[HN Gopher] Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in A...
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Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
Author : justinv
Score : 151 points
Date : 2021-02-17 18:42 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (about.fb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.fb.com)
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| i don't understand. FB claims that this law will hurt australian
| news outlets more than FB... Why not just let these companies
| protest themselves?? We saw something similar in facebooks
| campaign against apples new privacy law. There, too, they
| pretended to be representing the "small business". I find it
| pathetic that they are using this same tactic of casting
| themselves as the protector of smaller, weaker, companies again.
| It's like a toddler covering his eyes with his hands and hoping
| that no one can see him.
| DevKoala wrote:
| FB is always going on justice crusades for those "unheard"
| voices; their exec team, board members, lobbyists, etc.
| dang wrote:
| Facebook-specific threads on this from last year:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337269
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24347676
|
| The big threads about this issue generally include:
|
| [please stand by while I write a bit of code to make this less
| annoying]
| DevKoala wrote:
| Interesting experiment. I wonder if this will decrease or
| increase the amount of misinformation Australian people consume.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Could someone summarize both positions? It seems pretty
| reasonable to me - my understanding is that Australia wants
| Google and Facebook to pay lump sums to have their content on
| their platforms (as opposed to per-click). Google and Facebook
| can basically say yes or no. How is this different than, say, The
| New York Times saying the same thing about their content?
| scribu wrote:
| I think this article on simple linking vs. previewing sums up
| the issue:
|
| https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-ba...
| anticristi wrote:
| Awesome summary. It seems to me that this is a bit of a
| failure of the fair use doctrine. Making one preview of an
| image or article does not impact the author's monetisation
| ability. Making a business out of systematically producing
| previews (and adding your own ads around them) should no
| longer quality as fair use.
|
| 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.
| bawolff wrote:
| Fair use (or i guess fair dealing in australia) isn't
| totally about not negatively impacting other people's
| businesses. It helps your fair use argument if you don't
| impact, but there are plenty of clear cases where its fair
| use despite negative business impact. For example writing a
| scathing negative review of something that has quotes for
| context.
| anticristi wrote:
| You are right. By "business impact" I was rather thinking
| that the aggregator simply diverts ad revenue, without
| adding any value. If I made a business which summaries
| other books without sharing revenue, I would likely get
| busted.
| bawolff wrote:
| Why do you think that? I'm pretty sure that the cole's
| notes series of books do not share revenue nor do the
| summaries on good reads.
|
| Straight up copying of course would be different.
| xylophoner wrote:
| I wonder if FB ever offered or considered letting users link
| without previews (e.g., choose a word or words of their post
| to become the link text). It would defuse the way users scan
| headline/preview/image on the feed (instead of going to the
| publisher and reading the content). Not sure Australia would
| have accepted this but I believe it addresses some of their
| concerns.
| jabberwcky wrote:
| Because it is at odds with the grand idea of a beautiful open
| network and free flow of information^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W US-centric
| media machine governed by US law and exclusively celebrating US
| culture and western propaganda
|
| You are likely to find all kinds of explanations on this
| thread, but ultimately I believe the root cause is the above.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic or
| ideological flamewar. It makes discussion less curious, more
| tedious, and nastier. Instead, please make your substantive
| points thoughtfully and without that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jabberwcky wrote:
| Substantively, this is a battle between a US media
| powerhouse and a sovereign nation over control of its local
| media. This isn't "ideological flamewar", it is an
| inescapable reality underpinning the case.
| xenomachina wrote:
| My understanding is that even a headline with a link counts.
|
| 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.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| What does "saying no" mean wrt the new law?
| ahepp wrote:
| I haven't been able to find a source for this (apologies),
| but my recollection is that before threatening to leave
| Australia, Google threatened to simply stop linking to news
| sites in Australia. I believe they were told this would be
| illegal.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > before threatening to leave Australia, Google threatened
| to simply stop linking to news sites in Australia. I
| believe they were told this would be illegal.
|
| This is the most unacceptable aspect of this policy. If you
| want to say "you must pay to link", that's bad policy
| that's been bought and paid for, but it at least can be
| worked around and doesn't _compel_ linking or other
| association. But "you must pay to link _and you must link_
| " is incredibly dangerous policy for which a scorched-earth
| response is entirely appropriate.
| ahepp wrote:
| I think there's something to the idea that _given_ google
| should pay to link, they should not be able to sidestep
| the regulation through monopoly power.
|
| That said, I strongly disagree with the premise.
|
| I guess Google decided market share was worth more than
| the cost. I have to admit, I think it would be satisfying
| to see Australia face consequences for what seems like a
| pattern of hostility to the open digital world.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| It doesn't take monopoly power to sidestep it, just the
| ability to choose who you do business with. You don't
| have to be a monopoly to exercise freedom of association.
