Facebook bans news sharing in Australia
theage.com.au
theage.com.au
Am I alone in thinking Facebook shouldn't be obligated or expect to act as an editor, fact checker, and moral censor just because stuff a powerful crowd doesn't like naturally trends on engagement driven algorithms?
That's fine if there's competition. There isn't. Not even the incredibly vast resources of google could make a dent in facebook's network externality advantage from being the first mover. Not even google with their expertise, market power and a massive spend.
So it's facebook's algos or bust. That is a natural monopoly. You don't need to be fancy about definitions, you can't get your facebook like thing elsewhere. Monopoly is the exact time you need regulation - even from a libertarian perspective it's classic "market failure" of the same kind as water & electricity distribution, national parks, national defence.
So what is the approrpriate regulation for this new monopoly? Australia is trying something and the first attempt might utterly garbage, (especially from boomer politicians). Facebook are trying to fight the very idea of doing something with everything they have so it isn't repeated the world over.
It's worth remembering that even parler, while catering to the exact demographic, coudn't unseat facebook as the organisational venue for the Jan 6 riots. The capital storming was organised on facebook. They also censored the new york post story about Hunter Biden's corruption so that could not be shared, so they are censoring, whether you agree with that decision or not.
Engagment algorithms are horrible, vile, hostile, vicious things. Backed by monopoly power they are so very much worse. I'm inclined to think that no news at all on facebook would be a step forward.
But I take the point about google's aglos, which is a different problem. Perhaps regulating search so it cannot use any personal information and the same search terms produce the same results for everyone at a particular time would be the right way to go there.
"Water distribution is not a monopoly because you can go to your local shop and buy a can of coke or a bottle of artisan spring water if you're thirsty." Every monopoly always makes an argument like this. Treating it with withering contempt is always the correct response to such nonsense. Your family "christmas letter" or equivalent relating to more distant friends and relatives family news is also not a competitor to facebook despite some similarities. So it goes.
You cannot do what facebook does in competition to facebook at any price. You can't get whatever people get from facebook somewhere else at any price. That is market power. That is what economists call "market failure." That is an open-and-shut case for regulation the same as electricity and water distribution on the grounds of natural monopoly. It's so open-and-shut that's true whether you lean socialist, libertarian or something more moderate.
One can play definition games all flipping day long and turn it into a poor quality highschool debate. Monopolists always attempt this in defence.
Whatever the correct definition is it has the same definition as google's attempt to do the same thing where it poured a multitude of resources and expertise into it and failed while facebook made billions in revenue.
No definitional games alter that fact. As long as the definition captures /that/ it's fine, but wholly unnecessary. And you can mess with definitions and have defintion debates in quagmire as long as you choose which is what every single monopolist wants and will pay lobbyists, lawyers and politicians to achieve that end to prevent the obvious and necessary action.
> “This is not a workable code that has been landed by this government,” communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said.
So maybe you shouldn't have voted for it then, huh? Like, I might disagree with the politicians who are defending the code, but at least they are being consistent.