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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

> So congratulations, you've convinced me. I think Facebook and Google should charge Australian news sites to put their links in their feeds. These are after all little more than adverts.

Anecdotally (n=1), my Australian friends have already signed up directly with email newsletters and apps of the news sources they previously would've consumed through Facebook's feed (when Facebook started blacklisting links to media websites by domain). Those news sources are going to be just fine without Facebook, and existed before Facebook was a thing.

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If the media orgs in Australia were able to convert their Facebook traffic into newsletter subscribers as easily as this there would be little fury in the media. After all, they would have stopped Facebook profiting off the back of their content AND kept their readers.

The fact that The Australian media is steaming about the policy change, running negative stories about Facebook across almost all mainstream sources, and urging/willing the government to somehow crack down on Facebook for making the choice they did suggests that maybe they are hurting quite a bit more than they might be letting on with their newsletter/app pushes.

It really is incredible to me that you think that's an actual solution.

The main value Facebook and Google have to news sites isn't access from established readers, they will find the content anyway because they already know they want it. The problem is discovery and by and acquisition of new readers. That's the primary value and service social media and search platforms like facebook and google offer in this area. It's why they are primarily adverting platforms, and get most of their revenue from advertising in the first place. News organisations have been free-riding off this for years but are so desperate and entitled they want to charge their advertisers for promoting their content.

> It really is incredible to me that you think that's an actual solution.

Likewise regarding your position. I fall firmly on the side that Big Tech should be heavily regulated, and in some cases broken up. This is simply an extension of that, shifting monetary rewards to those creating content versus platforms extracting all of the financial rewards, throwing scraps to the content (which has a real cost, versus the zero marginal cost advantage platforms have).

Google and Facebook have a combined market cap of almost $2.2 trillion dollars and collectively generate over $260 billion a year in revenue. Am I supposed to feel bad for them? I pay for my news content (listed in another comment), and I think they should too (disclaimer: I am not a trillion dollar adtech platform).

That's an interesting shift, giving up on defending this law since it's clearly not justifiable, to saying oh well these people deserve it anyway. That's not how laws are supposed to work in a democracy.

If you don't live in Australia, these aren't your laws to vote for. If you do, your representatives enacted these laws. If you support these laws, congratulations, if you do not, call your representatives or run for office. There are large deltas in electorate sentiment across the world; different democracies will advocate for and legislate different laws.

I support the spirit of this legislation (content being compensated for its value on platforms), but also believe these specific corporations deserve it based on their exploitative actions & intent, and resources available to them [1]. My apologies if that wasn't properly communicated throughout my comments.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=regulate+big+tech

If those news sources were going to be fine, why are they so desperate to prop up their failing business model by shaking down competition?

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