An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia | Hacker News Reader

An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

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183 pointslunchbreak158 comments

Australian government and more specifically Rod sims, the chair of ACCC should get some counselling. Really good counselling. They clearly don't understand how publishing works and have a biased understanding of who is benefitting from this relationship.

However, the entire Australian media has been nothing but puppets controlled by murdoch. The one true less biased source is ABC which has been muddied by constant federal government censorship and budget cuts almost to a point where independent journalism and Australia cannot be spoken in one sentence.

I hope they move forward with this code and I hope that both Google and FB remove news from their site so that newscorp can die quickly. It a shame they are doing this. Come next election I am voting against both SCOMO and the likes.

ABC are compromised, they only ever hard ball interview the opposition, which is completely fucking useless. (They're not in power)

Just look at any liberal interview vs any Labor interview. Labor gets questions, liberal gets pleasentaries.

Don't know why being downvoted. This is as if fox news was govt funded.

And the ABC/SBS will not benefit from payments if this goes through. Nor will independents. Only the largest for-profit companies will. The gap ever widens.

I guess the level of science and technological literacy in our government here proves we are truly a representative democracy.

Would that mean that ABC/SBS news would feature on FB/Google and the large companies would not?

I don't think that would be legal.

"Digital platforms must participate in the code if the Treasurer makes a determination specifying that the code would apply to them. The Government has announced that the code would initially apply only to Facebook and Google."

This means they can't pick and choose. They are either a news platform or not. That's why FB is warning us they'd get out of the news game entirely.

https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/draft-...

Thanks for the info, given how Facebook and Google were used for spreading propaganda by various state actors in the recent past, if people were unable to get their news through these platforms, maybe that would be a good thing?

I read this book [0] recently, and I was astounded by how widespread it is around the world. The Duerte chapters are an eye opener.

[0] https://www.amazon.com.au/This-Not-Propaganda-Adventures-Aga...

It could be, but as an incidental side effect I don't think it's a great outcome. The law as suggested is confusing and uncertain and that will have a chilling effect on sharing 'news' while the crazies sharing opinions might not be so shy.

Day 1 for example, it supposedly won't effect Reddit. But if FB/Goog pull out, Reddit will be the next target really quickly. Repeat for anything relevant until it hits something that hurts.

Can someone explain why this is beneficial to Murdoch or other organisations? Right now if I perform a search for say ‘coronavirus vaccine Australia’ two government sites come up and 10 news sites. If I then click on a news site they can advertise to me and in the case of the guardian ask for donations in the case of Murdoch ask for subscriptions. If they are removed then how my only choice is to go direct to the site of choice. Especially for Murdoch sites that are hard paywalled I don’t get the benefit?

I suppose they are hoping the social companies (FB/GOOG) do not pull out, so then they get all the listed benefits around data and profit sharing (including algorithms - if Google had to share SEO implementation details or FB with their feed, that would be unprecedented I think).

But if they do call the bluff and pull out, then I don't see how it helps the papers apart from being able to set the narrative on their own platform and limit discourse (comments/critiques) off-site. If you can't share something on Reddit etc and talk about it, then you have to comment on 'approved' venues which will help bolster any cases they make by shutting out dissent. They are probably hoping this is still a win as others will go to the source directly, and pay if they have to because now there will be no other option.

In short they're used to the pre-2000 era and never adapted. They think with the right laws we can turn back time.

They don't want to be removed. The law is written in a way that makes it really hard for Facebook and Google to do so. They want to be paid (News Corp thinks they should be paying $1b and NINE think about $600m).

Why wouldn't the Australian government just make another law making it illegal for Facebook to block sharing of news on Facebook. If you throw enough laws at something, surely you'll get the desired outcome eventually (wealth redistribution from Facebook => struggling newspapers)?

It's not unlikely that Facebook will pull out of Australia for such follow up law, and US will retaliate against Australia economically for driving Facebook out.

Unlikely because newscorp controls the government in both Australia and the US

It doesn’t control either government, but they have the kind of symbiotic relationship that makes favours indistinguishable from control.

Oh how wonderful it would be if Facebook were to pull out of Australia.

The bar would have to be incredibly low for the US to retaliate against Australia over this specifically, seeing as Australia is an incredibly strategic pattern to the US in the Asia pacific region, especially with China being a far greater existential threat to the US economy verses Facebook leaving the Australian market.

Edit: Keep in mind we're talking hypotheticals, Facebook only said it would stop sharing news articles.

The most extreme thing that will end up happening will be a US diplomat reaching out to Australia on behalf of Facebook.

As nations, we contain multitudes. The US fights Canada r.e. lumber, but at the same time cooperates across a broad range of other aspects of international relations. Australia being a strategic partner in many respects does not preclude trade disputes when it comes to their laws as they impact Facebook.

I'm not suggesting allied nations cannot have disagreements & voice them with each other, I'm saying it's unlikely for the US to "retaliate" against Australia like this, when something like this can be better resolved with peaceful cooperative diplomacy.

Again, in this case we're talking hypotheticals with Facebook pulling out of Australia, as they've only said they would stop showing news. It's not like Facebook would suddenly be unable to sustain operations in Australia because users cannot share news articles. If anything they're just playing politics to get a better deal for themselves.

If Facebook left Australia, I would because they choose to, not because they were forced to, just like no one is forcing Google to either.

Would the US really care about Facebook's concerns? Why?

> the entire Australian media has been nothing but puppets controlled by murdoch

You're going a bit heavy on hyperbole there. There's a decent amount of non-murdoch news; ABC, SBS, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, The Conversation, etc.

Yeah they exist and most of them are good (certainly a lot better at least) but it's not what the mainstream majority of "Aussies" read and they don't have the advertising power or control of the Murdoch press here.

Most of them are specifically excluded from this legislation.

Yeah, I know. I'm not trying to defend it or "News" Corp.

FWIW, the ABC and SBS both depend on government funding, and so are far from independent; before even factoring in the Murdoch-Liberal Party relationship.

It's actually getting worse and worse. The Age and the Herald, having been sold to Nine are much lower quality than they once were. The Government is putting more and more pressure on the ABC, with constant (effective) funding cuts, and both direct editorial interference or indirect (i.e. threatening more funding cuts because of journalists publishing articles they don't like). With the ABC, this has been going on for years - in 2013, they withheld a detailed analysis of the flaws of the Liberal's NBN plan (which has been proven accurate) by Nick Ross before the election because of pushback from "the Turnbull camp", and then eventually he was made redundant because of pressure from the Government. Last year, emails were leaked of the chairman saying they needed to "get rid of Emma Alberici and Andrew Probyn because the Government hates them and they put our funding at risk" - for Alberici because she wrote some articles that got a lot of traction while the Government was trying to push big company tax cuts, pointing out that tax cuts haven't historically correlated with increased economic growth or employment growth (this is true). Last month, Emma Alberici was made redundant...

