Hacker News Reader

Comment by prdonahue | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is undoubtably the scummiest company of our generation, but this is the correct and only response here.

I continue to be surprised when politicians fail to think through the logical response to their actions. Either they failed to anticipate this, and they're naive, or they did and they went through with it anyway?

View on HN

This law was pushed by News Corp and is exactly the response they were hoping for. Their goal is to be the only game in town, because they know they can survive without FB and Google, and no one else can.

Will take your word for it (I haven't looked into it).

Do you think the politicians are just feigning surprise/insult here in response to Facebook's actions as that's what would be expected of them?

I'm not sure they're faking it. My guess is that News Corp's lobbyists are so persuasive they convinced the politicians that Australian news would die without this law.

The guy overseeing this law is 70 years old, so I'll tend to believe it.

> because they know they can survive without FB and Google, and no one else can.

News Corp has an impressive series of failed things they “knew” they could do better than everyone else in digital media.

I wouldn't expect them to be any more successful with a facially neutral legislative framework that they think they can work better than anyone else.

Conversely - if you're going to Facebook or NewsCorp to seek factual (or at least sensibly balanced) information, you've effectively given up in either case.

It was only about 3 years ago that I found out lots of people rely on Facebook for their 'news', which puts me in a bubble of some sort, but it's still a bewildering state of affairs.

Lol this is just not true. Fairfax, for example, will be completely fine. You’re honestly pushing a lobbyist’s narrative. Small papers don’t rely on Facebook click throughs.

> Facebook is undoubtably the scummiest company of our generation

Well we are comparing them to News Corp and politicians, everything is relative.

I stand by my statement :)

That's really over the top. Facebook scummiest of our generation? I envy you if Facebook is the worst company you've encountered. Many companies stiff their customers in all kinds of terrible ways, especially when there are no alternatives. I can honestly say I've never been stiffed by Facebook, nor has anyone else I know. Even the cases that are the most frustrating or angering are about censorship i.e. denial of service by them of something nobody strictly needs, they aren't e.g. charging for a service and then not delivering it.

Or Rupert is putting a lot of pressure on them to get this done?

What's Rupert's next move then? He's not stupid and had to anticipate this response as well.

Other companies go out of business while his can ride it out.

Good point of discussion. Here are a couple of possible paths:

1. Rupert gets paid from Facebook and Google. Rupert wins. 2. News results get blocked on Google and Facebook. People in Australia go to Rupert's sites directly. Rupert wins.

Rupert is currently 89. I would give his reign 5 - 10 more years at most. Really curious what will happen then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com