"The tech giant drew a wide backlash from Australian users."
This is patently false, the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook.
On this particular issue Facebook is clearly in the right, it is straight up insane to expect them to pay for links to news that users choose to share.
Not quite. You look at any of the posts by politicians and you'd see vast numbers of people lapping up the anti-facebook rhetoric.
The sad part is that it's not entirely unjustified. It's just in this instance Facebook was objectively not being the bad guy, yet there's enough mistrust in the population that it's easy to be told that they (facebook) were in the wrong.
You look at any of the posts by politicians and you'd see vast numbers of people lapping up the anti-facebook rhetoric.
There was already a lot of anti-facebook rhetoric here in Australia as a result of perceived left-wing bias and censorship on Facebook’s part during and after the US election. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed it’s basically the same type of people in both cases – uneducated right-wing anti-vax flat-earthers.
I personally found it really annoying. Facebook is a good means of delivering useful links to people who otherwise not see them. During this stupid fight my ability to connect friends and family with useful resources was ruined. I think this is a bad vs bad fight, but I think facebook deserves more of my ire for this one.
"Going forward, the government has clarified [Facebook] will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that [Facebook] won't automatically be subject to forced negotiation,"
so it looks like Facebook won in the game of chicken between them and the Australian government.
It’s not clear what this actually means in practice.
Most news source I searched are reporting small (but logical) tweaks to the law, to the point that it seems Facebook largely conceded and then put out some face saving PR.
In practice the government has achieved their goal of both FB and Google paying for news content. Both have backed down. The total (industry wide) payments seem likely to reach about $200 million AUD.
Further the government’s legislation is going to pass with cross-party support.
Overall the government probably considers this a resounding success.
To clarify, by face saving PR I mean that yes of course Facebook can take down its entire news service going forward. That wasn’t really in doubt.
What doesn’t seem to be the case is that Facebook can discriminate against content from bargaining code participants (companies that ask for money for content).
It seems likely they’ll now follow Google’s path and strike individual deals ahead of the legislation.
I’ve read several reports, they all speak about ‘amendments’ but so far I haven’t found an article that lists what they actually are.
It’s weird. They make this huge media circus for several days, then things change and nobody bothers to explain the new info that changed the situation.
The article is light on details. Do we have an idea of what the text of the amended law will say? I imagine Australians could end up with a law that says "exactly the same as before, except for Facebook" which would be very bad for everyone else.
1. Introduction of a good faith mediation period prior to compulsory arbitration
2. Introduction of a clause requiring the treasurer to consider existing deals before applying the code.
Basically it seems like FB have agreed to pay media companies but with a stronger hand in negotiations.
This is the reason people get frustrated, right here. Having expectations that a for-profit tech company doesn’t behave one. Why wouldn’t they use everything at their disposal to slam the competitors?
When people get tired enough of crappy behavior from other people, regardless of the excuse, people tend to do something about it.
This is why we have sayings like "what goes around comes around."
Business exists to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humans created it to serve human needs. Humans can exist without business. Business doesn't exist without humans.
Historically, the honey bee was revered as a symbol of a civilizing force and the force it symbolized was trade. Trade -- aka business -- is how you make the world better pragmatically. It operates on the idea that both sides gain something of value.
I don't know how or why, but we seem to have collectively forgotten that.
Well, its like in sports: there are some things that you could do to win, but you don't - because you are not scum and you know the game would be worse for all if everybody would do them. It's called fair play.
Facebook had all the leverage here, so I find it really really odd that Zuck caved to Murdoch^WThe Liberal Party.
Related: given the new proposed Australian law, I would love to see Twitter use this against News Corp - a hell of a lot of their articles is just commentary on a few tweets (i.e the actual news source of the story). Twitter should start demanding payment from News Corp because they’re stealing their revenue.
My biggest concern about the proposed laws were that the government wanted publisher’s (i.e News Corp’s) approval of future changes to Google and Facebook’s “algorithms” before they went to production...
