As an Australian, I'm actually a little bit surprised that, seemingly, common sense has prevailed over what appeared to be the preference of the politicians.
Because the messages were from a political party, they were exempt from anti-spam rules, and despite the protests from people sick of getting the messages - there was no requirement for any ability to unsubscribe.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/craig-kelly-uap...
Depending on your phone/dialling app, you can already do this.
For me on a Pixel 3a, using the default Google Dialler I go to the Dialler app (where you dial numbers from), tap the three dots, settings, Blocked Numbers and there's a toggle "Unknown - block calls from unidentified callers".
iPhone has something similar, and I think Samsung's dialler also does too.
From the Parent Commenter:
> my phone helpfully lists a lot of spam calls as "Scam Likely" but I've yet to figure out how to make it just send those calls straight to voicemail
Similar to my other reply, you may be able to do this with the right phone/dialling app.
Again, for the Pixel 3a with the default Google Dialler: tap the three dots, settings, Caller ID and Spam, and there are three toggles.
See Calller and Spam ID. This shows if a caller is suspected as spam.
Filter spam calls. This rejects calls from suspected spammers (your carrier's normal rejected call handling then applies - i.e if you normally reject a call and it goes to Voicemail, then this is what will happen)
Verified calls. This allows companies which participate in the Verified Caller program to send the business information/reason for calling to your phone when they ring.
The TL;DR of the case is that a lawyer involved in some criminal gang cases sued Google because the reports by newspapers about him were available in Google search results.
I don't think many Australian politicians would take the side of the lawyer in this case.
Someone else commented that this is a very 'thin' interpretation, and so there may be no implications to the above. Were there to be any implications, however, they would most certainly go against the above 'protection payments' being enforceable.*
*Personal opinion, do not misinterpret as fact, please do your own research to misinterpret in your own, personal way.
Sure, but that's a very different issue to this one.
The wacky "make big tech pay" thing is dumb populism but appears pretty unrelated.
There is no technical understanding of any of this in the minds of the people making these decisions. The distinction between republishing via AMP and linking takes longer than 5 seconds to explain, so will be ignored by everyone involved.
Google & Facebook were being attacked (at the behest of Murdoch) on multiple fronts. This was one of them, the news mess was another.
I think (again, personal opinion, ignore at will) that this is the last remnants of that broohaha being put to rest.
The were converting the links, using AMP for instance, and driving traffic away from the publisher