511 - "Australia’s Proposed “Fox News Tax”", 2021-01-25, 29 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25873001 - "Could Google Really Leave Australia?", 2021-01-22, 51 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870571 - "The spat between Google and Australia, as reported on HN", 2021-01-22, 95 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867547 - "Google Threatens to Remove Search in Australia as Spat Escalates", 2021-01-22, 33 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867264 - "Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia", 2021-01-22, 135 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866493 - "Google threatens to disable search in Australia if media code becomes law", 2021-01-22, 18 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25789773 - "Google looks at pulling all or part of its search engine from Australia", 2021-01-15, 71 comments
Others?
All of the "news" has been removed, with them the manufactured outrage, toxic comments and political rants. It actually feels far closer to the Facebook of 2008 that I actually enjoyed rather than the "engagement" machine of 2020.
Obviously the publishers will be hurt by this, particularly smaller ones without organic traffic. But it also feels like a lot of the "engagement" Facebook had been pursuing has been removed too. I wonder how this will affect usage as currently there's little in my feed that would encourage me to open the app every day.
The fact that this law is applied only to two cherry picked companies selected at the pleasure of a government minister does not change the nature of the precedent created, and creates an enormous risk that this will now be lobbied to apply to numerous other industries and circumstances. I would fully expect that to follow in short order if Facebook folded on this - and it probably will happen anyway.
It is much worse than that. The publishers themselves often share the links on Facebook themselves.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>If the above is true, what's really going on here is that content producers got together and said, "if you don't pay all of us, we'll stop you from linking to all of us," and it was worth it to Google to pay. Clearly it wasn't worth it to Facebook.
They want to be indexed, they just also want to get paid.
The root issue is that media companies no longer make $$$ from ads, instead google does and they want that money back. This is "silly" law to accomplish that goal.
Ding ding ding. This has always been about newspapers no longer being the best place to advertise. It's old media trying to hold onto the little power they have, and honestly the only reason they haven't been dismissed entirely is because as a society, we still value journalism, but the likes of Murdoch are now abusing that fact that entrench by lobbying for these outlandish laws.
The problem is that Media companies didn't lose their revenue to Google. They lost it to other more specalised websites i.e. Seek, Craiglists, Gumtree and so on.
Should sites be allowed to link to other sites?
Also, every website has the power to change Google: just put the noindex tag on your pages and you'll effectively prevent links from Google to your website.
For facebook, it's trickier. One thing that might work is sharing something from your website on Facebook and then reporting it as against community standards. It seems like there are a zillion pages of people trying to get their sites UNblocked from Facebook- the cause of which frequently seems to be people flagging content.
If the news organisations want people to pay for news, they can change to a subscription model and put their content behind a pay wall. Many companies already to this: I myself pay over a hundred pounds a year for the Economist for their excellent reporting. The old establishment needs to understand they're not special, and if they want people to pay for news they need to provide content that's worth paying for, just like everyone else.
It's a law written mostly by the ACCC.
In all seriousness I hope this drives the less informed in Australia to seek out actual news sources and break out of the echo chamber that is Facebook. And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it. You can't have a robust democracy without a robust fourth estate.
Are you one of them? How would you know? If you are, then aren't any opinions you share on the internet just making things worse?
I ask these questions because I keep seeing the news exaggerating some bogeyman and people believing that it's more significant than it really is. For example, you expressed concern for democracy in your post here, which seems like a pretty big danger! Is that really at risk for Australia or are you misinformed about the significance of this particular bogeyman?
I also see people complaining about misinformation while never identifying themselves as victims of it. Why aren't the victims complaining? Because part of being a victim of misinformation includes not knowing that you are. So maybe it's yourself, in which case, better to address that problem before trying to "correct" others. Also, this idea of there being a huge underclass of misinformed people damaging democracy is divisive. It classifies people into good (always ourselves) and bad (always someone else), giving moral justification to the self-declared "good" people to correct the "bad" people.
Not unreasonable arguments could be made that it's journalism that leeches off of FB. FB drives huge traffic and provides a massive platform.
And have you seen the types of 'information' people share on Facebook when they are not sharing links to news? I think users will stay in Facebook but share lower quality stuff.
More likely is that users will stay on FB and consume each other’s insane conspiracy theories without even a hint of real reporting added in.
This is a rabbit hole, and Australian govt wont let it go easily. They will next complain about screenshots being shared - tough to monitor but they are literally taking away the traffic from news sites. People move away from a website if it can't fulfill their needs. But, if they have all the needs (wants?) fulfilled except the part about news, they won't go to another site, they will just find a hack to fulfill the news bit. How far can the content moderation go? Given the motives of publishers are not noble here, asking for money for something they should be paying, not having traffic would hurt them badly. This is what Facebook is betting on, but given the size of the issue, it would be embarrassment for the govt to walk back the proposals after FB has withdrawn. Give it a year, they will come to an agreement where both parties win.
