I'm not sure how much I agree with the law about charging for news links, but then I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline, photos and often a few lines of a story, and FB does get a lot of benefit out of them.
However I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law, and I have friends in Australia who have said how much better the facebook experience is now. It's actually gone back to being a feed of posts by people they know about things that are going on in their lives. That was the whole value proposition of the platform, for me, and the endless link-sharing has made it incredibly unappealing. I can read news and follow link aggregators elsewhere.
I hope Australia get to keep their new facebook, especially as I'm moving there soon!
News orgs could already block that content if they wanted using robots.txt, but have chosen not to - indeed, they go out of their way to sprinkle Facebook's opengraph and other metadata to make their content more searchable and present better when shared.
The law is bad. I'm all in favour of our government actually taxing FB, Google, and others that manage to offshore all their profits to lower tax jurisdictions, but a pseudo-tax based (partly) around links is unacceptable.
I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.
> I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.
Why? Many comments I read are trying to make this a google -vs- Oz issue where you can only take one side. I'm taking a side where I want to see Google regulated and charged as an internet ad&search monopoly, Newscorp regulated and charged as news provider monopoly, and Oz to just put more taxes on huge companies and stop playing with Murdoch. FB can get penalties for lack of moderation while we're at it. They're all bad, we don't have to take any evil person/org's side.
> News orgs could already block that content if they wanted using robots.txt, but have chosen not to - indeed, they go out of their way to sprinkle Facebook's opengraph and other metadata to make their content more searchable and present better when shared
Google is a monopoly on search. You could block it from indexing and it would drastically hurt you and your discoverability. Cutting your hand to spite you kind of thing. The same way you could in theory just not get telephone service or just not buy oil in historic US anti-trust actions. Media sites can't live of the little that trickles to them, and can't live without it either, with some exceptions ( like expensive paywalled editions like Financial Times). Thanking most news sources to piss off Murdoch and stop his crap from spreading might be worth it, for a few days but would be disastrous long term.
> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law
The first and second half of that sentence really need to be separated; "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying.
But it's an interesting point; a big part of the "Facebook is a danger to democracy" stuff is about the sharing of misinformation on there, and zapping all the news on there has removed some of the most toxic and dangerous content. Especially all the News Corp stuff - from the organisation driving this law in the first place.
However, it's not so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as launching both baby and bath into the sun.
> "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying.
I'll concede that sentence is a little too wide. If they were standing up for themselves on some newly introduced corporal punishment laws, for instance, I'd be a lot less keen.
Perhaps I should rephrase - "I'm not sure how much I agree with this law, it seems to have some merit though may not come from the best of places, but I applaud the Australian government for standing up to facebook nonetheless."
I don't buy "you should pay to link" but news articles are a large part of what makes up a facebook feed these days, usually in the form of a large-ish picture, a full headline and the lead-in sentence. I can definitely see the argument that they are using it as content.
Also, honestly I think people having less engagement with news in general would be a good thing.
Yes you need to be informed, but perhaps constant political reporting/link-sharing/outrage shouldn't be in a social space? I know, it's not my right to force that on FB, we should start a new social network, with blackjack and ...
But I do wonder if this constant engagement with news and outrage isn't part of what opens the door to the misinfo and conspiracy.
> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself
They are not standing up for themselves, they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law, its a common tactic they look for. Any media newsgroup that's not in their pocket already they fear. They have an incredible track record on this and with journalists.
The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
> they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law
Erm ... do laws not apply on the internet? That's a very sweeping criticism and not one I'm on board with.
> The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
I'll have to take your word for that. From here it looks like a positive development, or at least an interesting one, a nation state entering open conflict with a tech giant.
(Not that I'm going to be able to vote for some time, but last time I lived in Aus was under the Gillard government, and I did not form favourable opinions about the liberal-national coalition. I'm not arguing with you from a position of support for them)
The idea of Facebook without news honestly sounds wonderful. Only original posts (without any news, links, shares, or any content that's been posted before to avoid memes) would probably be the optimal experience. Where do I sign up for an Australian version of Facebook, without news?
It’s nice. I used to get an endless barrage of anxiety-inducing news, now all I see are posts from old friends and groups I’m interested in.
I would be very happy to relegate news to daily chatter and the 7PM bulletin. I wonder if Facebook will let us keep filtering news once it goes back to normal ... (I kid - of course it won’t.)
Take a pinch of half truth (this is about protecting journalists), mix with a dusting of nationalism (FB are intimidating Australia) and viola - a news monopoly gets a legislated free ride.