|
| "Here are the rules for doing business here" with a set
| of unreasonable rules can be an annoyance, but there's
| always the choice of _not_ doing business there. "Here
| are the rules for doing business here, and you _must_ do
| business here " is absolutely unacceptable, no matter who
| it targets.
| evolve2k wrote:
| The Australian Government for ages has been trying to get the
| news organisations and the social media giants to come together
| and establish a voluntary media code that addresses concerns of
| multiple parties in a reasonable way. I'm sure each of you will
| be shocked to hear that Google & FB each have been hostile to
| the process form the start and have missed meetings and general
| behaved poorly and arrogantly in their dealings. This is a
| cynical late stage comms from Fb.
|
| 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.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| > Google & Fb know they are very powerful with limited
| obligations to Australians and so they are acting arrogantly
| and oppressively in their approach.
|
| 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.
| marcod wrote:
| I could totally see news orgs come crawling back to FB and
| ask them to put all the traffic back.
| jsnell wrote:
| Of course. But the law will not allow for that.
|
| If FB allows any news content (e.g. from news orgs that
| want their content to be listd for free), they must allow
| all news content (e.g. from news orgs that will want to
| be paid unrealistic amounts for it).
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| One also wonders whether Google would have put a
| termination clause in their contract with the news orgs
| in the event the law is repealed. And is Google really
| going to provide them notice of algorithm changes? Very
| interesting to see how that's going to be done if so.
| JamisonM wrote:
| There are a lot of comments in here slamming the Australian
| government for somehow "not understanding the Internet" or
| whatever and I thank you for this detailed background.
|
| 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.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This comment should be pinned to the top of every comment
| thread on the matter, and required reading before anyone else
| comments.
|
| 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.
| bawolff wrote:
| > I'm sure each of you will be shocked to hear that Google &
| FB each have been hostile to the process form the start and
| have missed meetings
|
| 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?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| No, if you're the guy who writes the laws, you're allowed
| to just tell people what to do. That's the deal with laws.
| bawolff wrote:
| As i said, you can also put a gun to someone's head (law
| is based on the state's monopoly on violence).
|
| However if you're the guy who writes the laws in
| australia, you have less (but still some) power over
| american corporations.
| djoldman wrote:
| The messaging on this tech vs news publishers in Australia is
| pretty intense. Any site that doesn't want google to index a page
| can add: <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>
|
| to the page and it will not be listed when someone searches
| Google (as far as I know), thereby preventing all the alleged
| stealing/siphoning/etc of revenue/profits from news sites. Am I
| wrong here?
|
| 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.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Any single site doesn't have the power to change Facebook. Your
| suggestion is equivalent to "no child is forced to work in the
| mines. If they don't need the money, they can choose to go to
| school instead"
| djoldman wrote:
| It seems to me that Facebook putting an anchor link to a
| website on a facebook page is materially different from child
| labor.
|
| 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.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| These links and snippets are mutually beneficial. The
| argument is if the "natural" allocation of benefits is fair
| and the best possible for society.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| You can Google Netflix and still have to pay for it.
| bwb wrote:
| I would love to see FB ban any news from their platform,
| especially politics. Globally.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| This will just ensure that all news is transmitted via memes,
| screenshots, and unsourced copy-pasted quotes.
|
| It won't be an improvement.
| koheripbal wrote:
| ... or worse - government approved news only.
| bwb wrote:
| You aren't stopping conversations. And, FB already has to
| do that in countries with laws that control those aspects
| of the free press.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Would there be any difference at this point?
| bwb wrote:
| Why wouldn't people just visit news sites like normal? You go
| to cnn.com or nytimes.com or your local newspaper. Thats it,
| just don't allow it at FB.
|
| People post so many fake stories from fakes sites, or outrage
| stories with headlines for clicks, stop incentivizing that
| behaviour. Just ban all politics/news and let people talk
| about other stuff.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > You go to cnn.com [...] "outrage stories with headlines
| for clicks, stop incentivizing that behaviour"
|
| CNN is one of the example of news organization that lives
| on outrage. There's not that many news sites left that
| avoid clickbaity headlines and fueling outrage. Social
| media helped to advance that, but it's not now - cable news
| and just their websites discovered that it works before
| social media.
| drstewart wrote:
| Should this article and discussion be allowed on HN?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Because people want to use social media, and they're going
| to keep doing it. And people talk about news.
|
| They're still going to talk about it with friends and
| family. Except, instead of at least linking to an article,
| now they'll have to share it via selected bits and pieces
| that FB can't censor (or via pure interpretation).
| g_p wrote:
| Perhaps there could be an unintended consequence that
| people will need to put some more effort into "sharing
| news" (i.e. writing or copying some words in order to
| begin a discussion)?
|
| By having multiple origin sources for the story (rather
| than one widely shared post from an outlet) it might
| reduce the popularity bias of "everyone else liked that,
| I should too"?
|
| Changing user behaviour is hard, but part of me wonders
| if this could be a really interesting experiment to see
| if it brings about any meaningful change on social media.
