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Comment by aemreunal | Hacker News Reader

This makes me so angry, not just because of Australia's clear attack on open web and a completely inverted value flow illusion, but also because it made me agree with Facebook on an issue (when they initially showed opposition and called Australia's bluff). Though they also went back on that, which is just disappointing to me.

Australia needs to step out of their illusion and stop shoveling snow up an avalanche. The only way to benefit from the age of internet is to embrace its realities.

I'm also curious why this didn't work when Germany tried to do it but it works when Australia does...

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Facebook is not the open web. Facebook is a walled garden.

That's totally true. What I was trying to say was that Facebook's interests became aligned with the open web's interests and their "triumph" (i.e. stopping this law) would've also benefitted the open web.

The issue is considered to be an attack on open web, because for the first time there will be a national law forcing someone to pay for posting a link. The ability to freely post links is the basis of open web.

The difference is the value of the link. As someone who does seo, a link certainly can be ascribed a price.

Facebook still isn’t even close or near being part of the open web. It’s a convenience aggregator if anything, and that’s where the difference lies. And Facebook benefits freely from something it did not produce.

Should Hacker News have to pay money to link to SMH? Answering "Yes" is an attack on the fundamentals of the internet.

> And Facebook benefits freely from something it did not produce.

Arguably the news publications get at least as much value out of news links being shared on Facebook as Facebook gets, if not more.

Look I get it - we all hate Facebook. Facebook and Google and Amazon should face more regulation, but this is not it. Lets actually aknowledge that the government is forcing websites to pay for linking to a site. Links that, in Facebook's case, the publishers voluntarily submit and post!

Good point you’re making. There seems to be a symbiotic relationship really. News producers do get the short end of the stick though when it comes down to it.

I also think this particular government intervention is not helpful. But something akin to a shared revenue system might be an option?

Most articles are paywalled so the publishers get subscription and ad money.

>Should Hacker News have to pay money to link to SMH?

Why ask this? Nobody's asking them to and nobody will.

News sites are certainly welcome to tell Google not to index their sites and I'm sure Facebook would be happy to set up a similar system. The fact they don't shows that they know they receive value from these links.

If you have mates in government it's easy to setup such money grab. I wonder what they are going to do next. For example coffee makers will demand a share of ones salary? (After drinking coffee you are more productive and make more money, it's only right to share with coffee producers % of your earnings, right? Then you will say you'll stop buying coffee and government will call you being anti Australian and will force you to drink coffee. It is that bad.

The law is forcing two walled gardens to pay - because they are walled gardens. That's exactly the opposite.

If they never reached a deal users would seek news not on Facebook or google but elsewhere - perhaps on the open web.

no they are forcing all websites to pay. There's just a delay between the 2 they've targeted currently and the millions yet to be targeted.

> forcing two walled gardens to pay - because they are walled gardens

How is Google search a walled garden? You search, see a link to a news story, click on it, leave Google.

(Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

Because you increasingly don't leave Google:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/202...

https://sparktoro.com/blog/less-than-half-of-google-searches...

When users stay on the Google and Facebook platforms then news media companies are for practical purposes forced to have a presence on both, but that also means Google and Facebook will capture most of the advertising revenue and the news media companies producing the actual content will see less. Hence the regulation.

Google has already done deals with various news media companies in Australia. Facebook is in the process of doing the same. The Australian government got what they wanted.

Every website on the open web is a walled garden. Attacking Facebook for doing something every other website does is an attack on the open web.

Your argument is tantamount to saying the US isn't a free country because you have to take your shoes off when you visit your friend's house. And then saying your friend should be required to pay you for taking your shoes off.

> Australia needs to step out of their illusion and stop shoveling snow up an avalanche. The only way to benefit from the age of internet is to embrace its realities.

Unfortunately you're 'shovelling snow up an avalanche' (what a polite way of putting it) if you expect that Australian governments will change any time soon.

Both major Australian parties are far too captured by corporate interests to do anything so radical.

The current Liberal[1] government trashed our attempt at doing a nation-wide FTTH rollout and cancelled our attempt at a carbon-tax/emissions-trading scheme.

Labour are uninterested in going down that path again because they lost last time, in significant part to the attacks from Murdoch and Packer owned news organisations.

