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Google: Open Letter to Australians

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Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#111

Post by johnnyYen »

stirlo wrote: post #52
reaperducer wrote: post #43

To all the people (hopefully Australians) who paint this as the government propping up legacy media: Isn't it better to have control of your media in local, Australian-owned and regulated megacorps, rather than some faceless megacorp in another country?

^ This. I'm hearing heaps of people crying "Murdock" and "Newscorp" but how about local jobs and ownership vs a global conglomerate that doesn't give 2 f#%ks about our tiny 25 million population and takes $4.8 billion offshore while paying only $100 million tax[1]. The Australian Associate Press recently went bankrupt and needed a bailout from philanthropists[2]. As much as you dislike one particular section of old m…

Ironic you should reference the ABC when the legislation specifically excludes the ABC from any benefit other "registered news organisations" may enjoy.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#112

Post by askvictor »

Arbalest wrote: post #107
stirlo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ This. I'm hearing heaps of people crying "Murdock" and "Newscorp" but how about local jobs and ownership vs a global conglomerate that doesn't give 2 f#%ks about our tiny 25 million population and takes $4.8 billion offshore while paying only $100 million tax[1]. The Australian Associate Press recently went bankrupt and needed a bailout from philanthropists[2]. As much as you dislike one particular section of old m…

Newscorp isn't Australian though, it was just started by one.

(a former Australian, who gave up his citizenship when it suited him better to be a US citizen)

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#114

Post by Semaphor »

mgraczyk wrote: post #18
ImaCake wrote: post #6

Link to the draft law is below [0]. Quoted from that page: >The code also includes a set of ‘minimum standards’ for: >providing advance notice of changes to algorithmic ranking and presentation of news; appropriately recognising original news content; and >providing information about how and when Google and Facebook make available user data collected through users’ interactions with news content. This sounds great to…

As somebody who works on ranking and personalization products, I can confidently assure you that you would not prefer a less personalized experience. You don't have to take my word for it though, you can opt-out of personalization on Google here: https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols Try it for a month and see if you prefer it.

> Try it for a month and see if you prefer it.

Far longer than a month. It’s a vastly superior experience.

99% of personalization is utter shit. Having hard filters ("never these domains" on search engines, "don’t try and get me to rewatch things" or "No comedy" on Netflix) would top shitty personalization (aka. hey, I’m dumb, but please watch this) every time.

edit: For me. I realize that the majority of people seem to want tech to guess/tell them what they actually wanted.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#115

Post by BLKNSLVR »

lancewiggs wrote: post #104

I am delighted at whatever law is driving that letter and want to lobby to introduce the same law here in NZ.

Be careful what you wish for. This law is Australian government protectionism for the already-corrupt and thankfully dying status quo: the lumbering dinosaur that is News Corp.

IMHO, what makes it obviously corrupt is that News Corp pays little to no tax and is owned offshore, and yet the Australian government protects it as if it's local (whilst at the same time cutting funding from the local news organisation the ABC).

There's most definitely a void opening up for quality news and media, which is being filled by social media opinion pieces (which, to be fair, is no different from what I'm writing here) which are lacking in any of the quality, research or integrity that news reporting should have.

Having said all that, history shows that what news reporting "should have" (quality, research, integrity, fact-checking etc.) has been bent in various directions since the very inception of news media. So what we're getting is just a changing of the guard as opposed to anything necessarily worse than before. However, this law the Australian government is attempting to push is a delaying tactic against the changing of the guard.

It's protecting something that never really existed.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#116

Post by 0xy »

DoctorNick wrote: post #98
gitgud wrote: post #91

I initially thought this was going to be about the new [1] anti-encryption law's in Australia... another concerning matter of government intervention... [1] https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryptio...

nope, Google doesn't give a shit about that. They just hate having to pay for displaying content from news media.

Why would anyone be thrilled about having to funnel cash to News Corp? The news business is dead, and good riddance because it descended into yellow journalism and clickbait garbage.

Check the News.com.au homepage and observe it looks like a worse Daily Mail.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#118

Post by cyphar »

zmmmmm wrote: post #97
ImaCake wrote: post #6

Link to the draft law is below [0]. Quoted from that page: >The code also includes a set of ‘minimum standards’ for: >providing advance notice of changes to algorithmic ranking and presentation of news; appropriately recognising original news content; and >providing information about how and when Google and Facebook make available user data collected through users’ interactions with news content. This sounds great to…

> This sounds great to me Keep in mind, this is not motivated by your interests and has nothing in it that is there to help them. It's based on an a priori assumption that old media is good for consumers interests and all of the benefits it provides are directed to a newly invented category of "registered news businesses" which will have special rules. So no, you're not going to find out changes to algorithmic rankin…

Look, I'm not going to deny that this is obviously motivated by News Corp and Fairfax lobbyists.

However, the ACCC is legitimately one of the really brilliant government agencies here in Australia -- our consumer protection laws are actually designed around protecting consumers interests and I would argue is firmly on the list of positives when taking stock of the pros and cons of living here.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#119

Post by discordance »

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1].

I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch institutions illegally wiretapped celebrities, politicians, royal family members and relatives of dead British soldiers [2]?

0: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/06/peter...

1: https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#120

Post by BLKNSLVR »

askvictor wrote: post #112
Arbalest wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newscorp isn't Australian though, it was just started by one.

(a former Australian, who gave up his citizenship when it suited him better to be a US citizen)

Ironically, for tax reasons.

And yet our pollies are, inexplicably (not really), still in his pocket.

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