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| You might be underestimating the percentage of the
| population for whom the internet _is_ Facebook. Just like
| AOL a few decades ago, there are still plenty of uneducated
| people who genuinely don 't know how to navigate the
| internet on their own. Those people then go on to
| effectively get their news from Facebook or similar.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| In my country media has learned a lesson: poor people are not
| your audience.
|
| 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.
| vicary wrote:
| Aussie. Aussie. Aussie.
| panda21 wrote:
| If FB and Google are the only two on the naughty list, does this
| give opportunity for smaller startups to take advantage, or have
| they made it clear that startups can easily be added to the list
| as well?
| ekimekim wrote:
| The law is being made under the auspices of anti-monopoly
| legislation, so adding a company to the list requires they hold
| a monopolistic position.
| the-dude wrote:
| FTA:
|
| Intro:
|
| > to restrict the availability of news
|
| Outro:
|
| > I hope in the future, we can include news for people in
| Australia once again
| minikites wrote:
| Facebook won't take any action when its product is used to
| facilitate genocide, but they absolutely will take drastic action
| when you threaten to regulate them or threaten their profits in
| any way:
|
| https://twitter.com/max_fisher/status/1362116659977281538
| mzs wrote:
| News Corp & Google made a deal:
| https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/google-news-corp-dist...
| tw04 wrote:
| Oh no, not that, anything but that.
|
| 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.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Are these less informed people numerous enough to cause a
| problem to others, perhaps by voting badly? How would you know?
|
| 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.
| ankit219 wrote:
| I hope so too. Though I have a different theory on how the
| public would react. Australian users of FB/Instagram can't
| share links to any news website. But they can share screenshots
| and memes about the news. Even videos. The other thing - many
| summary accounts just popup who would give their version of the
| news in text or video. Why? because the news is paywalled and
| not everyone pays.
|
| 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.
| creddit wrote:
| > And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism
| instead of leeching off of it.
|
| Not unreasonable arguments could be made that it's journalism
| that leeches off of FB. FB drives huge traffic and provides a
| massive platform.
| tomComb wrote:
| If FB thought that would happen they wouldn't have done.
|
| 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.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I can guarantee that the exact opposite of that is gonna
| happen. There's a reason why we are in the current state of
| misinformation. Quality journalism stays behind paywalls, while
| misinformation is free. In the age of constant information,
| anything that has more barriers to access, keeps losing its
| position in the ecosystem.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Australia is a backward nanny state and this is just another
| manifestation of this fact. The rules and regulations in this
| country are just over the top. They advertise themselves as "laid
| back" but there is nothing laid back about how this country runs.
| Still waiting for NSW to allow electric scooters.
|
| I do admit though, with all the progressivism going around being
| conservative in some aspects can be very beneficial. For example
| closing the country to flights from China and in general when
| corona started was a pretty good idea unlike in the US where
| everybody called Trump racist for trying to do just that.
| dannyr wrote:
| Does it take effect today?
| empressplay wrote:
| Apparently it's in the process of being implemented today yes
| indymike wrote:
| News adds little value to Facebook. I wonder how much of
| Facebook's engagement is actually from news versus user-generated
| content.
| pb7 wrote:
| The post says news makes up 4% of the feed content.[0]
|
| [0] https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-
| vie...
| indymike wrote:
| What I'm looking for is what percentage of engagement is
| attributed to that 4% of the feed content.
| hg35h4 wrote:
| Traditional media companies vs big tech oligarchs.
|
| Not sure which I dislike more. Liars and thieves the lot of them.
| Can they both lose for our sakes?
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| It would solve a lot of the problems I have with Facebook if they
| applied this policy internationally.
| sroussey wrote:
| Yes! No more news links on my FB feed would be great!!
| zmmmmm wrote:
| This is a fairly important stand Facebook is taking - I'm glad
| they are doing it. The precedent set here is uncomfortably close
| to creating a liability simply for linking to content - something
| that would quite literally destroy the very fabric of the
| internet if it was applied generally. In Facebook's case it is
| even worse because they are not the ones creating the links -
| their users are. If internet services have to assume liability
| for not just actual content people post but content within
| _things they link to_ it will create a situation that is simply
| untenable.
|
| 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.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the
| ones creating the links - their users are.
|
| It is much worse than that. The publishers themselves often
| share the links on Facebook themselves.