All of those keyboard warriors in the comments will start summarizing news articles and sharing them on pages or in groups.
It will make the echo chamber effect worse, not better.
FB is an insane echo chamber for sure but at least you can pick your chamber. Any exposure to the news in Australia is tainted by the Murdoch's foul agenda.
FB has abused our brain chemistry with addictive content. Their platform makes discussions more impulsive, passionate and careless not unlike any other addictive substance. People crave "the goods" ie browsing their bite sized feeds, and neglect the responsibility of actually learning about the news. Not unlike how if you're addicted to sugar/unhealthy foods you don't want your veggies.
This affects not only customers but news organizations. News orgs are forced to twist the truth to make their content more addictive in order to survive.
FB's double think comes out in this article. They attribute people's interest in the news to their platform. When in reality they almost certainly would have reached the news independently, and FB is an addictive and unnecessary additive to people's life.
I draw two conclusions from this:
1. FB is scared. The Australian government has found a weak point that causes FB to take a major hit to the breadth of their platform.
2. FB can no longer weaponize headlines. People will still discuss news in their own words or using fake sources, instead of impulse sharing actual news headlines. Headline quality will improve, meanwhile FB will remain a challenging place to discuss. People will now have the time to recognize headline quality and may even read the news without having the impulsive and addictive sharing option.
This is a hit to FB's reality bending brand. FB offers addictive and impulsive options for communicating, but they want us to think FB is an essential part of communicating. By not being allowed to share on FB, the addictive option is removed, and we can better experience the reality of how great the healthier options are.
Maybe we can live without sugar/FB. Maybe life will be better that way.
On the other hand, they delivered 5.1 billion views to Australian media sites last year. That would seem to me to be a big hit to media sites.
Previously FB sharing was limited with regards to specific taboo movements and it was called censorship. Now it's all news, even good news and great content. It's not censorship this time because FB is no longer "the place" where you share and connect.
FB is no longer a universal platform. Now it's just a website. This is a good thing.
Would be interesting to know how much of the remaining content roots in those 4%. How many of the remaining posts are in reaction to news, or reactions to reactions to news. Also do the 4% include screenshots of news articles and headlines, a very common practice on Facebook.
Is Facebook the bad guy here? Where is examination of the person doing the scrolling?
(The following applies to adults):
Ostensibly, the person should be allowed to spend their time as they like if they're engaging in legal activity. If people thought that engaging in social media was bad for them, they would stop. Are we really saying that people cannot stop using social media? Are we saying that people don't think it's bad for them?
If people can't stop doing an activity that is definitely hurting them, don't they need professional help? Do all these social media users need professional help?
What amount of time on social media is sufficient for it to have a negative effect? Is it anything besides zero?
To be meta: if hackernews is social media and social media is bad, are we all hurting ourselves?
Yes, that’s part of the definition of ‘addictive.’ Internet and social media addiction is well documented, even though not all users are addicted. Like gambling.
(Hopefully YC doesn't have to pay for this link one day)
I would check if you can 'like us on Facebook' but I can't find any buttons! What happened, they used to be everywhere?
They probably just want to increase the backlash. The emergency services Facebook pages will obviously be back within hours.
I live in Australia but I don't have a Facebook account and I don't read the fake news media, so I actually don't have a horse in this race. I hope they both mutually destruct each other.
FB Messenger is hard to dislodge though, for so many people it is their main comms system. Likewise WhatsApp. Luckily I have a burner phone for those, location features turned off.
Govt will probably come crawling back to fb on its belly. If they don't the ALP will.
Uuugh we all know that media is undoubtedly biased, and a lot is quite skewed to match an agenda.. But can we please refrain from regurgitating that Trump campaign catchphrase?
The Murdoch family's claim ... I mean, Australia's ... is ridiculous. Facebook are totally within their rights to stop using Australian content and not pay for it. If the law is so sloppily worded that it arguably defines the Health Department website as news, well, it wasn't Facebook who drafted it.
On the other hand, this does stuff around a lot of innocent bystanders, and Facebook could easily have given a month's notice that they were going to do it. Which is, ironically, one of the things that the law would require them to do. What ever else Facebook might have demonstrated by their irresponsible reaction, they have shown that this law isn't all wrong, rather some parts of it are urgently necessary.
https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-ba...
We have a joke:
A: How much is a drop of gas?
B: A drop of gas? Well, zero!
A: One million drops of gas, please.
But you have to play that silly game, because otherwise your competitor might get featured instead and we learn about them and not you.
I've also heard that, unlike Facebook, Google doesn't have the option to say no.
It'll be interesting to see if the newspapers start arguing that Facebook should be exempt, once all of their traffic from Facebook dries up.