Lets all fight amongst ourselves about government versus FB while the real winners remain invisible.
Australian here - day one of the news blackout is really weird. Some determined friends are sharing bit.ly links to news articles, most are just weirded out. Our national broadcaster (which can't even legally advertise anyway) is even disallowed.
It's an impressive shoe of strength and a really terrible decision imo.
Our current PM is a fairly hard religious conservative, and I've never seen as much support for him from bipartisan circles as I'm seeing right now as he stands up to Facebook's "bullying".
(Note: I am not sure if I support the legislation that led to this showdown.)
> Our current PM is a fairly hard religious conservative
No he's not. He's a left-leaning centrist, like both major Australian parties. Trying to apply American-flavoured extremism to the Australian political spectrum is exactly why getting rid of bubblegum news is a good thing.
For those playing at home, Scott Morrison the "hard religious conservative" who famously said[0] "the Bible is not a policy handbook, and I get very worried when people try to treat it like one" also happens to belong to the party that:
* Outlawed general access to firearms
* Legalised gay marriage
* Introduced GST (VAT)
* Introduced women-centric divorce law
* Gave people free money for having more children
* Made healthcare for pensioners free
Ad nauseam. None of these actions are "conservative" in the slightest, unless you're comparing them to literal communists, of course. The Australian Liberal Party is probably more left leaning than the American Liberal Party.
> No he's not. He's a left-leaning centrist, like both major Australian parties
What? He's a money worshiping pentecostalist (and I mean that in a literal sense). The LNP are pretty far right. They're no one nation, but they're not for behind.
> famously said[0]
(2012) also action speak louder than words. I mean they literally introduced a bill Called the Religious Discrimination Bill that entitles people to discriminate on the basis of religion (or lack thereof)
Uh... he's a right leaning conservative, like both major Australian parties. He's not off the scale nuts like the US, but only by looking through an American lens could you conclude that he was left leaning.
Yes,but still: He's a conservative, rightist, anti unions, climate denying, pro coal, Murdoch bum-sucking, sacked ad-man. He's just not as right wing as Americans.
If he could have avoided any of the things you listed, he would have. He depends on the support of mouth breathers who believe Islam is evil, and who lock up refugees. He is incapable of bipartisanship. He basically dumped all Labor state leaders under the bus, backing only liberal state governments and refused to give credence to science. He did not stop antivaxx messages from his party.
He used his religion to further his career. His church faith group harboured a notorious paedophile pastor, and uses scripture to justify wealth at any cost. Pentecostal churches are not apolitical neutral bodies.
He did well, politically. He's not as right wing as pinochet. He's still right wing.
You can only judge a politician by the Overton window of their country, and I agree in principle that ScoMo is painted as a hard-edged Bible basher by the left-wing end of our political reporting here in Aus.
But he is to the right of the Libs, and only recently has he pivoted to the centre as he took up the PMship. It still matters that he would be right of every major Western leader at the moment.
I think in some sense this is good. Something like intellectual property rights, if you found the news and reported as one of first hand sources, then you should get paid for it (if you ask for it, because someone is using your work).
Also I think Facebook should register as a news agency in Australia and charge news publishers if they re-post content from FB. This way FB also makes money
> Also I think Facebook should register as a news agency in Australia and charge news publishers if they re-post content from FB. This way FB also makes money
> Facebook should register as a news agency in Australia
This is not about "registering", there are specific guidelines that you must meet to be eligible to get paid by Google and Facebook as a part of this scheme.
A key part is that you must be focused on producing "core news" and make like $150k annually from it. A sports-news-only org would not be eligible, under my understanding.
I know the government and obviously the media are telling the peasants to dislike this move.
But do they?
I would have thought the commoners would support this. Sticking it to the media.
The media is going to run a campaign of lies, so it's going to be tricky to tell. I guess after a while the public will actually believe they feel like the way the media tells them to.
Scott Morrison is only intimidated by one thing, the multinational News Corp that keeps him in a job [0][1].
Notably, the outcome of the petition by fmr. PM Rudd to have the government formally investigate this relationship is a Senate media diversity enquiry, which begins tomorrow 19.02.21 [2].
Why are people willing to give traditional news media propaganda unfair advantage compared to public to game the algorithm? (This is part of the new bill)
The entire thing will make Google a propaganda machine for news corp and other media giants as Google can neither rank them low nor remove them from search results and be forced to pay to sustain them.
