Facebook is gambling Australia can't do without it. What if we prove them wrong | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is gambling Australia can't do without it. What if we prove them wrong

theguardian.com

63 pointssamizdis70 comments

I don't really understand what all the outrage is about. This is like me walking into the local shop and picking up a newspaper that until recently was free. The shopkeeper then informs me that it now costs money, and I put it back on the shelf and walk out. The shopkeeper typically doesn't throw a hissy fit if I do this. Likewise, my son typically doesn't throw a hissy fit when I tell him that he needs to make his papier mache artwork out of the junk mail that get shoved through our post box, instead of the formerly-free newspaper I used to get for the job.

It's not often that I side with Facebook on anything, but this just sounds like a case of Facebook being told that they need to pay if they want to use a resource, and Facebook saying "OK, we won't use that resource".

The main reason for the outrage is that a whole lot of content that is not (or at least is not intended to be) covered by the legislation was also removed by Facebook, apparently to make a point, but done in a way that was unfair at best and dangerous at worst.

Such content included public health and safety information (government/emergency services advice re. the pandemic and bushfires), though Facebook later claimed this was a mistake and restored it (I don't know details of exactly what was removed and what has been restored).

It also included other content platforms - i.e., several major news/comment sites, satirical news sites, weather/climate info sites, retail sites, a major independent restaurant/cafe review site, and info services for minority communities like indigenous groups. I think most of these platforms would have attained little-to-no benefit from the new laws, so they are just "collateral damage", losing traffic and revenue over a law they likely didn't support and had little to gain from.

It seems highly capricious on Facebook's part, and a terrible PR move, given that most Australians probably didn't support the laws, at least not very strongly, but in a climate where people are already uncomfortable with how much power the major internet platforms have, this "show of strength" against a country's elected government and populace is alarming.

There's no way for facebook to know in advance if a link is to a new agency or not, and in fact the law doesn't even specify news agencies. Links to any news-like content anywhere are covered by the law, whether they are on news publisher's web sites or not. Yes, it really is that appallingly badly thought out:

https://twitter.com/NewtonMark/status/1362173580776148996

Facebook has banned specific Australian sites by domain name, so they know in advance the kind of content that is normally published on all the platforms they've banned.

As one of biggest/"smartest" technology companies in the world, they could easily have implemented this response in a way that didn't make them look such bullies.

The laws are very clearly formulated for the benefit of the major media publishers, particularly News Corp and Nine Fairfax, and it would have been trivial for Facebook to limit their ban to those platforms, and perhaps a handful of other large ones that lobbied for the law.

To be clear, I'm not normally in the faction of people hating on Facebook, and generally regard the loudest attacks on them as overblown scapegoating. But, regardless of how technically right they might be, from a PR point of view it's a losing move.

What happens when one of the domains they did not ban publishes some news content than demands payment from Facebook when they do not have a process in place for that? How do they take the risk?

They did accidentally block their own page already[1].

[1] - https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-accidentally-blocks-own-p...

It has been interesting to see how incompetently Facebook wields its own platform. Having to back-pedal after banning government Covid updates and managing to ban themselves makes them look like they have no idea what they're doing.

All Facebook has managed to achieve is to give the Australian government a good reason to dig in, to increase support for the new media code within Australia, and to gain the Australian government the support of various other governments internationally.

The fact is government Covid updates quite clearly are covered by the law as content that is chargeable if they chose to do so. It's hardly reasonable to accuse facebook of not knowing what they are doing when blocking content, when the Australian government clearly has no idea what it's doing defining the scope of the law.

> The fact is government Covid updates quite clearly are covered by the law

They aren't.

> It's hardly reasonable to accuse facebook of not knowing what they are doing

No, it's reasonable. This has backfired badly for Facebook. They've weakened their bargaining position.

No the laws are not formulated that way, they are formulated to be ridiculously broad.

If any site of any kind publishing newsworthy content chooses to sue facebook for payment, there's nothing the Australian government can do to stop them. Also there is no way for facebook to know how he Australian government will actually choose to interpret and apply the law as regulators. They could even change the way they regulate it retroactively, that's the problem with at-will enforcement of vaguely worded laws.