What does that mean? Surely Google could remove their entire presence from Australia if they felt like it.
The government literally stated that with a heavy heart they were putting in a crude approach towards forcing both giants to finally step up and start to discuss this. That oblique reference to the new “Facebook news tool and their announcement of it in the last month or so” is part of this, and will be rolled out depending how their hand is forced from here.
The essence of the case against the social media giants is that journalism is dying. Not just newsprint but paid journalism itself. The profession is under massive attack and papers worldwide are being affected and it’s clear there is a value extraction occurring with the social media giants, who are in one framing benefiting from the content produced by news outlets and show it in their “listings” (feeds/search results) and further compete directly with the news organisations for advertising dollars all without having to include any remuneration to the content creator, in this case professional news outlets who still have an important social function to provide and are providing less and less due to the market dominance of these two ‘aggregation advertising companies’.
The Australian government is firstly fighting around this principle of ensuring fair competition in the advertising space, two large companies are exploiting newspapers due to their market dominance, ok excuse me, you folks need to adjust your market practices so that everyone can play. Their dominance is like a duopoply and is being criticised as such even though this economoic language has become foreign in recent times where dominance of American mega corporations is assumed as somewhow right and therefore fair. Google & Fb know they are very powerful with limited obligations to Australians and so they are acting arrogantly and oppressively in their approach.
The other side of this humerously is that while in principle it’s important to have an open and fair press and to ensure healthy competition and a healthy media space in the digital era, Australian media is largely owned by two major media moguls. I’m sorry to say that Rupert Murdock began his life right here in Australia. These moguls having done very poorly with their own digital strategies over the years are also pressuring the government to take action in this space, and while no-one loves these companies either, the prospect of the total breakdown of the local newspaper and media landscape and the related loss of local journalism jobs drives the government to get involved.
There’s more nuisance and moves and details on this but that’s the gist as best I can capture it.
I’m in support of the social media giants being forced to the negotiation table and working out platform options that do provide a content producers fee to media companies both big and small that might be a great model to help us move back away from crap spam content back towards a modern from journalism. Facebooks new newstool is headed this direction if they feel pressured in the right way to have to roll it out and create a Spotify of news redirecting some of the insane advertising revenue the receive.
I don't see what's arrogant about Facebook's approach here. They say they do not derive much value from this content, and the government is proposing to charge them much more than the value they do derive. So they are left with the only rational choice: to not have the content. That's not a threat, a punishment, an attack, or anything else. It's just a decision that needs to be made in light of the tradeoffs facing their business.
The proof will be in the pudding, but I suspect Facebook will suffer minimal economic harm from blocking the news. That will be clear evidence as to who was the economic beneficiary of their relationship with the news media.
A powerful company resisting a process from which they have nothing to gain. Shocking!
If you want people to come together, you need to give both sides something to gain (or put a (metaphorical) gun to one sides head). Of course fb is going to resist a process where they only stand to lose something and the best outcome possible for them is the status quo. Wouldn't you also resist such a meeting?
The Australian law is the first one with teeth, after many years of Google and Facebook smothering any reasonable measures any country anywhere has proposed. So yeah, it "feels unfair" at this point, because that's the only thing that'll work at this point, to use sovereign national power to order Google and Facebook to comply.
There are good and bad sides to this law and this situation, I personally commend Australia for /at the very least/ running this experiment for the rest of the world that probably doesn't have much downside and might very well lead to some real collaboration, changes and/or innovations going forward. At least they are giving something a try.
Most of the times I visit newspapers websites I was sent there from social media.
So while this approach with news media is a strange one, I think there is an argument to be made for taxing things differently. Make Facebook/Google pay a fair tax in all countries they're active in. Then each country can decide how they want to use that, if a democratically elected government in Australia wants to subsidize news using taxes they should be able to do so.
An analogy might be to minimum wage laws: a laissez-faire market would result in an unfair distribution of benefits, so the government steps in.
There is the argument that showing news snippets next to the link is what you bare paying for. But otherwise it's a pure media money grab backed by the government.
They complain that big tech gets the reward (content that drives user engagement) and further, it detracts from the potential traffic they would otherwise receive.
Have you reference for that?
That is the first coherent argument, IMO, for their position. Coherent, but so wrong I think.
That is certainly a true sentiment, but in general as many other commenters have noted, it's better not to have "news" articles being force-fed to social media users via blackbox algorithms, emotional trigger-sharing, and over-enthusiastic ad buyers. This is a great first-step to help break the spell that accidental over-consumption of news media has on people's mental health.
Enjoy Australia, the rest of the world envies the peace and quiet in your news feed!
Reminds me of when Google pulled out of China over censorship and Microsoft took the opportunity to try to jump in and take their place (in search).