That's not even mentioning that the chairman of 9News is former treasurer of the conservative party which Murdoch is backing.

Alberici was caught making egregious errors and was heavily biased. She couldn't even tell that MYOB is a software company, instead calling them an insurance company IIRC.

Her claims that all corporate losses are profit-shifting was similarly egregious.

She deserved to lose her position, she was campaigning for one side and lying to do so.

I don't say this lightly - go look at the investigation into her piece and why it was taken down.

TheAge has gone to sh*t. It’s basically a collection of government press releases now. I’d been noticing just though reading it, and then their own journalists made the same point. It had become pretty blatant.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/14/journalists-at...

To be fair, The Age has long been in a state of derangement through having to compete for its traditional audience with both the (state-funded) ABC and The (trust-funded) Guardian, as well as smaller outlets like The Saturday Paper, Crikey, etc, whilst having lost much of the classifieds revenue that used to fund the formidable investigative, political and business reporting on which it built its proud reputation.

It hasn't been a decent publication for at least 12-15 years, and has long sought to attract eyeballs by stooping to BuzzFeed-style clickbait.

The Nine merger is an attempt to restore it to the position it used to hold in the market, but sadly the world has changed too much for that to be possible, so it's just gone from one kind of trash to another, it would seem.

It's a shame, I have great nostalgia for what it used to be in my early adulthood of the late 90s/early 2000s.

"Sydney Morning Herald" publishes articles written by people you'd think are journalists but are climate deniers working in the "Institute of public affairs" think tank [1][2]. Back when a tsunami hit the coast of Indonesia in 2018, the death toll was growing over the days and Sydney Morning Herald was giving the numbers from a few days back in a tinny article about halfhway through the newspaper with the frontpage news telling the story of a deer accident on a NSW road. Sydney Morning Herald is the worst mainstream newspaper I've seen in a non communist country.

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/budget-tax-cuts-prom.... - there's a long list of articles written by people working in the "institute of public affair" think tank both in smh and other outlets like theaustralian and more.

[2] https://ipa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IPA-Report-Why...

The Age and SMH (as well as Nine) are owned by the same company, which is chaired by Peter Costello. Though non-Murdoch, it's rare to see anything non-friendly to the Liberal party on there.

You mean aside from these articles published over the past few days?

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/icac-to-investigate-corr...

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/who-is-richard-colbe...

https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-law-to-deprive-immigration...

https://www.smh.com.au/national/morrison-s-china-decree-reek...

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/how-good-are-the-pro...

I encourage everyone to have a read of the actual draft legislation along with hearing Facebook's reaction to new regulations being imposed on them.

The actual legislation sounds well thought out to me: https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...

The FAQs: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/DPB%20-%20Draft%20news%...

See also the ACCC response to Google's open letter, which contained misinformation: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/response-to-google-ope...

The legislation is, honestly, difficult enough to parse that linking it with a non-specific comment ("sounds well thought out") just turns into a tar pit. I can't tell if you have specific agreements or disagreements, and the only approach available to discuss is to basically summarize it or link to it again.

On the ACCC response: it implies google made statements they did not, and seems to willfully ignore the reality of supporting the cost of a free service.

Do you have specific things you think this does or doesn't do? In the future it helps to start with those.

> Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so.

Yes the law doesn't imply this in any way.

But it requires Google to notify most changes "in terms that are readily comprehensible". What if an algorithm cannot be explained in comprehensible terms (e.g. machine learning)? What if they don't want their teams to be limited to changes that can be explained? What if they don't want to share their internal changes (e.g. they don't want a competitor to know, or they don't want these changes to be a "TODO how to update your site")?

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's impossible for a big company to decide to develop a less magic and simpler algorithm for Australia instead. And once you consider how small Australia is (in terms of population, and business opportunity), this might only sense if you combine it with a paid membership.

Note that I'm not saying this will happen, I think it's more likely that big companies will decide to opt out from displaying news or (in extreme cases) opt out from the Australian market completely (if they can't make it work).

> Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so.

IANAL but section 52M(2) seems to contradict this (52M(2)(e) implies Google must make the data available to media companies)

> A healthy news media sector is essential to a well-functioning democracy.

Strongly agree with this, and I'm generally in favour of making sure media companies get their fair share of $$$.

But the idea that government can define which companies deserve an extremely unfair advantages (compared to all other companies, e.g. small media companies), and force google to explain all changes with a 28 days notice... that's just bollocks.

The ACCC response if disingenuous. It fails to mention the requirement that Google and FB must give news entities 28 days of any changes to their ranking algorithm. I mean WTF. It's the most brain dead piece of legislation you could imagine.

I think it actually misrepresents Google's statements too - the ACCC response makes it sound like Google are saying they would be required to charge for their services, but Google actually said that the code might make it no longer worthwhile for them to provide their services for free in Australia.

It would have been fair to say that part of Google's statement is probably an exaggeration, but the ACCC instead muddies the waters by rebutting something Google didn't actually say...

Stratechery quotes and rebuts the official sources you linked. It's hard for me to imagine a more poorly thought out legislation. [1]

It completely unfairly favor news orgs over the rest of the web, it gives publishers extensive control of user discussion about content that they own which is an affront to the principle of free speech, the terms of the forced binding arbitration are incredibly vague and, well, arbitrary.

The ACCC response is also nonsense.

> Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so.

Google's letter didn't mention anything about charging Australians for the user of its free services at all. If you actually read the open letter [2], it doesn't even contain the words "charge" or "price" or "cost" or "fee" or imply anything about charging users.

> Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so.

Google never said it had to share "additional user data", whatever that means. It is quite clear in claiming that "Under this law, Google has to tell news media businesses “how they can gain access” to data about your use of our products. There’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses." [2] which is absolutely true.

The ACCC is responding to fictitious claims. It's the ACCC response that contained misinformation, not Google's open letter.

[1] https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-bargainin...

[2] https://about.google/intl/ALL_au/google-in-australia/an-open...

Speaking as an Australian who has been following this closely, the Stratechery post is the best analysis I have seen of the situation, and cuts through the spin that F and G have put on it. It checks out with the ongoing relationship Murdoch has with the LNP who are in government. I encourage anyone interested in the topic to check out the Stratechery article on it.