I'm not defending the new laws - I agree they're stupid. But all the public discussion about the laws in Australia, where I live, has focused on the giant publishers - News Corp and Nine Fairfax in particular. They were the primary lobbyists for the laws, and were the ones who would attain almost all the revenues from them.

My point is that Facebook's reaction is a tactical error in the PR battle. They've effectively conceded this themselves, having back-pedalled on at least some of the sites banned initially.

They could have responded in a way that won them support from the Australian populace, but instead they've made themselves seem worse than the AU government, which is quite a feat.

Much of the "outrage" is confected by the journalists that are presenting it.

In actuality, none of the parties concerned held the public's trust to begin with, so pardon me if I suggest that most Australians would interpret the whole charade as a pissing contest between idiots.

Yeah I think that's a reasonable take, and it'll be interesting to see how it plays out up till the next election, which should be early/mid next year, and whether anyone's still talking about it by then.

I'm mostly just surprised to see Facebook play the PR game so badly, but perhaps I shouldn't be.

It's stunning that Facebook can be criticised for sending referrals to news media, then simultaneously criticised for not sending referrals. Murdoch and co bluffed, their bluff was called. Now newspapers around the world are calling it "bullying". I wish they would report on the poker games I lose consistently.

There is a conflict of interest here. Newspapers everywhere want the Australian media to win this round. Extracting rents from tech companies is their best shot at survival.

^ THIS

The reason is pretty clear. News companies benefit a lot more from Facebook than Facebook benefits from them. The whole idea of this law was to extract even more money from Facebook but now it blew up in their faces and they have lost money so they are using their power in Australia to make it look like what Facebook has done is evil.

The cognitive dissonance in these reactions is deafening.

Firstly the title "What if we prove them wrong". Of course Lenore means that to be read as 'we' the public but actually Lenore is a Guardian Editor and big media insider.

As the the chaotic way facebook has blocked sites it didn't mean to, that's just because this law's definition of media sites and how to identify them and know you have to pay to link to them is a mess.

On the one hand Lenore is saying Facebook is finding it incredibly hard to block news sites without blocking all sorts of stuff unintentionally, so it's clearly a hard problem facebook is having major problems solving. On the other she's saying blocking news sites was easy and so they should be able to block harmful content easily too. Doh!

It seems it's literally not possible to argue in support of this new law without contradicting yourself, at least I haven't read one yet that doesn't, they're that dumb. Heck I don't even use or like Facebook, I think they're scumbags, but that doesn't mean imposing stupid laws on them or anyone else is ok.

>Facebook is finding it incredibly hard to block news sites without blocking all sorts of stuff unintentionally, so it's clearly a hard problem facebook is having major problems solving.

That's because this law is incredibly broad on it's definition of what "news" is.

I'm not sure if what a single person experiences fits a societal impact, and I don't know if it is privileged thinking. But when I quit Facebook (FB Blue) it was almost ridiculous how easy it was and how little of an actually recognisable impact it had on my life (but that might be the privilege speaking). From the psychological routines to the social norms: I basically forgot that it existed within a couple of days.

I imagine this to be a more universal thing: It is impossible to imagine a live without Facebook. But it has been basically impossible to imagine a live with Facebook before there was any and just as quickly you will forget how inevitable and necessary it felt while it was there – once it loses its role. And I hope that this applies not only to individuals but also to societies.

I guess we will find out in the near future to just how many things this principle applies, for example petrol fuels, casual international flights and video platforms. Quitting Facebook Blue has shown me that to unlearn something is just as easy as it is to learn it. This is not nicotine or alcohol. This is just a mode of doing something you do anyways.

The problem (in some places, at least) is that people and organisations have mindlessly started using FB to communicate; I (reluctantly) signed up as the school my kids attend, their athletics union &c all started using Facebook to share information as 'everyone was on FB anyway'.

Pointing out that that was demonstrably not true, the response pretty much was 'sign up or lose out'.

I don't mind people using FB to communicate. I do mind when it is the only option available.

OK but Facebook users in Australia can still use Facebook for this.

Oh, they most definitely can - when replying, I had the OP's observation that quitting FB hadn't impacted his life at all.

It wouldn't impact mine, either - hadn't it been for all the entities you need to interact with who unilaterally decide that Facebook is the way to interact - period.