How on earth did these two companies even agree to meet let alone completely roll over because they’ve now just let News Corp be part of their future CI/CD pipeline approval process?! :mindblown:
So the news sites all knew exactly how much of their traffic came from Facebook, and they should have known that people’s habits change slowly. What did they expect? They started this game of chicken and didn’t even have the will to wait over a week for user habits to change?
Australian authorities will now introduce further amendments, including a two-month mediation period before government-enforced arbitration kicks in.
Mediation which will now include empirical data from the blackout.
Going dark has meant a bad news cycle for FB but in the long run they now have data to prove it’s FB driving NewsCorp’s revenue and not the other way around.
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26233897
This is patently false, the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook.
On this particular issue Facebook is clearly in the right, it is straight up insane to expect them to pay for links to news that users choose to share.
I only use facebook for extended family and friends of the family and noted a lot of people pissed off about not being able to share links.
The sad part is that it's not entirely unjustified. It's just in this instance Facebook was objectively not being the bad guy, yet there's enough mistrust in the population that it's easy to be told that they (facebook) were in the wrong.
There was already a lot of anti-facebook rhetoric here in Australia as a result of perceived left-wing bias and censorship on Facebook’s part during and after the US election. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed it’s basically the same type of people in both cases – uneducated right-wing anti-vax flat-earthers.
It works in both ways. Anectdotal evidence is not quite evidence.
"Going forward, the government has clarified [Facebook] will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that [Facebook] won't automatically be subject to forced negotiation,"
so it looks like Facebook won in the game of chicken between them and the Australian government.
The news has no leverage, they want to shakedown FB for driving traffic to their own sites?
I'm glad FB told them to fuck off.
Meanwhile Google decided to pay Murdoch's extortion fee: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56101859
Google did the wrong thing.
Facebook is negotiating deals with media companies. The Australian government got what they wanted.
From my understanding of the situation, there was no game.
FB didn't give a shit about pulling news from Australia because it was a tiny proportion of their content.
The government/politicians were trying to strong arm FB into coughing up with zero leverage. It was insanely stupid.
Here's FB's post for context: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-vie...
What an embarrassment.
I expect nothing less of this government.
Most news source I searched are reporting small (but logical) tweaks to the law, to the point that it seems Facebook largely conceded and then put out some face saving PR.
In practice the government has achieved their goal of both FB and Google paying for news content. Both have backed down. The total (industry wide) payments seem likely to reach about $200 million AUD.
Further the government’s legislation is going to pass with cross-party support.
Overall the government probably considers this a resounding success.
What doesn’t seem to be the case is that Facebook can discriminate against content from bargaining code participants (companies that ask for money for content).
It seems likely they’ll now follow Google’s path and strike individual deals ahead of the legislation.
It’s weird. They make this huge media circus for several days, then things change and nobody bothers to explain the new info that changed the situation.
Deleted Comment
ABC is reporting some small tweaks to the law (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-23/facebook-reverses-new...)
1. Introduction of a good faith mediation period prior to compulsory arbitration 2. Introduction of a clause requiring the treasurer to consider existing deals before applying the code.
Basically it seems like FB have agreed to pay media companies but with a stronger hand in negotiations.
This is why we have sayings like "what goes around comes around."
Business exists to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humans created it to serve human needs. Humans can exist without business. Business doesn't exist without humans.
Historically, the honey bee was revered as a symbol of a civilizing force and the force it symbolized was trade. Trade -- aka business -- is how you make the world better pragmatically. It operates on the idea that both sides gain something of value.
I don't know how or why, but we seem to have collectively forgotten that.
Related: given the new proposed Australian law, I would love to see Twitter use this against News Corp - a hell of a lot of their articles is just commentary on a few tweets (i.e the actual news source of the story). Twitter should start demanding payment from News Corp because they’re stealing their revenue.
How on earth did these two companies even agree to meet let alone completely roll over because they’ve now just let News Corp be part of their future CI/CD pipeline approval process?! :mindblown:
Mediation which will now include empirical data from the blackout.
Going dark has meant a bad news cycle for FB but in the long run they now have data to prove it’s FB driving NewsCorp’s revenue and not the other way around.