> Google's letter didn't mention anything about charging Australians for the user of its free services at all.

It absolutely does. One of the headlines in the open letter was "Hurting the free services that you use", and includes:

... the law is set up to ... encourage them to make enormous and unreasonable demands that would put our free services at risk.

(Edited for brevity and clarity, but you can compare against the original.)

If Google didn't want to give the impression that they would have to start charging, they could have deleted the words "free" and it would still have made sense.

With the "your free services are at risk" messaging, Google was definitely trying to create the fear of a price increase. They didn't say "the quality of your services are at risk".

[1] https://about.google/intl/ALL_au/google-in-australia/an-open...

> They didn't say "the quality of your services are at risk".

I think you missed these clear cut sentences: "The proposed changes are not fair and they mean that Google Search results and YouTube will be worse for you." and "There’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses." which point to service quality and privacy, not price.

This nice and vague part of the legislation sounds like an insurmountable hurdle to me:

> a) a list and explanation of the data that the digital platform service collects (whether or not it shares the data with the registered news business) about the registered news business’ users through their engagement with covered news content made available by the digital platform service;

> c) a list and explanatio nof the data that the digital platform service currently has a practice of making available to registered news businesses;

> e) information about how the registered news business corporation can gain access to the data mentioned in paragraphs (a)and (c).

Google/Facebook may not even have the architecture to supply all that information to begin with. And if they did, this is beyond just analytics. It seems to be requiring the companies hand over what allows them to be competitive at all.

Without Google News or news on FB, people will probably go for free news sources like abc, SBS, the guardian etc rather than the conservative media like The Australian and Daily Telegraph which by and large charges subscription fees for content.

Counter productive to what the conservative govt probably hoped to achieve politically

This could actually de-weaponize FB. I quit FB when it degenerated into people arguing over news articles. Maybe now they’ll be less angry and discuss broader topics.

IMO, they won't. FB will remain weaponised, but the news sources willing to play ball (often more extreme sources) will hold sway and increase influence.

As I've mentioned before you only need to look at the fact that public and smaller news organisations e.g. ABC, SBS are not compensated to get an idea of the intention of this policy.

It's purely to prop up News Corp which is struggling (16% loss in 2020 revenue) because of weak newspaper sales and Foxtel bleeding customers to Netflix, Disney etc.

And unfortunately just like in UK and US whenever Rupert Murdoch says jump you better say how high or else your government will go down in the next election.

The fact that it's _years_ too late to save Fairfax reinforces this IMHO.

News Corp is impressive I think they are the only company that can actually make Facebook look sympathetic.

If they're struggling, are they that relevant any more in swinging elections?

Stratechery has a good analysis of the "News Media Bargaining Code":

https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-bargainin...

Committing the faux pas of replying to myself, here's another take:

https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/08/31/scott-morrison-v-facebo...

As far as I can tell Facebook makes a good point. The Aus government designed heavy-handed regulation which clearly plays favorites and is totally one-sided. This is not behavior that we should tolerate. I absolutely support Facebook standing up for themselves here.

I don’t like FB as a company. However I have to admit, they are correct that news organizations benefit the most from this relationship. Why doesn’t google do the same thing? Don’t index news sites. Googles response seemed less effective than FB’s.

Google is a monopoly. Facebook is not. If google pushes their weight around they get targeted for anti competitive behavior.

They can avoid such issues by simply leaving the Australian market; a non-participant in a market clearly isn't monopolizing it. It just isn't that much money they would be giving up, and if the government tries to force them to operate at a loss it is no money at all.

They're not going to pull out of Australia. The market share of English speaking countries is more important. And the loss of revenue from Australia is higher than the cost of paying up.

Why do you think they're behaving in the way they are?

If they could drop them they would.

Google is a monopoly for what service? I don't use Google (directly) for search. I use Google for some email accounts and other providers for other email accounts. I use Firefox instead of Chrome. I use Android, mainly because it's far more open than ios, and it's possible to use a de-Googled Android (although the useful-ness is reduced). None of the above is related to news, however, which is what this particular discussion is centred around. I don't go anywhere near Google for news. I know Australia's media websites, and I use them directly, and attempt to focus on the more independent ones because they're less likely to be unduly influenced.

If you think Google is a monopoly, then how is Facebook not? Either in direct relation to this discussion of News or in relation to the greater internet?

You're not serious? Antitrust is about optics, google is clearly monopolistic. Facebook is likely also but it's not perceived that way, Facebook has a lot of real alternatives, people use more than one social platform, whereas people only use one google, oops sorry, I mean search engine.

https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/au...

So "Search" is your answer to my question. Fair enough.

Google will likely do the same, as they did in some European countries.

The legislation explicitly prevents platforms from deindexing/downranking news sites that participate in the code in favour of other sites that do not.

Which places Google in a more difficult position, because if a user searches for some news, Google is essentially forced to return results from a participating news organisation, or not show any relevant news results at all.

While Facebook can just prevent users from sharing any news links, Google can't exactly stop users from searching for news.

Google absolutely can stop users from searching for News, by removing all News tabs, News boxes, and News News-specific metadata uses (such as current events timeliness) in search results at Google.com.au. They can then legitimately claim that they are no longer indexing news, only websites in general, and if site operators don’t wish to be indexed they can follow the standard practices for exclusion.

Whether they (Google) will do so or not is a timely question to consider.

I'd think Google could easily get around this by limiting the frequency with which their GoogleBot visits News Corp web sites to, say, once a month. Effectively makes being indexed worthless for News Corp.

Regardless of politics, media and big tech dynamics, anyone who thinks that sharing links can or should be charged for just doesn't understand the fundamental nature of the internet.

Somewhat related, from Daring Fireball's clipping of https://themargins.substack.com/p/facebook-the-pr-firm:

> So, in that way, I read Facebook less as a tech company, but instead a communications one. Not a telecom communications, but more like a PR / marketing consultancy. There’s nothing original about Facebook. It’s a company that hires people to build others’ ideas, and, more often than not, it does that better and faster than them too. And when it can’t do that, it just buys them outright. There is a lot of building, but the ideas are outsourced. But what Facebook is really good at is actually doing all this while fighting what seems to be a never-ending, at least since 2016 or so, PR battle while not giving an inch.