| css wrote:
| Text of the relevant Australian law:
| https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
| [deleted]
| teraflop wrote:
| That's a summary of the bill, along with some commentary on the
| arguments that were heard about. This seems to be the actual
| text:
| https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...
| clouddrover wrote:
| In contrast, Google has been making deals with Australian media
| companies:
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-...
| quink wrote:
| Mostly because afaik the law prohibits Google as it is from
| delisting news content specifically like Facebook is doing now,
| so it was either efforts like this to last-ditch prevent the
| legislation from passing or face a complete shutdown in
| Australia.
| g_p wrote:
| I wonder if this is the start of a course-correction that
| recognises search/basic discovery of information is probably
| "infrastructure", and that (perhaps) large social media
| platforms are becoming "public places".
|
| The way this is being brought about (the linking part) seems
| flawed, but perhaps if this goes ahead, it will be an
| interesting way to see how a future world might look where
| some of the damnage done by the "internet" (well, its
| business models) in recent years is forcibly reversed?
| ipsum2 wrote:
| So disappointed that Google is caving into a government-
| enforced shake down.
| dekhn wrote:
| Begun, the social media government wars have.
| rafaelturk wrote:
| I'm going to side with FB on this. This law is so bizarre.
| v_london wrote:
| It's a law that's either written by media lobbyists or people
| unfamiliar with technology. Potentially both at the same time.
|
| 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.
| kgog wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you find bizarre about it?
| ta89489544 wrote:
| I found it bizarre that the Treasurer gets to (arbitrarily?)
| pick which platforms this applies to and that only 2
| platforms, Facebook and Google, were chosen. Maybe I'm just
| missing the information, but why isn't there just a
| definition of a platform this should apply to? I'm pretty far
| removed from this issues, but it smells like some large news
| organization decided they wanted to get some free money from
| Facebook and Google so they lobbied for this law.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Does this law hit Reddit as well? I'm kind of curious what they'd
| do if they couldn't link to news in some parts of the world.
| Especially because a lot of the time the comments will include
| full article text if there's a paywall.
| llacb47 wrote:
| New error message being displayed on facebook:
| https://i.imgur.com/sxHaAUg.png
| gambiting wrote:
| I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I think I'm going to
| side with FB on this. The Australian government is once again
| showing absolute disregard when it comes to understanding
| technology, and its signature heavy handed approach to
| regulation.
| 60secz wrote:
| Laws of economics are pretty clear on this. News, especially
| international news, is a commodity. Government can impose
| monopoly ruls to try to allow distribution channels to extract
| more, but technology (and users) will find ways to route around
| this as damage to the network.
|
| 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.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Laws are never necessary where economics or physics already
| lead to the desired outcome.
|
| 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".
| wvenable wrote:
| The problem isn't so much that people don't want to pay for
| news. But if the competition is giving away news for free,
| news now has a price of zero.
|
| 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.
| quink wrote:
| One recent quote from the former prime minister when Australia
| was planning to introduce backdoors to end-to-end encryption:
|
| > "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only
| law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"
| flukus wrote:
| And this was a hip "tech savvy" PM who was CxO at an ISP, the
| rest of them are worse.
| cowpig wrote:
| Oh my god this is a real thing...
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-
| en...
| quink wrote:
| > Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate
| people who share its luck. It lives on other people's
| ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable,
| most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about
| the events that surround them that they are often taken by
| surprise.
|
| - Donald Horne, 1964
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I think this describes other commonwealth countries, like
| here in Canada, as well. Likely an outcrop of former-
| colonial mentality. The history of leadership here when
| we still had a mother country was one of governorship and
| colonial administration. The towns and streets are named
| after them. Frankly the attitude towards politics has
| persisted. It has its positives (stability and a relative
| lack of dysfunction) and its problems.
|
| In Ontario as well we have this kind of problem with
| state-capture by industries all over. Regulations and
| land zoning are in many ways geared for the already-haves
| rather than a level playing field. An example being the
| wine industry regulation here.
| clouddrover wrote:
| What is the Australian government misunderstanding? They wanted
| a better deal for domestic news media, they are getting a
| better deal for domestic news media:
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56101859
|
| The Australian government's approach is working.
| nostromo wrote:
| This is how regulatory capture happens.
|
| 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.
| offby37years wrote:
| Where does it stipulate this law applies to new startups?
| jsnell wrote:
| First, Cloudrover's link has nothing to do with the law,
| nor on linking to news content. It's about showing news
| content inline in some new app that nobody has heard of,
| nor will use.
|
| Second, the Australian law does not apply to all companies.
| It just applies to the companies the current government
| decides it applies to. (It's not that it will even be
| selectively enforced. It literally only applies to a
| specific set of companies, which is currently FB and
| Google.)
