Facebook faces a global backlash over its bid to 'bully' Australia
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
If they are forced to pay for the links, they should be allowed to ban them. Otherwise it's just a tax for one single company to sponsor newspapers.
But that's not what the backlash is about. Rather, it's about Facebook's banning of content that they would not have had to pay for, apparently just as a flex to show how powerful they are.
I wrote more about this here a day ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192903
Facebook seems to have backpedalled somewhat since then, so they've effectively conceded they got it wrong initially, but they've still made a big PR blunder, even if their claims are technically true.
> core news contentmeans content that > (a)is created by a journalist; and (b) that records, > investigates or explains issues that are of public > significance for Australians; or are relevant in engaging > Australians in public debate and in informing democratic > decision-making; or relate to community and local events.
The code doesn't define what constitutes a "journalist" (unless Australia has some kind of pre-existing qualification system for journalists), but I think one could certainly argue that publishing the information in (b) automatically makes you a journalist.
Facebook blocked everything the law said they could be charged for, not everything they would currently be charged for. It's a bold move, and I think they failed at communicating that this was meant to demonstrate how broad the law is.
Or they were just boasting about how powerful they were, but I tend to think corporations are a little more emotionless than that.
A winning move would have been for Facebook to run an information campaign pointing out that the law was written badly and that it could have had unintended consequences. Separately, they could also have said it's not worthwhile to pay when users share commercial news content in their feed, so they would be blocking that. It could easily have been done in a way that people would understand and respect, and would have allowed Facebook to seem reasonable and for the AU government to seem unreasonable.
The move they've made instead does seem to have been an emotion-driven, and possibly directed by Zuckerberg himself, as he'd been in direct communications with senior AU government figures shortly before the ban was applied.
The move is obviously not designed to protect Facebook commercially/legally in the short term, as the laws haven't even been passed by both houses of parliament yet, let alone come into effect. So it's just intended to make a political point, but making it a very unclear, petulant and counter-productive way.
Or, hey, given how much we’re taking about it now, maybe Facebook knew exactly what they were doing.
Maybe, somewhere in their reporting, they should mention that turning up the heat on Facebook will benefit them too.
Maybe people realize that the relationship between relatively small and disparate local media companies and the giant foreign tech companies aggregating them and making money from their content doesn't allow negotiation on an equal footing and that preserving healthy journalism justify a state intervention.
France did it well. Australia is trying. Apparently Facebook is more scared of France than Australia.
Are you referring to Nine Entertainment Co. and News Corp. as "relatively small and disparate local media companies"??
Why not introduce a nosocial tag, then newspapers who don't want their stories shared on social media can simply exclude themselves?
Oh, it isn't about sharing content you say? It's about shaking down Facebook and Google? Hmm.
I have no evidence to back this, however given that it causes them a huge amount of pain and (IMHO) newsfeeds are substantially better when there is no/heavily reduced political fighting between strangers, I can see only upside to this if it happens.
I don't think so. Politics and "political fighting" seem amazing for engagement.
If they have to decide between regulation that stifles their business or slightly reduced engagement, they’ll pick the latter.
I'm really not a zuck apologist. I dislike fb as much as the next person. But this piece just doesn't make sense to me.