> With all the negative press around, you might think they are not doing a good job at avoiding criticism, but consider the alternative that they’ve been able to weather all this because they’ve been able to deflect the criticism and avoid scrutiny and accountability. I know this all sounds pretty unhinged right now, but, stay with me. This is a company who hires conservative politicians to its highest ranks in multiple countries, while maintaining a veneer of political neutrality. The same company pretends its not the arbiter of truth while employing tens of thousands of people to do exactly that. Ask yourselves: What has changed at Facebook?

I'm no fan of the Murdoch media and the damage it has done to Australia in terms of our internet infrastructure, but if Facebook are to block news media from their platform it will not affect me in the slightest, I don't trust _any_ of them to provide me the correct information.

I don't trust Facebook to serve me news, and I don't go there for news, and I don't think anyone should go to Facebook (or Google) for news.

I don't think Australians have a lot to lose from any big tech company blocking all news media on their platforms, and if they do so as a result of this legislation, and if it furthers the bleeding of these conglomerates, it sounds like a win/win situation.

There are probably negative follow on effects I'm not considering, though.

I agree with your assessment.

Social media sharing helps accelerate the sensationalism of news. Which in turn has been creating very bad situations in our reality. Without social sharing of news, maybe it would be more tame.

The quality of discussions on those platforms would also very likely benefit.

Hopefully other laws are passed with similar responses from tech companies in other countries.

It would be a great sort of reverse-monkey-paw fate. The world could certainly use some good luck right now.

It really does feel like Murdoch has reached Bond villain status with this one.

He's has made the Australian government write a law that specifically and only targets two multi-billion dollar global companies (Facebook and Google) and forces them to give him more money.

It specifically isn't going after other online companies that don't have a huge net worth, and it specifically isn't even attempting to hide the intent by also giving money to the not-for-profit news outlets in Australia (ABC, SBS).

Because he controls the very vast majority of media in Australia he can obviously force the government to do his bidding - one by ensuring all his government buddies stay rich, and two by promising not to publish anything that would result in them getting voted out.

A fiction writer couldn't come up with such an outrageous idea.

As an Aussie, I can confidently say Australia has utterly lost the plot, and I applaud Facebook for standing up to them. I sincerely hope Google follow suit, and they both refuse to come back even if the legislation is scrapped. I hope News Corp. dies a rapid death without the 2.3B clicks

If Facebook really wanted to fight the government it could unleash it's democracy crippling social network to hurt this toxic government we have here in Aus. Wink wink Zuck.

But seriously this is just regulatory capture from News Ltd. Our Government works for them. Corruption is becoming a real and visible problem in Australia these days.

Because that worked so well in the US?

Yeah I know, I'm just wishing bad things on our current government who really don't live up to the word 'liberal'.

This may not kill the large newspapers, but surely it will destroy the local newspapers. When does a tech blog become news? Can you even share anything on the internet through Facebook?

>Instead, we are left with a choice of either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits.

Tbh I think FB's comment here is too binary. It seems to me they're implying that news needs to either be free, or they will get charged "unlimited amount". I'm sure other industries have faced a similar issue (e.g. music?) and have implemented a workable solution that benefits both parties (the aggregators and the creators).

How exactly are Facebook and Google 'using' news content though? What we're talking about here is a link - a headline, maybe a sentence or two and a thumbnail image... The people pushing this bill are trying to make similar comparisons as you, to things like music, but there's no sense in which Google or Facebook are using news content in the way Spotify uses music content, for instance.

If you look at the bill, bits of it are actually fairly carefully designed to work around the inconvenient truth that they aren't really directly profiting, and it actually makes other things (like whether the amount the publishers are asking for would be too damaging to Google/Facebook's finances) as big a consideration (or more!) than what the actual benefit Google/Facebook are getting!

Whether or not Google or Facebook directly profit from the use of news content isn't, and arguably shouldn't, be a consideration as to if they should be required to pay or not. This is copyright logic we're working with here: the harm isn't that Google or Facebook found gold in someone else's sandbox, it's that they were digging there at all. We create the law specifically to make money move from one pocket to another, not to satisfy an underlying concept of justice.

The thing is, if this was just a new related right, like the EU Copyright Directive, we'd see the market play out as usual. News corporations would realize that Google and Facebook actually are paying them in valuable exposure, and sign away their aggregation rights for free or little cost to the aggregators. Australia appears to be trying to do an end run around that by taking away as many negotiating options from Google as possible. Effectively, there's one massive news collection society and anyone who carries news at all, regardless of who it's from, has to play ball with them. They also are legally required to get what is effectively most-favored-nation status. This is such an oddball way of doing things that I see this either crashing and burning so hard that the courts have to bail out Australian Parliament, or it works perfectly, becomes the new model regime for funding news, and winds up in the next set of WTO treaties (whenever those come around).

News Corp (who lobbied to get this bill created) already did a lot of that this year [1] - over the last few decades, they had bought up most of the newspapers in regional Australia, and then ended up deciding they were unviable and shuttered 125 of them in May this year.

They're keeping some kind of digital version but let go basically all the local reporters, photographers, etc. and closed all the local offices, and I think just run all the remaining online versions out of just a handful of locations now.

1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-28/news-corp-makes-regio...

New Zealand has seen a proliferation of local news apps, employing local journalists, payed for by advertisements from local business, come to fill this gap https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2...

Without reading the legislation in detail, I have to say that I'm inclined to just take the side of whoever News Corp is upset at.

If you change your mind, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337359

If you are like me and wondering what the legislation draft is, please see

https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...

Some of articles discussing this topic do not provide a link to the the draft legislation source.

Nevermind the reasoning

If the result is no more/fewer news on FB, doesn't that mean it will be a more difficult platform for political parties and Rupert Murdoch's of the world to manipulate?

It will probably hurt independents a lot more though. So while they may lose the most views, they might grow their market share.

Murdoch already has his news distribution systems in place in Australia -- the less other outlets can gain visibility the better as far as he is concerned

News Corp is losing money across almost all of its Australian properties. The government keeps finding ways to prop them up under the guise of subsidies for local sports coverage because News Corp provides them with such favourable coverage. It’s blatant corruption.

I haven't followed this debate too closely but this seems pretty disingenuous.

>The ACCC presumes that Facebook benefits most in its relationship with publishers, when in fact the reverse is true. News represents a fraction of what people see in their News Feed and is not a significant source of revenue for us

News may not directly contribute much ad revenue but it surely is a huge driver of engagement on the website, which in turn indirectly keeps people engaged with the facebook ecosystem at large. Political commentary involving news pieces certainly seems to be a feature on Facebook's most popular pages.