| ekimekim wrote:
| > Google can afford to pay for the right to link to
| publishers. New startups can't.
|
| The law specifically only targets Google and Facebook due
| to their monopoly power. New startups are not affected.
| gambiting wrote:
| Are they? Surely Australian companies are now also forbidden
| from sharing their stories on Facebook.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Yes. It was of no value to them anyway. That's what the
| legislation is about: preventing platforms with market
| dominance capturing most of the advertising revenue with no
| real return to the organizations producing the content.
| gambiting wrote:
| Sure, but now no one is getting the advertising revenue.
| So the domestic news companies are not better off, the
| best case scenario is that they are exactly as they were,
| but most likely they are worse off since they simply
| don't even get the traffic.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I can easily see the outcome being that people simply
| read less news, or read more international news.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Under these new restrictions, Australians can't read or
| share even international news on Facebook.
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| Facebook showed in their release the monetary value of
| they provided the news companies.
|
| I can't see how you could possible argue they do not
| provide value to the classic media companies by allowing
| them to be linked and discussed freely on their feeds.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Facebook can say a lot of things, but I bet the
| publishers also have their own numbers and they are the
| ones who pushed for this deal.
| bawolff wrote:
| Traditional media companies have been cutting off their
| noses to spite their faces for a long time now. I dont
| see why this will be any different.
|
| Besides, this is obviously a good deal if facebook folds.
| Publishers seem to be overestimating their position so fb
| is calling their bluff. Both sides have stuff to lose,
| but im pretty sure the publishers have a lot more than fb
| does.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| You understand that publishers control the distribution
| of their content, right? Facebook users merely pass
| around links. Publishers can block page loads from
| Facebook or put up a paywall anytime they want to. Some
| (like WSJ) chose to do so and others do not. This is
| basically a decision as to whether they receive more in
| value from those links than they do from blocking the
| links.
|
| Thus the publishers have already revealed whether they
| benefit or not, by choosing to allow or disallow the
| traffic. There is no rational argument that they were
| being "hurt" by the traffic.
|
| Of course Tech is now politically unpopular, and if you
| are Australian then it is _foreign_ tech -- even more
| unpopular -- so why not use this political environment to
| try to extract some cash payments? Everyone wants to
| receive cash payments, and I can understand why a for-
| profit Industry would want cash payments, but what is
| harder to understand is why the public would view them as
| victims if they didn 't get those payments, as they have
| already made it clear that they are benefitting from the
| tech traffic by allowing it and by setting up marketing
| accounts in Facebook and promoting/ sharing links to
| their stories there. Yet in addition to that they want to
| receive cash from Facebook. Well, that's a bit of a
| fantasy, now, isn't it?
| DevKoala wrote:
| I am not Australian or defending this move. I am just
| saying that these large corporations won't shoot
| themselves on the foot without doing some analysis.
| anonymousab wrote:
| They could have blocked Google and Facebook at any time.
| They didn't because they know the value is important if
| not existential.
|
| What they want is for Facebook and Google to be forced to
| list them, but also forced to pay for the privilege. If
| they failed to craft or pay for legislation to that end,
| it was nothing more than a mistake.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > What they want is for Facebook and Google to be forced
| to list them, but also forced to pay for the privilege.
| If they failed to craft or pay for legislation to that
| end, it was nothing more than a mistake.
|
| Such legislation is impossible given that Google/Facebook
| are not Australian companies. At the end of the day, if
| the legislation makes their involvement in those
| countries a net negative for their bottom lines, they can
| and will take their ball and go home.
| tt433 wrote:
| I'm not really sure what you mean by impossible
| DevKoala wrote:
| How could they have coordinated a full agreement to block
| FB/Google by all news associations without this law?
|
| Most likely this deal benefits the biggest stakeholders
| only. Small players would cave into opening up to
| FB/Google.
| shock-value wrote:
| Is it really any additive value? News companies and
| consumption certainly existed before social media.
| rodonn wrote:
| Any publisher already had the option of blocking their
| content from being linked on Facebook and Google, they
| chose not to do so because the traffic they get from F/G
| was valuable.
|
| Ben Thompson has a nice analysis of the situation:
| https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-
| bargainin...