Why are people willing to protect ad ridden news industry when they hate big tech adware so much? What's the difference? Shouldn't you be against both? Have you seen how bad trackers on news site are? I would rather use Google than generic news site full of trackers from everywhere.
Everyone wants to stick it to big tech but big media is suddenly good?
Every newscorp owned site is a cess pool of nazi defender and propaganda.
Any legislation which targets specific companies so blatantly isn't good. Anything which sets a precedent for paying for linking to someone isn't a good idea.
Come up with better anti trust laws instead of whatever this is and target every big tech company.
Remember that people still read the mainstream media as legitimate news, and literally no media property has an incentive to cover this from Google or FB's perspective. In a way this is a massive oversight on Google and FB's part.
This is the same fight that Uber had to fight with taxi cartells. You need to fight, you need to fight hard, and most importantly you need the public on your side. I'm not sure if FB's move is the right one and will get public support, but at least it opens people's eyes to the consequences of this.
You think anyone apart from Uncle Rupert had a say in this? In a first-world democracy, every citizen has the right to be ignored by his or her elected representatives.
Readit News
However I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law, and I have friends in Australia who have said how much better the facebook experience is now. It's actually gone back to being a feed of posts by people they know about things that are going on in their lives. That was the whole value proposition of the platform, for me, and the endless link-sharing has made it incredibly unappealing. I can read news and follow link aggregators elsewhere.
I hope Australia get to keep their new facebook, especially as I'm moving there soon!
The law is bad. I'm all in favour of our government actually taxing FB, Google, and others that manage to offshore all their profits to lower tax jurisdictions, but a pseudo-tax based (partly) around links is unacceptable.
I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.
Why? Many comments I read are trying to make this a google -vs- Oz issue where you can only take one side. I'm taking a side where I want to see Google regulated and charged as an internet ad&search monopoly, Newscorp regulated and charged as news provider monopoly, and Oz to just put more taxes on huge companies and stop playing with Murdoch. FB can get penalties for lack of moderation while we're at it. They're all bad, we don't have to take any evil person/org's side.
Google is a monopoly on search. You could block it from indexing and it would drastically hurt you and your discoverability. Cutting your hand to spite you kind of thing. The same way you could in theory just not get telephone service or just not buy oil in historic US anti-trust actions. Media sites can't live of the little that trickles to them, and can't live without it either, with some exceptions ( like expensive paywalled editions like Financial Times). Thanking most news sources to piss off Murdoch and stop his crap from spreading might be worth it, for a few days but would be disastrous long term.
As far as the proposed law is concerned, it seems we're talking about any kind of linking. https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...
> "a proposal is developed to recognise original covered news content when ranking and displaying news content on the digital platform service;"
It's very vague.
The first and second half of that sentence really need to be separated; "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying.
But it's an interesting point; a big part of the "Facebook is a danger to democracy" stuff is about the sharing of misinformation on there, and zapping all the news on there has removed some of the most toxic and dangerous content. Especially all the News Corp stuff - from the organisation driving this law in the first place.
However, it's not so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as launching both baby and bath into the sun.
I'll concede that sentence is a little too wide. If they were standing up for themselves on some newly introduced corporal punishment laws, for instance, I'd be a lot less keen.
Perhaps I should rephrase - "I'm not sure how much I agree with this law, it seems to have some merit though may not come from the best of places, but I applaud the Australian government for standing up to facebook nonetheless."
I don't buy "you should pay to link" but news articles are a large part of what makes up a facebook feed these days, usually in the form of a large-ish picture, a full headline and the lead-in sentence. I can definitely see the argument that they are using it as content.
Yes you need to be informed, but perhaps constant political reporting/link-sharing/outrage shouldn't be in a social space? I know, it's not my right to force that on FB, we should start a new social network, with blackjack and ...
But I do wonder if this constant engagement with news and outrage isn't part of what opens the door to the misinfo and conspiracy.
They are not standing up for themselves, they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law, its a common tactic they look for. Any media newsgroup that's not in their pocket already they fear. They have an incredible track record on this and with journalists.
The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
Erm ... do laws not apply on the internet? That's a very sweeping criticism and not one I'm on board with.
> The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
I'll have to take your word for that. From here it looks like a positive development, or at least an interesting one, a nation state entering open conflict with a tech giant.
(Not that I'm going to be able to vote for some time, but last time I lived in Aus was under the Gillard government, and I did not form favourable opinions about the liberal-national coalition. I'm not arguing with you from a position of support for them)
I would be very happy to relegate news to daily chatter and the 7PM bulletin. I wonder if Facebook will let us keep filtering news once it goes back to normal ... (I kid - of course it won’t.)
