181–190 of 330 posts
They really should stop saying "Australian news media" when they are referring to commercial entities only. The fact that the public ABC and SBS media are not allowed to be compensated says everything about the intent and motivation of this policy.
Also explains the response... very News Corp'ish.
I'm Australian, and I created an account just to comment on this issue. Imagine Google News or the Facebook news feed were normal news websites. If you count their traffic as the amount of times people went to those websites just to read news, their raw traffic would dwarf any other news website in Australia by an order of magnitude. Journalistic websites have editorial standards, and at least some relationship and c…
For Google at least they have the option to opt-out. They can add a robots.txt file to prevent indexing. It isn't clear to me why special legislation is required to give the media companies bargaining power. They already have the power to say no if they don't think the arrangement is fair. (For facebook it is less clear, because you can't really force people to stop sharing your links)
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Isn't that a basic tactic in political communications: when asked a question provide the answer you want to give not the answer to the question you were asked?
Similar to "strawman" in online forums, right
I'm Australian, and I created an account just to comment on this issue. Imagine Google News or the Facebook news feed were normal news websites. If you count their traffic as the amount of times people went to those websites just to read news, their raw traffic would dwarf any other news website in Australia by an order of magnitude. Journalistic websites have editorial standards, and at least some relationship and c…
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> I don't think Google actually made either of these claims in their letter. Agreed. And because this ACCC response doesn't link to the letter, I think these rebuttals to non-existent claims are deceptively misleading
The google letter makes non-existent claims that aren't part of the proposed law. Like that youtube and google will somehow magically offer worse results. They can offer the exact same results they do now - they might just have to pay for it. "If we had to pay more for news content, we would probably just cut it out because we don't want to pay - thus leading to worse results" doesn't quite have the same ring, does i…
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Except for the Defund the BBC movement that's going on right now... I'm skeptical any government funded broadcaster is sustainable when it just turns into a propaganda outlet for the establishment.
I'm not super familiar with UK politics but it looks like this movement raised something like 45k british pounds on gofundme? Seems pretty fringe. I guess the BBC will remain funded.
Let's put aside whether Google had justified concerns about this legalislation. What's more appriopriate? Having a company incite the people in a foreign country to change laws or do it using diplomacy using experts in your state departement? We are only talking about allied countries to the US because google doesn't do this with, for example, china, russia, north korea, etc... I'm NOT advocating they should do this…
Problem is, once you get to a certain size, it's almost impossible to just "stay out of the politics" - because other companies won't stay out of it. The whole reason this bill exists is because another American multinational company that pays no tax in Australia and owns 70% of the readership of Australian news media is very effective in its politics. And they didn't do it by telling the public to ask for it - they…
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> Because I'd be a little surprised if you'd be saying that given the quality of our mainstream "news" sources So your solution is to make them even worse by letting Google bleed them dry? What percentage of Australian's news reading goes through Google? What percentage of Australia's advertising spend does Google command?
Sure. Let them die - that ship has sailed. News Ltd and Nine have destroyed most of the quality journalism on their platforms already, and I honestly don't think anything this bill proposes will make it better. I don't have all the answers, but the best way I think I can support quality journalism is to subscribe to some independent news sites now (Michael West, MacroBusiness, Anthony Klan's new site The Klaxon. Migh…
Seems like News Corp helped them both get started. Why shouldn't News Corp continue to fund others as well?
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> In another section the draft legislation requires Facebook / Google to notify the news organisation of changes to their page rank / feed algorithm, and also provide advice on how to mitigate the effects of those changes. Interesting. On the one hand working in software the idea of having communicate changes to an algorithm like this to 3rd parties gives me nightmares, and opens the door to regulation of the algorit…
Lowering rank of a sleazy news organization that was previously gaming the ranking... is exactly what they should do if they are keeping the end user in mind. I buy that AMP is bad and they should share revenue. It is not entirely Google’s fault that their survival requires click-bait articles instead of having original content
> Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so. > Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so. I don't think Google actually made either of these claims in their letter. They didn't mention charging for services at all. They said "the free ser…
Weaselly words or otherwise, there is a big power imbalance here. The ACCC can ultimately make Google do what it wants and is backed by a government on this matter. Google has no control over the ACCC. The ACCC is being irresponsible not dealing with - in precise terms - what Google actually said. Anything less verges on bullying. This isn't a public shouting match between equals.
Not really. Google could just exit Australia. And who you think that would hurt more, Australia or Google?