Also I haven't figured out yet what part of the law actually would imply that Facebook needs to blackout news wholesale. As I read it the law merely requires that Facebook negotiate with each publisher.

Facebook can remove news and it will minimally effect engagement. I wonder what happens to the publishers when they lose 2.3BN clicks.

Which would indirectly prove the point of the legislation right? That Facebook has immense market power in the social media / ad space with no competitor in sight, which would mean expanding bargaining power for news orgs is legitimate.

Because switching to a competitor would actually be the answer to your question in a functioning market.

> Because switching to a competitor would actually be the answer to your question in a functioning market.

What do you mean by "switching to a competitor"?

Me posting an article on Facebook does not create a business relationship between Facebook and CNN.

No, because the argument being made is that facebook is paying the news orgs less than they're owed. But the reality is that facebook is providing a free service to the news sites.

You normally have to pay someone for advertising. Facebook (and Google) give it away for free.

This seems to miss the point because normally platforms also have to pay for content. Facebook is a platform that hosts user/business produced content. No content, no reason to go to facebook. Likewise, Facebook brings attention to content owners. All of this is 'free' nominally.

That's not the question, the question is who has more market power and squeezes who.

Are you saying that Google should pay me to include my website in it's search results?

If they're stripping your information to hand out to users via their scraping mechanics, absolutely. That's what news companies, and plenty of other sites, have been subject to for years: "Google would like to scrape your content and serve it on their own site. Agree or delist yourself from search."

https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynet...

Google's monopoly position gives them complete negotiating power, because you can't survive on the Internet without them. What Australia is doing here seems extreme, but only because you aren't accounting for how extreme Google and Facebook's existing negotiating power is. If you don't understand how abusive Google and Facebook are, you'll think this deal is unfair. It's not.

Right but we're talking about news, where that isn't the case. I open Google news and I see a list of headlines. I click one one and go to the full article.

I mean, if you're arguing that news provides zero value beyond a headline, that's certainly an indictment, but not of Google and facebook.

Extending this, any aggregator would need to pay to link to things. Hackernews included. It's the link-tax all over again.

Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.)

Is Google News ripping off the monetizeable property of every news site's homepage for zero cost? Yes. Sure, it may not present the full text of every article, but you've stolen the front page of every newspaper, at minimum.

It is the link-tax "all over again"... because it's still what needs to happen. (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.) The problem is Google is so immense, and so powerful, it is able to obliterate any one nation's attempts to do this.

We actually need a unified front of governments stating that Google and Facebook need to pay for the content they scrape, or go out of business. And it probably won't be successful until a large enough contingent of governments can do it at once. (This is why the EU as a whole has generally been successful whereas attempts at regulation from France or Spain independently have failed.)

> Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.)

For me the answer is, either I get a headline that I don't care about, or I read at least some of the article.

> (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.)

It's absolutely a link tax and not a scraping tax. A scraping tax would apply to anyone scraping the site. But the link tax proposals don't apply to people scraping the site, they only apply to sites linking. Why? Because if I go and scrape CNN.com, they just block me. But if Google does it, they don't want to block the scraping, because the net value of the scraping is nonzero, but they want to be paid anyway.

You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense.

And "scraping" doesn't even apply at all to Facebook's case, where if I post a link to CNN on facebook, now Facebook owes CNN money. WHAT?!? It's literally a cost on links. It's antithetical to the internet. But you're right, it's not a link tax. It's more akin to link-licensing. Which should sound even scarier.

> You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense.

But that is the level of craziness we are under in the Google regime: Accept Google's terms or go out of business. That's the whole problem. Google has infinite negotiating power. The counter to that does indeed sound insane, because where we already are is insane.

Yes, Australia is giving news companies a loaded gun, but it's because Google already has a boot to their neck, and they're barely still conscious. Where we are right now is really, really bad. Tech companies are bleeding journalism dry.

And frankly, Google and Facebook can afford this. Tech companies have so much spare cash they don't know what to do with it, while everyone else is struggling to survive. Expect laws to feel one-sided against you for a long time. Let's call it a wealth redistribution. Imagine how much quality investigative journalism could've been funded with just the money Google spent developing messaging apps.

You can dislike google and facebook, and feel that they need to be regulated, and still not support objectively bad laws.

> Imagine how much quality investigative journalism could've been funded with just the money Google spent developing messaging apps.

If you want to tax big tech companies because you feel the end result of doing so is good, then do that. Tax them. Don't create some hairbrained scheme to allow a media conglomerate to extort them. Especially when it won't actually help investigative journalism. The law is crafted to support an entrenched tabloid, not local and investigative journalism, which is what's suffering the most. This law funnels money from tech companies to rupert murdoch. That's not a win. The fox news guy doesn't need a bailout, he's doing okay on his own.

> Accept Google's terms or go out of business.

What are these "terms"? Aa far as I can tell they're "get traffic for free". What am I missing? Your counter seems to be that Google posts the headline so that, you know, you can pick what to click, and that somehow having the headline means that I won't click on the link. I don't get it.

> What are these "terms"?

Let me highlight some history from the article above:

> In 2014, Warner got an email from Google asking if he would be interested in giving the company access to his data in order to scrape it for Knowledge Graph, for free.

> At the end of it, we just said ‘look, we’re not comfortable with this.’”

> “But then they went ahead and took the data anyway.”

The sole way to opt out that Google offered was to delist the site from Google Search, which is effectively deleting your site from the Internet.

So the terms of your employer are basically "let Google do what it wants or else". And that's what they've been doing to news companies for years. There's nothing "objectively bad" about forcing a bad actor to finally pay up for it's conduct. Allowing Google or Facebook to decline to participate would be simply allowing the robbers to leave with all of the loot.

To better explain: Google and Facebook are monopolies. One common monopoly practice is called predatory pricing: Where you price so low, you are losing money, temporarily, in order to kill competing businesses. For Google and Facebook, refusing to negotiate here, removing service from a given country, is similar: They're aware if they decline to participate, a given country's news organizations will suffer, and eventually relent.

Google and Facebook, as global monopolies, are large enough and profitable enough that this doesn't hurt them much, so they have no reason to negotiate fairly and honestly. Hence why Google and Facebook argue the price they should pay is $0: They currently don't bear a significant enough loss from simply refusing to play. They must be forced to participate so that honest negotiation can happen. Realistically, the long term answer is to break these companies up, but in the interim, we need to use regulation to force them to pay up in areas where they would have to if they weren't monopolies.

Again: I'm talking about news. You keep bringing up a thing that isn't news. What are the terms for news sites?