Deleted Comment
Lets all fight amongst ourselves about government versus FB while the real winners remain invisible.
It's an impressive shoe of strength and a really terrible decision imo.
Our current PM is a fairly hard religious conservative, and I've never seen as much support for him from bipartisan circles as I'm seeing right now as he stands up to Facebook's "bullying".
(Note: I am not sure if I support the legislation that led to this showdown.)
No he's not. He's a left-leaning centrist, like both major Australian parties. Trying to apply American-flavoured extremism to the Australian political spectrum is exactly why getting rid of bubblegum news is a good thing.
For those playing at home, Scott Morrison the "hard religious conservative" who famously said[0] "the Bible is not a policy handbook, and I get very worried when people try to treat it like one" also happens to belong to the party that:
* Outlawed general access to firearms
* Legalised gay marriage
* Introduced GST (VAT)
* Introduced women-centric divorce law
* Gave people free money for having more children
* Made healthcare for pensioners free
Ad nauseam. None of these actions are "conservative" in the slightest, unless you're comparing them to literal communists, of course. The Australian Liberal Party is probably more left leaning than the American Liberal Party.
[0] https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2012/february/1328593883...
What? He's a money worshiping pentecostalist (and I mean that in a literal sense). The LNP are pretty far right. They're no one nation, but they're not for behind.
> famously said[0]
(2012) also action speak louder than words. I mean they literally introduced a bill Called the Religious Discrimination Bill that entitles people to discriminate on the basis of religion (or lack thereof)
> Outlawed general access to firearms
After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi... with bipartisan support. Firearms have never been a political issue since. I mean, it was a good idea, but I suspect that either party would have done that.
> Legalised gay marriage
They were dragged kicking and screaming after a non-binding plebiscite showed widespread support. They get no Brownie points for that.
> Introduced GST (VAT)
Was an amalgamation of other taxes, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goods_and_services_tax_(Austra...
If he could have avoided any of the things you listed, he would have. He depends on the support of mouth breathers who believe Islam is evil, and who lock up refugees. He is incapable of bipartisanship. He basically dumped all Labor state leaders under the bus, backing only liberal state governments and refused to give credence to science. He did not stop antivaxx messages from his party.
He used his religion to further his career. His church faith group harboured a notorious paedophile pastor, and uses scripture to justify wealth at any cost. Pentecostal churches are not apolitical neutral bodies.
He did well, politically. He's not as right wing as pinochet. He's still right wing.
But he is to the right of the Libs, and only recently has he pivoted to the centre as he took up the PMship. It still matters that he would be right of every major Western leader at the moment.
Also I think Facebook should register as a news agency in Australia and charge news publishers if they re-post content from FB. This way FB also makes money
I like this, I like this a lot.
This is not about "registering", there are specific guidelines that you must meet to be eligible to get paid by Google and Facebook as a part of this scheme.
A key part is that you must be focused on producing "core news" and make like $150k annually from it. A sports-news-only org would not be eligible, under my understanding.
But do they?
I would have thought the commoners would support this. Sticking it to the media.
The media is going to run a campaign of lies, so it's going to be tricky to tell. I guess after a while the public will actually believe they feel like the way the media tells them to.
Fingers crossed Facebook doesn't blink.
Notably, the outcome of the petition by fmr. PM Rudd to have the government formally investigate this relationship is a Senate media diversity enquiry, which begins tomorrow 19.02.21 [2].
[0] - https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics... [1] - https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/11/26/coalition-news-corp-fun... [2] - https://twitter.com/AdamBandt/status/1362233278212661252
The entire thing will make Google a propaganda machine for news corp and other media giants as Google can neither rank them low nor remove them from search results and be forced to pay to sustain them.
Why are people willing to protect ad ridden news industry when they hate big tech adware so much? What's the difference? Shouldn't you be against both? Have you seen how bad trackers on news site are? I would rather use Google than generic news site full of trackers from everywhere.
Everyone wants to stick it to big tech but big media is suddenly good?
Every newscorp owned site is a cess pool of nazi defender and propaganda.
Any legislation which targets specific companies so blatantly isn't good. Anything which sets a precedent for paying for linking to someone isn't a good idea.
Come up with better anti trust laws instead of whatever this is and target every big tech company.
This is the same fight that Uber had to fight with taxi cartells. You need to fight, you need to fight hard, and most importantly you need the public on your side. I'm not sure if FB's move is the right one and will get public support, but at least it opens people's eyes to the consequences of this.