Google: Open Letter to Australians • Hacker News Board

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#171

Post by chillfox » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:03 AM UTC

altindag wrote: post #155

zmmmmm wrote: post #101

> News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be…

interesting. it seems to me that if Google really wanted to influence Australian public opinion, they have far more sophisticated ways to go about it than this clumsy attempt at PSA outreach slash fear mongering. It's almost as if they need to be seen to be taking some responses to the media payment legislation but they don't really care. That's what's interesting to me. I wonder why they would not care. perhaps beca…

My guess, is that they will comply by either giving the media a copy of their "Quality Raters Guidelines", or just setup an office where the media can send staff to sit at a slow computer and view a billion lines of source code.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#172

Post by golemiprague » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:03 AM UTC

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #164

Google should just de-list News Corp and the other big media companies that dominate the Australian media industry and who often manipulate elections for their own benefit with one sided heavily biased coverage. Give some breathing space to the smaller players.

Dominate or not they represent half of the Australian population more or less. You can't just bring news from the Guardian and expect it to appeal to all Australian. The question is, if you don't want to show News Corp what else will you show in order to give a voice for the Australians on the right side of the political map?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#173

Post by Polylactic_acid » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #127

Australian here. Fuck News Corp, one of the most corrupt entities in Australia that directly collude and interfere with our elections for the benefit of themselves and Big Coal. I hope Google don’t fuck around.

>corrupt entities in Australia

They have also seriously damaged the media in the US and the UK. Its no wonder all 3 countries are having serious issues with news.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#174

Post by sthnblllII » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

ssss11 wrote: post #166

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to parent commenters [0] link, this is the story that got a journalist's home raided by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) because she received leaked information (that turned out to be 100% correct) that the Department for Home Affairs was planning to allow the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to spy on Australian citizens. Directly quoting from the linked article: ASD powers have been a source of co…

How do you draw the conclusion that the Australian people want this behaviour? As far as I can tell none us want this but once elected the politicians fail to action what the people want. Over and over again...

I think his point was that if you’re unwilling to stop something, that is politically equivalent to wanting it.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#175

Post by tirpen » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

mgraczyk wrote: post #82

jjj123 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of examples of where personalization results in a worse experience for users but better metrics for the tech company. Somehow the Instagram ads algorithm has figured out exactly what I’m self conscious about with my own body; all I see are ads for invisible braces, skin cleansers, and hair treatments. I don’t actually want to buy any of these things, and they make me feel bad to look at. A de-personali…

You can click the ... menu, then "hide ad". It will show you fewer similar ads in the future. An unpersonalized IG ad experience would be teenage women's clothing and Netflix branding (assuming you're in the US). You probably don't want that either.

Why wouldn't I want that? It's not like I want to be successfully manipulated by ads, so getting shown irrelevant ads is just a big win in my book.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#176

Post by tim-- » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

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…

The Australian Associated Press is a news wire service, similar to AP or Reuters.

It did not disappear because it went bankrupt. AAP had three owners, Nine, News Corp (~95% ownership between them) and SWM (Seven West Media).

This year, when Fairfax and Nine merged, there was no longer any requirement for AAP to exist in its current form. Fairfax and Nine both supplied roughly 35% of AAP's operating costs. The newly merged organisation could reroute the money spent with AAP (tens of million dollars a year) to their own in-house reporting staff. The benefit here is that the copyright to the content produced is then owned by Nine - not AAP, and the content produced would not be sold to other media organisations as well.

The whole reason for its existence was to reduce the amount of money spent by Nine and News Corp, so they could pool resources.

If it still existed today, the only benefactors would be other media organisations that acquired content from them (eg, Seven, The Guardian and News Corp)

Why should Australia's largest media company subsidy coverage for other companies?

Edit: some words and clarification

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#177

Post by dongvsascript » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:07 AM UTC

chottocharaii wrote: post #146

dongvsascript wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, i'm not getting this. they take revenue, not profit offshore. profit meaning global profit. you want to tax the money they make in your country, without them first paying expenses in other countries? so if i have developers and research in america, and software sales in australia, my australian costs are $0, and all revenue is taxable profit. yeah, that seems fair. double fair for australia.

Look up transfer pricing

it's the method i used to move capital in my small american business when i opened an office in russia. a company in another country is a separate legal entity. you charge market rates, as you would any other company. it has zero to do with my post.

the complaint is profit is taxed instead of revenue. the complaint is not valid.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#178

Post by jojobas » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:07 AM UTC

kyrra wrote: post #145

jojobas wrote: post #113

Pay corporate income tax here and then will talk.

(googler, opinion is my own) My understanding is that Google is locally incorporated in australia, as you can see on this page[0], at least for Ads, likely other businesses. If you select Australia on there you will see Ads payments are made to "Google Australia Pty Limited". [0] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375370?hl=en

Google Australia Pty Ltd acts as an agent for Google Asia Pacific registered in Singapore.

The profits are routed as licensing costs around the world to end up in this or that low tax jurisdiction.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#179

Post by sthnblllII » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:09 AM UTC

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #164

Google should just de-list News Corp and the other big media companies that dominate the Australian media industry and who often manipulate elections for their own benefit with one sided heavily biased coverage. Give some breathing space to the smaller players.

Wouldn't that just be Google manipulating coverage for Google’s benefit?

I don’t think Google should be blessing any publishers with special “news section” status. Let websites compete organically. Any media with finance capital backing is going to be biased in favor of wars and against labor.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#180

Post by foxylad » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 6:10 AM UTC

altindag wrote: post #155

zmmmmm wrote: post #101

> News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be…

interesting. it seems to me that if Google really wanted to influence Australian public opinion, they have far more sophisticated ways to go about it than this clumsy attempt at PSA outreach slash fear mongering. It's almost as if they need to be seen to be taking some responses to the media payment legislation but they don't really care. That's what's interesting to me. I wonder why they would not care. perhaps beca…

Google's entire business depends on being squeaky clean. If they ever got caught doing "sophisticated" opinion influencing, they'd lose half their value overnight as customers switched to alternatives. And then every democratic government would join in with a serious kicking, given their elections are so vulnerable to said influencing.

I think Facebook sails very close to the wind here, but my impression is that Google's management is a lot more professional about protecting their business long term. So I'd be suprised if they tried any dirty tricks.

However, their efforts won't be limited to open letters. There will be some very high-powered lobbying going on, and I bet this letter is mostly to frame that debate to counter the lobbying from Murdoch's empire. All in all, a great time to be an Aussie politician - a lot of very expensive trips, lunches and other inducements coming there way.