> There's nothing "objectively bad" about forcing a bad actor to finally pay up for it's conduct.

Correct. That's why I said, essentially, "if you want them to pay up, tax them". I'm not saying any law that forces tech companies to pay money must be objectively bad. I am saying that this law is. You understand the difference.

> Realistically, the long term answer is to break these companies up, but in the interim, we need to use regulation to force them to pay up in areas where they would have to if they weren't monopolies.

And to do this, you support a bit of regulatory capture that instead directs the funds to a media monopoly. Like I said, it's an objectively bad law.

> One common monopoly practice is called predatory pricing: Where you price so low, you are losing money, temporarily, in order to kill competing businesses

You're actually arguing that the price, free, which Google and Facebook charge is too high, and that they need to further decrease it (by subsidizing the content they aggregate). Is the price too high, or is it predatorily low? You can't argue both sides. If you were really concerned with predatory pricing, you'd be against this law, because it (if applied generally) prevents competitors to Google or Facebook from gaining marketshare, since they can't afford to pay media companies. So as long as the entrenched actors pay the tax, upstarts can't start.

> "if you want them to pay up, tax them"

Tried that. Your employer as of yesterday has... decided to make the little guys pay for that too: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-amazon-google-pass-cos...

Fundamentally, we're trying a lot of different strategies to fix this, but Google is greatly invested in dodging any sort of responsibility for it's externalities and actions. Perhaps the solution here is to both implement a tax and prohibit harmful over-trillion-dollar-monopolies from raising prices at the same time? But then, they'll say it's unfair that they can't set whatever prices they want.

I am not sure Australia's attempt will be any more successful, but it's increasingly becoming apparent we just need to ban these companies from operating, forcibly shut them down, and retire their user-hostile services.

I think there is an argument that they should for rich snippets at least. They go a bit beyond being an index then.

> normally platforms also have to pay for content

? This doesn't seem generically true to me. Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Instagram, Vine, FourSquare, Yelp, Pinterest, DeviantArt, LiveJournal, Xanga, Medium, etc. None of these platforms pay for user-generated content like link posting. When analyzing this issue you can't get away from considering what the platform is a platform for. If it's a platform for UGC, the general rule is that the sharing of the content is a service provided to users at no cost. The vast majority of users receive no monetary payment from these platforms. Some of them rev share if they advertise on content, but that's about as far as it goes. Facebook should rev share on any revenue from advertisements they place on news content ($0).

>If it's a platform for UGC, the general rule is that the sharing of the content is a service provided to users at no cost. The vast majority of users receive no monetary payment from these platforms

That is true (although Youtube actually does pay creators reasonably well), but I think you can make the case that they ought to, and that I think is what the central disagreement is about.

Facebook/Google and so on basically function as distributors. In the olden days publishers had integrated distribution, which is why they basically owned the market. Now tech firms have basically seized control of distribution, and because they compete for the same revenue source as the publishers (ads) the conflict is very apparent.

But I think the issue is general. User generated content isn't paid for because the marginal value added is so low per user, and users have no opportunity to bargain, and property rights for user content are non-existent.

Just imagine if there was a sort of data-stewardship, and users could easily collectively bargain for data they submit to facebook, quickly move it, and this was enabled across all regions. I think Google and Facebook would have to very quickly part with some of their economic rents.

That is true (although Youtube actually does pay creators reasonably well),

They pay a tiny, tiny fraction of creators that create most of the economic value. But by count the vast majority of uploaders do not get paid anything, because they produce nothing of economic value, or maybe even negative value. They also have no BATNA (no other site willing to pay them more for the worthless content they generate). I say this as an occasional uploader to YouTube of videos that get in the low thousands of views. My content likely has negative value to YouTube, but they host it because low friction is part of how they attract creators who someday grow big.

but I think you can make the case that they ought to . . .

You're welcome to.

Just imagine if ... users could easily collectively bargain ...

If they could, we'd live in a different world. I don't know what to take away from that. It's not the world we live in. Everyone has different standards for "ought," but this argument doesn't meet mine.

There are lots of arguments for regulation, but that's not really what this law does. It is pure rent seeking.

Isn’t that basically what Instagram is? It seems social networks are cutting 3rd party content and focusing solely on UGC.

Question is does it increase or decrease subscriptions to news sites. I can see reasons it going both ways. Lack of traffic to news sites from social decreases subscriptions. Lack of news on social forces people to seek alternatives which increase subscriptions.

Controversy is a double edged sword. It pulls people in, but also drives people away. It will be interesting to watch what happens for sure.

It says they must negotiate, and crucially, that if they can't come to an agreement they must enter binding arbitration. Currently publishers can go to Facebook and say, "Pay us for linking to our pages." And Facebook can say, "No, we don't derive benefit from links to your pages; we're not paying you for them." Under this law, the publisher could then force FB into binding arbitration where, presumably, their $0 offer wouldn't be accepted.

I suppose in theory FB could only block those news outlets that attempted to negotiate, but somehow I expect the government would take a dim view of that.

The draft law explicitly prevents Facebook from blocking only news outlets that attempted to negotiate [1]:

> The draft code would prohibit digital platforms discriminating against the news content of news media businesses on the basis of their participation in the code.

This is crucial. A negotiation that you cannot genuinely back out from is not a negotiation at all, it is effectively extortion. If Facebook cannot back out of a negotiation with an individual news outlet, I think it will choose to back out of news altogether. If Facebook is being honest that news is not much of a commercial interest for them, this is the rational choice.

[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/DPB%20-%20Draft%20news%...

Ah, there you go; thanks for pointing that out.

> Also I haven't figured out yet what part of the law actually would imply that Facebook needs to blackout news wholesale. As I read it the law merely requires that Facebook negotiate with each publisher.

A negotiation is something that ends up with mutually agreeable terms, or no deal.

That's not the case here. The news companies do not need to negotiate in good faith, they are allowed to force the tech companies into binding arbitration. The arbitration will of course be done by people in the pockets of the news companies. It's legally mandated that what is considered is the cost of producing news and the benefit that the tech companies get from news. The inverse of the benefit for the news companies and the costs for the tech companies are not to be considered.

Oh, and that no deal option you'd usually have? Not in this "negotation". If the tech companies serve any news from any source, including non-Australian sources, they're at the mercy of any qualifying news org that wants to fleece them in this kangaroo arbitration.

It's funny this is happening to Google and Facebook, two companies who have forced their take-it-or-leave-it "negotiations" on over a billion users each. They're monopolies, and the amount of power and leverage they have and exploit is insane. Their EULAs are literally a non-negotiable "agree if you want to exist on the Internet".