The uproar is caused by Facebook's (botched) removal of news sites. Are all those people using Facebook as their sole information source? Then yes, they will be affected. If not, then whatever. As for myself I read the Guardian anyway in their own app, same for my other news sources, so if Facebook decided to do the same in my country, I wouldn't even notice - and neither my publishers.

Pardon my ignorance, but as someone who has never used Facebook (I just saw some friends use it), what is FB Blue? From a cursory search, there is a hint of a redesign happening at some point, but that's it.

It's the main facebook app, blue is a nickname for it in SV circles. It's to differentiate it from their other apps insta, etc

I used "Blue" to criticise myself for not severing all ties to Facebook (I still use Instagram and WhatsApp) but just from Facebook, the social network (=blue). But I want to firmly distance myself from any SV circles! ;)

What's an SV circle?

KaoruAoiShiho said "blue" was a nickname for the main facebook app "in SV circles" and probably meant: Silicon Valley Circles.

But now that I think of this I wish it was something more technical... [edit:typo]

Silicon Valley

I think that's missing why so many people use and like facebook. Personally I can't stand it, but I know how to track down and use forums, discord servers, Reddit groups, etc for topics I enjoy.

However for a vast swathe of non-tech savvy ordinary people Facebook provides a simple, complete, highly functional way to keep in touch with family and friends and socialise online. For the vast majority of these people using special purpose tools, apps and forums is way too much.

I don't like it or the company, but it's massively popular for very good reasons and it's no point pretending those reasons don't exist.

I didn't elaborate on this. But this is what I meant when I pointed out my possible privilege. I don't want to condemn people who use it; and it might indeed be a very good communication tool for many people. I know how WhatsApp has changed my elder relatives' way of communicating and I can't imagine that anything else but Facebook's power to create size effects did this...

But I'm very sure that it doesn't need Facebook to do this right. It could be anything else.

Totally agree with this.

I stopped using Facebook years ago and feel that leaving it had no real impact on my life.

If there is one thing the pandemic has shown it’s how resilient people are.

If Facebook disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow there would be outrage and surprise for a month and then people would move on.

It would just become another episode in history and no doubt other platforms and tools would come in its place.

Here's the thing - FaceBook is not the Internet, but unfortunately a lot of people seem to think it is and don't bother to venture out of it's closed garden. It's the early days of Compuserve and AOL all over again. This article would appear to have been written by someone who clearly falls into that camp.

Honestly, if FaceBook went offline tomorrow, would the world stop, or would millions of people suddenly find themselves with hours of extra time to be productive?

This is a good chance for the country to ween itself off of FaceBook and venture back out into the world.

Hopefully FaceBook holds its ground. It doesn't need the news and we really don't need it for the news, and certainly not for accessing Gov services. Maybe everyone can go back to posting picture of their pets and holidays, but I guess there's no money in that for FaceBook.

Either way I'm disgusted with our nanny-state Government involving itself in what should be a contractual dispute. How about making Google and FaceBook pay appropriate taxes on revenue earned from Australian citizens instead of this bs?

Not in defence of big tech but Australia is doing this whole news business laws wrong and for the wrong reasons. [0]

Only good is that this serves as a nice reminder that big tech & co. that they are not independent of government legislation.

[0] Read into Murdoch's deep hands in state affairs https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/19/kevin...

I'm no fan of Facebook here as both them and Google have some questionable practices here. But I do find the law questionable. As I have seen it described it focuses solely on two tech companies without remediating the issues that allow anyone to operate in such a way. My understanding is that Murdoch essentially has monopoly control on the Australian media market and uses that to influence the political leanings of the country. The situation feels like that control is being exploited to protect his control and bottom line.

"It’s hard to think of a better way for a platform [Facebook] to anger a nation and destroy what’s left of its own reputation than to block health and hospital sites in a pandemic, emergency service sites in a state that recently battled bushfires and the sites of innumerable welfare groups, charities and community organisations, all in a bid to avoid making payments under a new media bargaining code that aims to address the power imbalance between media companies and the big tech platforms.