Embracing the internet, clean energy or other things risks upsetting major empires, which those empire-owners are decidedly against.

[1] For the non-Australians: The Australian Liberal Party is a center-right/conservative party. Think sort-of like the US Republicans prior to the Tea Party/Trump. The Australian Labour Party is more center-left/progressive party.

> Both major Australian parties are far too captured by corporate interests [...]

Someone said "as if Rupert Murdoch himself wrote this law", which I think is quite apt.

What is worrying is that the bodies that are supposed to protect citizens from such corrupt relationships do nothing.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recommended that something be done in relation to the concentration of digital market power, and the impacts to Australia's regulatory regime and economy:

"The 2019 University of Canberra Digital News Report found that that 33 per cent of Australian consumers report accessing news through social media, with 25 per cent using search engines to search for news brands and 20 per cent using search engines to search for particular news stories.

Google is a critical source of internet traffic (and therefore audiences) for news media businesses. A news media business risks losing a significant source of revenue if it prevents Google from providing links to its websites in search results. While Facebook contributes a significantly lower proportion of traffic to news media businesses, it remains a vital distribution channel for a number of media businesses, particularly those seeking to target a particular demographic group.

The content produced by news media businesses is also important to digital platforms. For example, between 8 and 14 per cent of Google search results trigger a “Top Stories” result, which typically includes reports from news media websites including niche publications or blogs.

While the digital platforms clearly value the news media content that they are able to display to their users, Google and Facebook each appear to be more important to the major news media businesses than any one news media business is to Google or Facebook. As set out above, this provides each of Google and Facebook with substantial bargaining power in relation to many news media businesses.

The reliance by news media businesses on traffic from Google and, to a lesser extent, on traffic from Facebook also means the digital platforms and their business models have a significant effect on news media businesses. Particular concerns raised during the course of the Inquiry include: * the lack of warning provided by digital platforms to news media businesses of changes to key algorithms relating to the display of news content or news referral links * the implementation of policies and formats that may have a significant and adverse impact on the ability of news media businesses to monetise their content and/or to build or sustain a brand and therefore an audience * the impact of such policies on the incentives for news and journalistic content creation, particularly where significant effort is expended to research and produce original content.

A key concern relates to Google’s use of news media businesses’ content in snippets, the short summaries or extracts of text that accompany links to a news story and are displayed when a consumer searches for a news story. A similar concern exists in relation to the posts of news stories that appear in a user’s Facebook News Feed.

The ACCC recognises that news media businesses, digital platforms, and importantly, consumers benefit from the reproduction of news content in snippets.

Media businesses benefit because a snippet provides context and an indication to the user of the value of that content, increasing the likelihood of consumers clicking through than if no snippet were provided (although this may depend on the length of the snippet). Consumers value snippets for a related reason, as the context enables them to make an informed choice of which article to click on. While Google does not generally sell advertising opportunities next to search queries that are considered by Google as having a ‘news intent’, Google benefits because the inclusion of news stories and snippets in search results increases the attractiveness of the Google search engine.

This in turn increases the likelihood that consumers will use the search engine for other queries, which can be directly monetised. Facebook benefits because news stories appearing on a user’s news feed retain the user’s attention, enabling more advertisements to be displayed. However, the inability of news media businesses to individually negotiate terms over the use of their content by digital platforms is likely indicative of the imbalance in bargaining power. Individual news media businesses require Google and Facebook referrals more than each platform requires an individual media business’s content."

The ACCC recommended:

"Given the imbalance in the relationships between the leading digital platforms and Australian news media businesses, the ACCC recommends that designated digital platforms should each separately be required to provide a code of conduct to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) to govern their commercial relationships with news media businesses. The ACMA would be responsible for designating which digital platforms should be required to implement a code. The development of each code should be informed by a consultation process with news media businesses and contain a strong enforcement mechanism. The ACMA would closely consult with the ACCC in performing its role under this recommendation.

Breaches of the code would be dealt with by the ACMA, which should be vested with appropriate investigative and information gathering powers and the capacity to impose sufficiently large sanctions for breaches to act as an effective deterrent.