Do not try to make us feel bad for these companies that someone is also going to do it to them too.

Have Facebook or Google compelled you to use their services? If not, then there is no parallel. It is not about "feeling bad" for companies or not. It's about whether the policy is sound.

I have certainly been compelled to use both, Facebook for vital student groups during my time in university (it's also in many developing countries the only digital place to run a business), and Google for similar reasons, including a work account. There's DDG now for search I suppose but Google used to be the only player in town.

Technically if I had to avoid Google I couldn't use Uber because it depends on Google maps, I couldn't use websites using Google cloud, etc..

In terms of function they certainly compel people to use them because they've been so integrated into infrastructure. You cannot avoid them.

Facebook for vital student groups during my time in university

I.e. your colleagues compelled you to use Facebook.

(it's also in many developing countries the only digital place to run a business),

I doubt very much there is any such country, but even if so, it's not a compulsion.

and Google for similar reasons, including a work account

Your workplace compelled you to use Google.

There's DDG now for search I suppose

Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu . . .

but Google used to be the only player in town.

There was never any such time.

Technically if I had to avoid Google I couldn't use Uber because it depends on Google maps

It is still your choice to use Uber or not. You could use Lyft, hail a cab, drive yourself, walk, ride a bike . . .

Google Cloud

I don't see this as you using Google, but rather you using someone who uses Google. This just isn't something you have any reasonable expectation of control over. There is nothing wrong with Google providing a service that some businesses choose to use, who you happen to also do business with.

Australian here... Not sure who to trust on this.

This is a good thing. Media content quality has primarily been garbage the past 10+ years (and getting progressively worse), mostly due to the advertisement click-bait business model forced on them in order to survive. Social media kind of naturally fell into position to reap the benefits...they shouldn't be the gatekeeper to news without paying a fair price.

2 Points: Underscoring that facebook is not now, nor was it ever a good source of news is a very good thing. Don't get your news from facebook. Don't get it via facebook. Anything on facebook that isn't actually personal is tainted and horrible to be treated with extreme suspicion. Facebook have earned that reputation and deserve it.

People going elsewhere on the internet than facebook to get news will reduce facebook engagment, use and get people in the habit of not going to facebook first.

Bring it on. Facebook are horrific. The less they do the better. Especially given they apparently won't do anything about being used for violent organisation.

About the only organisation guaranteed to be more wrong than the Australian Government about literally everyting is Facebook.

[1] https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/28/21406022/facebook-banne...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...

I get lots of news from Facebook. My friends who I trust post articles that they've read. It's a perfectly fine source of news if your friends are the kind of people who actually think critically and read the articles.

If the news you get from Facebook is suspect, it's your friends that are the problem, not Facebook.

you get that news from your friends that facebook algorithms deign to show you.

They have algorithms to influence. They have said so. They were trying to manipulate people's mood with it for "research"

This isn't contraversial.

It's a garbage source of news because of that filter. Even if your friends are lovely, wise, empathetic, intelligent and critically minded and their editorial selection is beyond reproach - that isn't what you get.

Why does the title say "An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia" rather than "Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia"? For me (2) is much more readable.

“An update about...” implies the reader is unlikely to care unless already following the story. If they wanted to reach normal users there would be A/B-tested headlines, pastel illustrations, and bolded reassurances that your Facebook isn’t going away.

Smells like PR-speak to me.

This is the right move by Facebook (and Google) in the face of naked crony capitalism.

It's an effort by the Morrison government to engage in rent-seeking on behalf of Rupert Murdoch's News (which essentially operates as the communications arm of Morrison's government), Nine (which held a fundraiser after the last national election for Morrison) and other media groups.

Yes, there are many valid criticisms of and concerns we should have with tech giants, but this proposed code doesn't deal with any of those concerns.

Australia's former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has stepped up his war against Murdoch's influence on Australian Democracy in recent years, was incredibly perceptive and scathing of this proposed code recently [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiFTT_QgqIc&feature=youtu.be...

Why are we getting hot by this in New Zealand? Last I checked we were autonomous from Australia and our only legal connections are treaties and the crown.

I don't see any indication we would be affected in there? Aside from that the author is also MD for New Zealand...

Where are you reading that this affects New Zealand?

Thank you. I see what I did. I read the job title and confused things.

How much do we have to pay Facebook to do this in the US?

A week ago back some friends and I looked at the draft of the law... it's honestly terrifying.

They basically want Google/fb/? to be upfront with all changes. The goal is clearly to give aussie media outlet an unfair advantage and let them use this information to manipulate the ranking algorithm and/or bypass whatever restrictions are put in place. These info need to be "in terms that are readily comprehensible".

IANAL, but here's a few (reformatted) articles from the draft:

52M:

Google/fb/? will need to give aussie media companies access to:

- a list and explanation of the data that the digital platform service collects (whether or not it shares the data with the registered news business) about the registered news business’ users through their engagement with covered news content made available by the digital platform service;

- a list and explanation of the data that the digital platform service currently has a practice of making available to registered news businesses;

My interpretation: these companies will be required by law to share more user data than they currently do.

52N:

- if: changes are planned to be made to an algorithm of the digital platform service; and the changes are likely to have a significant effect on the ranking of the registered news business’ covered news content made available by the digital platform service.

- then: notice of the change is given to the registered news business corporation for the registered news business at least 28 days before the change is made

My interpretation:

The government wants aussie media companies to be able to be proactive and change their site/service so that ranking changes are minimised

52O:

- if: the changes are specifically designed to have an effect on the ranking or display of content behind a paywall.

- then: notice of the change is given to the registered news business corporation for the registered news business; and the notice is given at least 28 days before the change is made;

My interpretation:

media companies don't like when Google penalises paywalls. This will give them a 28 day window to change how they do paywall so that Google won't be able to detect it. Like a whack a mole where you have to announce what you are about to hit

and this keeps going:

- 52P: 28 days notice for changes to how news items are displayed

- 52Q: 28 days notice for changes to advertising (if it affects news)

- 52S: media outlet must be able to moderate comments on their items (does that include comments on shared items? surely not?)

Draft: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...

> The goal is clearly to give aussie media outlet an unfair advantage and let them use this information to manipulate the ranking algorithm and/or bypass whatever restrictions are put in place. These info need to be "in terms that are readily comprehensible".

I wonder what kind of malicious compliance we could see while still being within the letter of the law.

e.g. Articles that start with "Murdoch is a cancer on society" will be ranked much higher than those that don't. Enjoy.