It’s hard to think of how to look more like an arrogant international monopoly not taking a country and its proposed laws seriously than to implement a ban with no warning and in such a ham-fisted way that a radio station could get its page back up by listing itself as a gift shop and users could still post news articles if they were posted as a link to a tweet. This is a company so sure of its capacity to bully that it was prepared to push the big 'destroy news in Australia” button apparently without spending even a moment thinking through the consequences."

The whole article is priceless.-

(Particularly when it speaks of the relative "ease" of censoring factual news sources vs. F'book's mishandling, to date, of disinformation and fakery, and the usual poison it spreads unto which it sells ads ...)

Australia liberating itself from Facebook could create a new productivity boom. If there are any FB features at all worth having, an enterprising Australian could build a one-off service in an afternoon. If they doubled down just walked away, I would consider moving to a country with such an enlightened culture.

What are they going to miss? Doom scrolling middle school acquaintances profiles for hints they have finally earned comeuppance for some forgotten 7th grade slight? Gifs of corny jokes that didn't merit a bumper sticker? Working their school districts parents association like it's game of thrones?

I don't think that if people detached from it, given everything we know about it now, that people will return to it if it's gone for a month.

> If there are any FB features at all worth having, an enterprising Australian could build a one-off service in an afternoon.

Google failed with their social media sites, why do you think some other Australian enterprise would succeed?

I'd say because they're not google. I'd be surprised if Google ever invents/produces another successful consumer product.

Australians still have access to Facebook and can post their own content or share posts from non-news sources. Very few Australians will stop using it, although engagement will probably decline.

Imagine a company had a giant government relations team that went around and gave “seminars” showing politicians and government officials how to use their software to connect with local constituents, used that connectivity to then target those constituents with bogus ads filled with false information, and then pulled the entire communications capability when the politicians started to question a completely different aspect of the now-monopoly-like service.

Now you understand why these politicians, and their peers in other countries, aren’t playing ball. Yes, Murdoch set this up, but Facebook walked right into the trap. And you know, this is a good playbook for anyone that wants to take these guys on in the future: let them walk into their own traps, because you can always count on them to think they’re invincible.

It is impossible to overstate how much better our lives would be if FB didn’t exist.

Whoever is right or wrong here..

this seems like a one in a lifetime opportunity for a competitor, with the help of all the rage and momentum, to seize the market and start a mass migration.

I'm rooting for https://friendi.ca.

> to seize the market and start a mass migration.

Why would the masses migrate though, individuals can still use Facebook they just cannot post news links, everything else is the same.

I heard on the news yesterday that Facebook suspended their entire service as a form of protest. But I have to admit I only follow that topic half heartedly since I don't reside in AU and additionally I don't use Facebook.

I presume their service is back again for users.

Facebook did not suspend their entire service, they suspended every page that was listed in the news category which is in line with government regulations. This had the unfortunate effect on blocking a lot of government pages like the health and fire department pages since these are technically news under the definition of the law. Facebook has since unblocked most of these important service pages.

Facebook did the right thing here, and the Australian media meltdown about it only seems to prove that. For Facebook (according to their press release) news stroies account for about 4% of the content on their site. They cut all of this out for Australian users and stopped Australian media from sharing their links to non-Australians, too.

In the day since, the traffic to news orgs in Australia has dropped significantly. Early data shows that referrals dropped more than 90% in the 24 hours after the shift in policy came in. [1] The same source reports that overall traffic to the news sites in Australia dropped between 15% (local traffic) and 20% (international traffic) compared to normal.

If Facebook was really stealing value from the news orgs, then the fact that they have 'stopped stealing' should have been met with relief. Instead, there are articles all over the media about the hit that Facebook is taking to its reputation, the fall of Mark Zuckerberg [2], and how the Australian government is going to fight back.

I’m not convinced there is a lot that the government can do, however. The choice for Facebook was pay for the links to media that you allow on your platform, or don’t allow links on your platform.

Ben Thompson said it well in his piece on Australia, Facebook, and Google this week:

"The company was quite literally going to have to pay, say, 'The Australian' for 'The Australian' posting 'The Australian' links on Facebook!"

That they eventually chose what the government assumed was the impossible choice shouldn’t have surprised anyone - they had warned they might for months.