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >It was of no value to them anyway.
|
| We have something of a natural experiment here on how
| much FB traffic is worth to news sites. We'll learn the
| results in a year if Australia repeals or maintains the
| law.
| centimeter wrote:
| It's generous of you to assume that laws are passed and
| repealed based on benefit.
|
| We already had a natural experiment, in which Australian
| publishers were free not to share their content on fb.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| This is probably the only reason why as an Australian
| resident, I'm not in a rush to get the law changed.
|
| I'm not sure how discoverability is going to be effected
| and that may take a while to see the effects given how
| locals probably know the locals news sources.
| [deleted]
| angry_octet wrote:
| This unfortunately does nothing to stop disinformation actors
| with armies of bots and sockpuppet accounts. So the information
| content on fb has plunged even lower.
|
| 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.
| Sephr wrote:
| Honestly wish Google did this as well instead of bowing down to
| unjust laws.
| smolder wrote:
| Who is deciding what laws are just? Hopefully not Google or
| Facebook, as they are amoral profit-motivated behemoths who
| will annex your home and life if they're allowed.
| pb7 wrote:
| Most people would agree that paying for the obligation to
| drive traffic to someone else's business without a choice in
| the matter is unjust.
| tomComb wrote:
| Agreed, but that became a lot less likely when Microsoft
| supported the new law (while claiming they were taking the
| moral high ground).
|
| 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).
| linuxftw wrote:
| Personally, I think it might actually make facebook enjoyable
| again in Australia. I don't want to go to facebook to see people
| sharing news. I 0% want to see anything news related on social
| media.
|
| TBD what qualifies as 'news,' though.
| Cyclone_ wrote:
| Will be interesting to see the social impact on this. I kind of
| wish sometimes there was a plug-in that could just block news
| postings on facebook, since I don't go to facebook to see what
| friends are saying about the news
| creaghpatr wrote:
| There used to be, you could hide all from certain sources when
| you looked at the options on a given post but they sunset that
| feature. The sources I hid then still don't show up in my feed,
| though.
| srcreigh wrote:
| I haven't read the bill, but this looks like a huge win.
|
| 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.
| dingaling wrote:
| You should consider rewriting that post with FB substituted by
| 'social media'.
| docdeek wrote:
| Facebook's statement says that news is only 4% of what is
| shared on their platform. I'm not sure 4% is a major hit to
| their platform.
|
| 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.
| worik wrote:
| Can anybody explain to me what the problem is with Facebook et el
| driving traffic to news sites?
|
| Most of the times I visit newspapers websites I was sent there
| from social media.
| vinger wrote:
| A group of people want to control what websites your friends
| are sharing.
| pochamago wrote:
| The cynical streak in me would suggest that now is a popular
| time to criticize major tech organs for their relationship to
| news, and the Australian government is hoping to use that to
| funnel money from US companies to Australian ones.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| You could argue that taxes were designed before the "you are
| the product" age. If Apple sells a phone in Australia to a
| local customer, they pay Australian sales tax and possibly
| import dues to get the phone into the country. When Facebook
| sells data from an Australian user to a random advertiser,
| all tax is due in Ireland/Netherlands or some other tax haven
| and Australia makes nothing.
|
| 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.
| offby37years wrote:
| If anything, US big tech is and has been siphoning money from
| the Australia news media for a decade.
| extropy wrote:
| Australia thinks they can extract value from news aggregators.
|
| 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.
| offby37years wrote:
| The complaint is that many users just read the headline and
| never click to leave the Facebook walled garden, generating 0
| income or traffic for the news media.
|
| 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.
| angry_octet wrote:
| Those ads you see in FB and next to google results generate
| money for them, not for the websites whose content you're
| looking at. Basically the portal collects money from helping
| the advertiser match closely to people who will buy, but the
| content platforms don't have that info on the user and can't
| influence their decision making process as much.
| gkmcd wrote:
| A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech
| companies to provide selected news organisations with advance
| notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been
| generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I
| believe it is the actually the most important part of the
| legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an
| enormous advantage over other companies not included and protect
| them from new competitors, basically entrenching the current
| media landscape for the foreseeable future.
|
| 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.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The only problem I have with this requirement is that it
| requires giving _only_ news organizations access to this
| information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by
| ensuring everyone has even access to that information.
|
| 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.
| extropy wrote:
| Publicly disclosing the algorithms would drastically increase
| the pace of gaming them and resulting in pay to play system
| where the fanciest SEO wins.
|
| 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.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| the war against spam is being delegated to the search
| engines instead of being fought by users. It doesn't seem
| right to give them such power in order to relieve ourselves
| of a mild annoyance. There comes a point where an industry
| becomes too important to be the sole decision of a private
| company. Hence we have local governments which are less
| efficient at getting things done and inconvenience people
| greatly, but is found to be preferable than becoming
| commercialised and ultimately slaves. This is the argument
| against monopolies, and the internet needs to become more
| democratic. The answer isn't to charge tech companies for
| the privilege of dictating our lives, rather its greater
| transparency on behalf of big tech and more responsibility
| on behalf of their users.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This excuse has been used to protect Google and Facebook
| for decades, but considering disinformation campaigns,
| civil unrest, and outright genocide has been the cost... I
| think the price of using obscurity to prevent SEO tactics
| is _way too high_.
| nostromo wrote:
| This isn't as true as it once was.
|
| Google's best asset for ranking is their user data. Even if
| you had the exact algorithm, you couldn't game it without
| massive amounts of user traffic. (At least not for popular
| searches.)