What I find funny about this reaction is that most Australians are actually either quite blase about this situation, or actually are quietly enjoying the fact that massive multinationals who will do anything to avoid paying taxes in Australia have finally discovered that their power is quite limited in Australia.

Most Australians have seen what Facebook was up to during the 2016 election. They have seen the rise of Trumpism and, despite the incredibly conservative government, don't want that sort of crazy in their nation.

I'm Australian and I see this law as confirmation of dementia in the government. This is all kinds of unrealistic.

Having to notify Murdoch of any changes to search algorithm 28 days in advance? I wonder if that is even possible - it's probably a magic ML algorithm that they tweak here and there.

I can't imagine that google/facebook would continue linking to news under these conditions. The small return is not worth the cost.

But not Whatsapp so no biggie.

I am no fan of this right wing government, which is letting Fake News Corp write it’s media policy, but Facebook does not have an inherent right to other people’s content.

Rather than redistributing ad dollars away from big tech, this is likely to force people consuming news to go directly to the source. Either that or it will further dumb down our discourse (though Fake News Corp is doing a pretty good job of that anyway). Time will tell.

Facebook is not taking anyones content. News companies willingly submit their content to facebook and now demand that facebook should pay for the stuff they submitted. So facebook is taking the logical step by stopping them from submitting the content.

I can't walk up to someone and hand them the keys to my car and then demand that they now owe me the value of the car.

They're not even submitting their content; they're submitting links to their content. Readers still need to go to the publishers' pages to read the articles.

This isn't even true when you consider news articles that are cached by Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

The publisher controls whether AMP is used. If they don't want to use it they can stop publishing it.

This is exactly what Facebook are doing (as evidenced by Facebook stating they'll block this feature for Australian users if the proposed law goes ahead). A third party generates the content then Facebook's user base shares it within their network. Any advertising revenue generated in the meantime is pocketed solely by Facebook.

My point still stands. The state of online advertising as of 2020 is such that there are essentially two vast monopolies (Facebook and Google) and you can't advertise anything online without going through one of their systems. In addition, they generate essentially no valuable content themselves (I emphasis content here, I'm not suggesting they provide no value whatsoever).

For a bit of context here, the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) is arguably Australia's most respected media organisation but as it's publicly funded it generates no advertising revenue itself directly and takes no donations. It also has been hit hard by austerity from this same right wing government in recent years.

To suggest we do nothing and continue to let any revenue generated be vacuumed up by the big tech giants is unacceptable.

The point is though that Google and Facebook don't put ads on news content. The user still has to go to the news site to actually read the news article, and the news site can put their ads on that or have a paywall. Google and Facebook only have ads on pages that might also link to news sources. (This bill is specifically about Google search results and Facebook's news feed - not Google/Facebook's ad sales businesses). So it's not, for example, like Spotify where the music is played from Spotify's servers and the user stays in the Spotify app/site.

Note also that this bill specifically exempts ABC and SBS, as well as most independent news sources from being able to get any benefit.

As an Australian I have no doubt the policy is misguided, but the fact that these American companies are being so loud about it makes me wonder if the government is actually on the right track.

In general I would say whatever corporations want is not in my best interest, so whatever they don't want, might be.

It's because of the precedent effect.

Countries very much look to each other for policy guidance because nothing is better than having facts on the ground in deciding whether a policy works or not. We've seen it especially recently with COVID-19 responses.

Facebook/Google need to make sure that policies like this aren't enacted because whilst Australia is tiny, the US and the EU aren't and will adopt a similar policy if it works. And then suddenly it snowballs into something you can't stop.

That feels like a pretty bad take on how to review changes. You might get better mileage by looking at the context each time. In this case its pretty clear that the Australian goverment is acting on behalf of specific vested news companies and NOT for the consumer...

It seems dangerous to have this kind of government-on-the-right-track reaction when the corporation cheering it on is in the business of fossil fuels, factory farming, or opiod manufacturing just because a different corporation yells loudly about it.

Fair enough, I simply don't trust any corporation to act in my interest - if there was a trusted third party lobbying for FB/Google's position I may have another look

Of course I would like to see the government go further and upset News Corp as well, but upsetting these two seems like a good first step

FB doesn't have to have your best interests in mind for their actions to make sense. You also don't need to trust them to agree or disagree with them.

which corporations though? Facebook and Google (against) , or news corp(for)?

Which corporations though? News Corp. wants one thing, Facebook the other. It's like having to decide which type of terminal cancer you'd prefer to get.

Using your analogy, I would say Australia currently has Facebook, Google and News Corp cancer

Better to treat one now than none...

When the main driving force is lobbying from an American multinational that pays no tax in Australia but controls 70% of our news (News Corp), and ABC, SBS and small independent news sources are specifically excluded... No, they're not on the right track.

I mean, that's even before you consider that there isn't really any logical consistency to the claims that Google and Facebook are making huge profits directly from Australian news content. It's just a ludicrous false assumption...

Were it not for the parens, your first paragraph could have been talking about any of the players

Why is it a false assumption? The users are the product, and the user want news

Tax evasion is a separate matter - I agree we do need to work on that, not just for Google and Facebook but all multinationals (resource companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Woodside etc. leave Google in the dust in that respect).

With the assumption - at the moment, these publishers the ability to not be indexed using robots.txt, sitemap.xml etc.. If Google and Facebook were making huge profits directly from Australian news content, they could pretty easily organise to all boycott them. If the assumption behind this law was true, then that would be extremely effective because of the money apparently at stake. Or if the news sources just felt they were being unfairly used, they could just cut them off on principal. But they haven't done either. Why not?

Secondly, Facebook couldn't credibly come out with a threat like this. Why would they cut off what News Corp and Nine tell us is apparently a huge revenue stream? But as we know, they're not really making huge profits directly from news, and not even much indirectly, so Facebook can threaten this.

The only thing Facebook risks by banning all news for Australian users is engagement - that is, if the site doesn't instantly become better without the largely grim narratives put out by News Corp and most all modern news stations.

Do you feel that what the government wants is in your best interest?

I'm Australian and I don't.

No, but I feel it could, I don't think any corporation ever could

But a corporation's interests might line up with yours, just like a government.

Superficially, it is profitable for a corporation to make their customers happy so they will want to buy/use their product. Not everything is a monopoly.

Personally, I feel like our government is only concerned with staying in power - historically that's been whoever Murdoch favours - and that's why we get garbage like this.

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