This is technically not correct. Publishers can opt out from Google Search if they want to, so one may also argue that they willingly choose to be on Google as well.
I find the argument made by Facebook to be sound. They're making a comparison between Google crawling the web and indexing content vs. a news site intentionally posting their content to Facebook.
The difference between getting your webpage crawled and explicitly posting on a public forum is significant. I read their comment as "users explicitly post contend on Facebook vs. passively having their content scraped by Google".
This was another big one. User links a news article, the newspaper would get to moderate comments on Facebook, in the user's page
[0] https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-vie...
Now the company tells it will not pay trustworthy publishers for the content. As far as it seems absurd, it just shows that any news in Australia on Facebook can be considered a fake news as default. The clarity is a benefit.
The DFES (Department of Fire and Emergency Services) page is down - i.e. no bushfire or flood alerts showing up. Their entire page is gutted.
There's some government run domestic violence and community service pages that are wiped.
Though hilariously, the local LNP candidate's page is gone, which in the midst of a state election campaign is probably pretty hard for them.
I get that facebook have a bone to pick with the government, but does a) blocking crucial emergency service pages have a benefit, and b) does wiping a campaign page have some worrying connotations?
core news content means content that reports, investigates or explains:
a) issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or
b) current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level
DFES, BOM & other government services would fall under definition b. Candidate page would fall under definition a.
It looks like the blast radius from this decision is impacting organizations that is out of scope of this legislation.
core news content means content that reports, investigates or explains:
a) issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or
b) current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level
Weather info & especially anything emergency-related is covered by that second definition.
The definition of organisation covered by the code is stupid & arbitrary anyway. It's heavily weighted towards existing incumbents (requiring $150K revenue), and makes things even harder for an independent trying to compete.
It's causing pain to the government now, to put pressure on re-evaluating their ridiculous proposal.
Besides the obvious drawbacks of the proposal, there would also be side-effects that won't be seen until later, and I'm glad the side-effects are being shown right now to try and stop this whole mess.
It won't be an improvement.
Second, how about having a way to add meta-information to web pages/articles saying what is okay to use as preview and what is not. This looks to me like the long term solution to all sites and services on the current web. As long as there is a single, non-specialized way for browsers to ignore attributes/tags/other info they do not use then it does not add complexity to browsers.
The whole 'good on facebook for standing up to the government' is quite a funny stance, given how most people view facebook as a not-so-good entity on the web.
Fake news is a worse problem than Murdoch media and its sensationalist journalism.
Well, this is actually the case.
TBD what qualifies as 'news,' though.
If might be a good thing overall though, because it might become clear that anything you see on fb isn't professionally developed news, whereas previously Breitbart/SkyNews/Pete fucking Evans got greater access to eyeballs than serious media like SMH/Guardian/ABC.
I don’t know whether Australia will reverse this, but I really hope other countries don’t jump on the bandwagon. The reason why the Internet is the internet is because of free information sharing. Having laws that target specific companies for extortion is just dumb.
For those who are outside Australia, it bears mentioning that Murdoch-owned media in Australia by far and away dominates the media landscape, and has a blatant bias towards the current sitting government (the conservative liberal party), and the liberals have for decades now returned the favour by consistently legislating in favour of News Corp.
The only way that the government will back down is when they are confronted with a much bigger fish than News Corp, in which case, chances are better than none that the government will go scurrying back into their little holes.
It’s pretty scary that a few people in parliament can sign a law that only serves a few rich and powerful people at the expense of its citizens.
What is the future of governance? Because 2021, it feels still like a drunken king doing what “feels good”
ACCC has addressed some of them here: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/response-to-google-ope...
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-...
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/facebook-ban-hits-he...
Intro:
> to restrict the availability of news
Outro:
> I hope in the future, we can include news for people in Australia once again
Not sure which I dislike more. Liars and thieves the lot of them. Can they both lose for our sakes?
You can make low quality simple crap, put a bunch of ads on it and give it to the the masses. The soap operas and quiz shows of journalism.
And you can make longread investigative journalism and put it behind a paywall. Undoing the damage the internet has done takes time but it can be down.
- To stop Australian publishers from sharing any content on FB
- Prevent International or Australian news from being viewed or shared by Australians
However, when I read this sob story by FB :
> publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.
...I know that's not the truth. A lot of the news I read is the same as the free-to-air news that I get across all tv channels (sbs, abc*), so this notion that they'll be losing money anyway is a bit of a misnomer.
*abc is the same as the US's pbs
Some simple business analysis would show that having a strong presence on Facebook drives value to the company.
Look at a company like the American Right Wing outlet DailyWire. They have a massive presence on Facebook and they do a good job of getting people to comment and share articles and it has caused the valuation of the company to explode. (see Now This for a left wing example).