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| I'm curious how this advance update thing is supposed to
| work. What does disclosing those details look like, actually?
|
| 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?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Any human-initiated change to search algorithms is
| presumably human-understandable. Someone writes a rule to
| downrank some terms or traits of a website, they presumably
| document it somewhere.
|
| That documentation will need to be shared, and the
| implementation of the rule change will need to be delayed
| until the disclosure window has passed.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Human understandable, yes, but the details of particular
| changes might only make sense to humans familiar with the
| system.
|
| But yeah, the product manager view / documentation of
| intent sounds generally reasonable.
|
| I do wonder how useful that will be to the news orgs in
| practice.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Honestly, first and foremost, I expect a _firehose_ of
| documentation, if Google isn 't lying about making dozens
| of changes to it's algorithms every day. News companies
| might need a full-time guy (or team) just to sit there
| and read through them all.
|
| But on the other hand, a bunch of journalists will have a
| ton of never-before-seen information about how the
| world's most powerful companies affect every other
| company on the planet. That alone is going to be worth
| some major exclusives.
|
| Also, by the mere nature of being forced to share it,
| Google and Facebook will have to clean up their acts,
| they'll have to assume any change they make that could
| open them up to legal scrutiny will be found.
| Jonanin wrote:
| These algorithms are not human readable code. They are
| massively complex interconnected systems of many black box ML
| models. I don't understand what clarity people think
| releasing the "algorithms" will bring. In fact, describing
| ranking as a single algorithm is pretty misleading.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I also believe any algorithm that isn't human-readable
| should be banned. If it can't be understood, nobody can
| validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards
| encouraging violence and harm.
|
| The fact that technology companies have been grossly
| negligent and irresponsible isn't a reason to not regulate
| them: It's proof regulation needs to be much, much
| stronger.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > I also believe any algorithm that isn't human-readable
| should be banned. If it can't be understood, nobody can
| validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards
| encouraging violence and harm.
|
| I'm not sure a human-readable algorithm exists for
| ranking all the web pages in the world based on natural
| language input. In fact, I'm pretty sure such an
| algorithm does not, and potentially cannot, exist given
| the absolute failure of all approaches towards NLP that
| weren't based on absolute masses of text data and complex
| models.
|
| Are you willing to make Google 10% as effective to
| achieve your goal of a human-readable algorithm?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > Are you willing to make Google 10% as effective to
| achieve your goal of a human-readable algorithm?
|
| Absolutely. If it can't be done responsibly and
| ethically, perhaps it should not be done.
| hooande wrote:
| what % of people do you think would be willing to stop
| using search engines because they are unethical?
| xemoka wrote:
| To me, their response didn't seem to indicate that it
| should be directly decided by people. This is a consumer
| protection matter, and to stretch an analogy, like a list
| of ingredients on a consumable. Here we have these black
| boxes, and no list of ingredients, yet they drive and
| shape our world. A Person can't EVEN directly decide if
| they wanted to.
| drstewart wrote:
| >If it can't be understood, nobody can validate that it
| isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging
| violence and harm.
|
| This is quite a bizarre claim as there is famously an
| entire category of problems that are hard to solve but
| easy to verify: P vs NP
| Jonanin wrote:
| This is an incredibly naive perspective. I guess you want
| to ban search engines, self driving cars, automated
| filtering of lewd and abusive content (why do you think
| FB isn't full of porn? It's not a hand engineered
| algorithm), automatic speech recognition for the hearing
| impaired, and a vast swath of important technology I
| didn't list. I don't think you really understand the
| implications of what you're asking for. Sorry - black
| boxes are here to stay. And they are immeasurably useful.
| I could spend hours listing important and crucial
| technologies that you want banned because you are scared
| of racism.
| Isinlor wrote:
| Do you apply the same standard to people?
|
| Tell me, how did your brain come up with what you wrote?
| How do I validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or
| slanted towards encouraging violence and harm?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Very few people have the ability to influence the success
| or failure of every business on the planet. Those that do
| are heavily scrutinized for racist or sexist behavior.
| (Sometimes they also don't get convicted anyways, but
| that's another matter.)
| xemoka wrote:
| By asking them. You can't just ask an algorithm, it must
| be designed to show its own work. Credibility is another
| problem...