Additionally, the media response in the article linked by OP and the talking points from the government ministers on the recklessness of taking critical resources offline during a pandemic, bushfire season, and crisis periods rings holllow when you refer back to the text of the bill. See this Twitter thread with extracts - if it was information about current affairs of local, regional, or national significance, it counted as ‘core news content' according to the law. [3]

1: https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/02/in-australia-facebooks-ban...

2: https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/the-rise-an...

3: https://twitter.com/NewtonMark/status/1362173580776148996

> I’m not convinced there is a lot that the government can do, however.

I don’t think there is, 25 million people in Australia is what, 1% of Facebook’s users? Not much leverage there.

Of course the media is painting it as the fault of those petulant self-important tech companies throwing a fit instead of protecting themselves from a law that makes sharing news a bad business. And of course many people here will play along despite knowing why Facebook is doing it because of their natural affinity to support any negative narrative about Facebook.

Going forward, this is all going to end up as a historical footnote. We have no idea what the future will bring for what we currently categorize as "news" much less how to pay for it. The medium is the message and this medium is just getting started.

One of the funniest consequences of this law is that (under the new equilibrium) a significant portion of the world may end up getting its news about Australia from media outlets that are not based in Australia. This could prove to be a significant PR challenge which — I can only speculate — may well come as a surprise to the Australian government.

I've rarely seen legislation that runs so forcefully against basic economic realities. I look forward to hearing all about the interesting behavioral distortions this law will cause — though, perhaps unfortunately, not from the Australians themselves.

Is there anything that prohibits Facebook, or Google from turning the tables on the Australian news media and charging a fee for any new media that wish to be features on their sites?

FaceBook has Boosted Posts and there's Google Ads, so there is a paid channel for getting noticed if you're not a household name.

It also worked for places like NewsMax to get noticed.

I’m Australian. Since this change I have not talked to a single person who was affected...no one uses Facebook to get their news anymore. Few even check Facebook

And yet traffic to news sites in Australia have taken a painful hit, 13% of domestic traffic and 30% of overseas views. It may not seem all that massive, but for many news orgs on the edge that's their whole profit margin gone, if they have one.

Shouldn't those news orgs be thankful that evil Facebook isn't stealing all their valuable news stories anymore?

Wasn't the whole point of this that Facebook was supposedly making so much money off the backs of all that valuable content? Seems it wasn't all that valuable after all.

We live in a bubble. I'm not sure I interact with anyone who even uses facebook at all. But I know I am in the minority.

If the news sites really don't want traffic from Facebook, it should be pretty easy to block requests referred from Facebook.

They could take the first step by not posting their content on facebook to begin with.

The article mentions that some AU residents have been able to bypass this ban by linking to tweets of news stories. Has Twitter indicated whether it'll be following the Facebook or Google route? I can only imagine that they will be covered by this regulation too.

> The government says the code will initially focus on Google and Facebook, but could be expanded to other tech companies.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56107028

My guess is that Rupert Murdoch didn't think Twitter was a problem.

Possibly because its feeds are not filtered and it doesn't scrape content in any form. It's also short form so you're not going to get a more than a brief summary of a news story and most likely a link.

It's feeds aren't filtered? That's not true. And it's besides the point. Murdoch didn't shakedown Facebook because Facebook's feed is filtered. He decided to do so because advertisers moved from his properties to Facebook/Google and he wants that revenue back. Kinda like ocean liners wanting a cut of airlines' profits.

Murdoch didn't think bother with Twitter because Twitter's profits are slim.

The law will apply to platforms at the discretion of the Treasurer. If he/she decides it will apply to Twitter, it will; if not, it won't.

This sounds like it should be illegal. Why is the government allowed to make laws that specify individual entities. Surely they should be required to come up with some classification that covers every business like google and facebook.

And what if Twitter registered themselves as a news company in Australia? Would newspapers using links to tweets (or images of tweets) have to pay twitter? This would be really funny.

To clarify, the "we" in that headline is referring to the news media and Murdoch publications, not the unwashed masses of Facebook users that have the temerity not to click on the links through to their sites.

I hate Facebook just as much as the next guy, but linking to other websites should not be seen as copyright infringement. It is the essence of the web.

Linking != stealing

Yes. Facebook is more essential than oxygen to Australian people and they will suffocate if not using it. Good luck Facebook!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com