The ACCC considers that if a digital platform is unable to submit an acceptable code to the ACMA within nine months of designation, the ACMA should create a mandatory standard to apply to the designated digital platform"

As I understand it, none of the tech giants played ball, so the Government drafted legislation to force the issue.

From https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Digital%20platforms%20i...

> Though they also went back on that, which is just disappointing to me.

This is actually a pattern for Facebook. Something happens, they have a good point in their favor, then instead of explaining it they just completely ignore the best arguments in their favour and just grants the point. It is incredibly infuriating.

Can someone explain to me why I uncritically need to accept the status quo of the 'open web', when it to me seems to be one of the primary reasons for shifting revenue from users and publishers to aggregators and platforms?

What exactly is wrong with the notion of having technology companies pay for links? The links and content are a form of intellectual property that is collectively produced by users and firms in a nation, and a law like the one passed in Australia effectively just functions as a form of collective bargaining over that information with Google or Facebook.

Why do we need to accept the logic that the most powerful and profitable technology companies in the world get to utilise our data for free?

It's nothing wrong with having to pay for links - its a commodity after all. The problem is that you are being forced to host those links and pay for existence. If government forces private entity to host certain information that is the other side of censorship coin. It's just wrong and reeks of China way of doing things.

Links are what make the web! When you're talking paid links, you're talking about breaking the foundations of the net and limiting the free flow of information. It's that simple.

Content you see will be limited to whatever companies have made agreements with each other. Organic search would just be broken.

As paid links are in complete opposition to the way the net works, government intervention is required to dictate the rules of information. Politicians will decide what we see, what services will be given benefits and who misses out.

Without paid links, neither Google nor Facebook would exist. A Google ad is a paid link. The only difference in this case is that Google is the one getting paid. Ditto for Facebook. Both have become much more agressive in recent years in making sure that any clicks off their platforms are being paid for. Organic search no longer really exists for any search that can be monetised by Google, especially on mobile and some Governments are waking up to this.

There is a difference between advertisement and mandated government legislation that forces businesses to pay for links. Google still uses organic search, it simply places clearly marked ads in obvious places. If they embedded search results with hidden ads, that would be another story,

Google is a trillion dollar company because people pay to be linked to. The giveaway is that the Drudge Report has been around since the mid 90's but no news companies have ever complained about it because they benefit from the traffic that it drives. The reason they go after Google and Facebook is because they have a lot of money to grab, whereas the Drudge Report is tiny compared to the media outlets that it links to.

> What exactly is wrong with the notion of having technology companies pay for links? The links and content are a form of intellectual property that is collectively produced by users and firms in a nation, and a law like the one passed in Australia effectively just functions as a form of collective bargaining over that information with Google or Facebook.

A link is how the web has decided to say "go here if you want to learn more". It doesn't make any sense to me to make people pay to tell you where you can go find out more about something. It becomes a tax on the transfer of knowledge, which is the worst tax idea I have ever heard in my life.

It also creates perverse incentives. If Google and Facebook have to pay to show you the news, then their obvious incentive is to either not show you news, or make you uninterested in the news. Do you really want a world where Google and Facebook are motivated to convince everyone that the news is a lie, or that it's not interesting, or that the best sources of news are tiny conspiracy theory outlets that are too small to actually have to pay for news?

Also consider that most people use the news as part of their decision on how they vote. Having "the most powerful and profitable technology companies" in the world motivated to mess around with something that directly feeds into the voting process sounds like something that will inevitably lead to a crisis. They helped create the Capital invasion on accident. I shudder to think what will happen when they really start tinkering with the news.

> Why do we need to accept the logic that the most powerful and profitable technology companies in the world get to utilise our data for free?

Because knowledge should always be free. No one should ever be too poor to learn. I accept that sometimes other people will do things I don't love with that knowledge.

> Why do we need to accept the logic that the most powerful and profitable technology companies in the world get to utilise our data for free?

Also, I can see at least 3 other potential solutions in that sentence that don't involve changing the word "free".

"powerful" - use some of your anti-monopoly laws then. They're meant to break up companies that become too powerful.

"profitable" - cool, tax them then. That seems to be the route France is going, and closing down the loopholes where they shift money around.

"world" - if they're that bad, then ban them in your country. I'd rather live in a world without the conveniences of Google than a world where someone can be too poor to know what's going on in the world.

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