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| lol. sorry, but that reminds me of a skit by an
| Australian comedian:
|
| male guest: "now first of all, let me just start by
| saying I'm not racist..."
|
| female guest: "pfft..."
|
| host: "ah see you made a noise there, but a lot of people
| accuse him of being a racist, so I think it's very
| helpful to know that he actually isn't one..."
| xemoka wrote:
| Right, like I said, credibility is a different problem.
| But at this point, we don't even get a lie from them, we
| get nothing. At least a lie can be checked and examined.
| There's nothing available at all currently.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Why can't you just test the algorithm? It's not
| conclusive, but it's also not worthless.
| teraflop wrote:
| It's even broader than that. The law applies to any
| "alterations to the ways in which a service distributes
| content". The law never actually defines what this means, but
| it gives a bunch of examples that go beyond ranking. For
| example, anything that affects a particular "class of content",
| such as deciding whether or not to make all videos auto-play,
| is an alteration.
|
| 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...
| riquito wrote:
| "Digital Platforms must provide moderation tools to news media
| companies to enable the removal or filtering of user comments;"
|
| This was another big one. User links a news article, the
| newspaper would get to moderate comments on Facebook, in the
| user's page
| March_f6 wrote:
| The gall of FB mentioning the importance of news in a democratic
| society. They have arguably done irreversible net bad for
| democracies. Let em bow out.
| mythz wrote:
| Did you RTFA? They're having to put content moderation guards
| in-place: - To stop Australian publishers from
| sharing any content on FB - Prevent International or
| Australian news from being viewed or shared by Australians
|
| Failing to see how this benefits Australians or Australian news
| publishers.
| March_f6 wrote:
| It benefits them by reducing their exposure to online echo
| chambers reinforced by fake or extremely biased news that are
| endemic to Facebook. It benefits them by forcing them to get
| their news directly from the source rather than wrapped in a
| context Facebook decides upon. It sounds as though you
| presuppose FB is or should be the only source of news.
|
| And yes I did read it. And I thought critically about it :)
| mythz wrote:
| I'd say it's wishful thinking that you believe a majority
| of the population is going to visit all their news sources
| directly rather than simply ignore they exist.
|
| News publishers were voluntarily posting on FB themselves
| to generate traffic to their own sites, it's some warped
| tough love view to think removing their ability to share
| content is somehow for their own benefit.
|
| > It sounds as though you presuppose FB is or should be the
| only source of news.
|
| Never stated anything remotely close to infer this false
| assumption, ironic that in the same breath you're
| lambasting FB for spreading misinformation.
| March_f6 wrote:
| People won't stop consuming news and they will go where
| they need to to get it. With FB out of the running I
| think that means they will likely end up on some mixed
| diet like a forum (like HN) and getting it from various
| sources (local,national,etc.) Essentially, I'm less
| worried about people being uninformed than I am about
| them being misinformed and I'm afraid that FB has shown
| to enable misinformation at unprecedented scale thus far.
| If we can't agree that FB has uniquely played a large
| role in that then our discussion is rather moot I'm
| afraid.
|
| Also, that's why I said it "sounds like". I was inferring
| while being fully aware of your ability to clarify.
| ttt0 wrote:
| > Failing to see how this benefits Australians
|
| They will hopefully stop using Facebook.
| llacb47 wrote:
| Well this will go great.
| nojs wrote:
| Good on Facebook for actually calling the Government's bluff,
| with a straightforward explanation of the economics, instead of
| pretending to and posting strange and confusing things like
| Google. I tend to believe them that the impact will be minimal,
| but will be huge to publishers (which is why the law was so
| ridiculous in the first place).
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Nobody disputes the economics. That's why a law was needed.
| You're confusing might with right.
| nojs wrote:
| If linking to Australian news content is not in the financial
| interests of the company, why would they continue to do it?
| It shouldn't be surprising that they choose not to.
| eznzt wrote:
| Why does it say "recognizes" but then "penalise" in the same
| paragraph?
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| I use FB as an easy way to garner news from several locations at
| once. Of course FB uses that to litter my 'news feed' with junk
| (eg suggestions of all kinds). So I'm two minds about this being
| a problem for me (an Aussie).
|
| 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
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm confused how you know that's not the truth. Why _are_ the
| publishers posting on Facebook if not because they expect it
| 'll get them more readers?
| dannyr wrote:
| In some countries, Facebook has a monopoly in online
| distribution that publishers have no other choice aside from
| Facebook to get readers.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Is that because they're legally forbidden from setting up
| their own website or is it because they're unwilling to
| spend money on some decent developers and build a homepage
| worth checking everyday?
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| Except its obvious that posting news articles drives readership
| towards the links. You get very detailed statistics from
| Facebook on clickthrough rates and its not hard to see who
| clicks through that already has an account for your site (and
| is likely already a regular reader).
|
| 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).
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