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Response to Google open letter

accc.gov.au

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Re: Response to Google open letter

#191

Post by esrauch »

specialist wrote: post #167

For the health of society, all recommender algorithms have to be daylighted. For a start. Yes, the gamification will be terrible. So what? Is maximal advertising revenue for monopolies societally important? Every other efficient open market is heavily regulated. Accountability, transparency, fair play, information symmetry, prohibit self-dealing & conflicts of interest, tort, etc. Right now we can't even imagine appl…

> Yes, the gamification will be terrible. So what? Is maximal advertising revenue for monopolies societally important?

I don't really see how gamification being terrible will only cause ad revenue to drop. Surely it will also make the results worse and less relevant to you?

As in, if SEO spam managed to take over the top results of major queries, it doesn't just drop ad revenue but actually makes Search suck, right?

Re: Response to Google open letter

#192

Post by boloust »

jwlake wrote: post #184
infinkaramazov wrote: post #82

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…

Is the goal here to just have Google shutdown Google News in Australia? Seems like that's the only logical result.

This affects Google search as well.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#193

Post by zentiggr »

lolinder wrote: post #174
rstuart4133 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow everyone misses this little gem in the draft bill [0]: > 52S.(1).(a) ensure that the registered news business corporation is provided with flexible content moderation tools that allow the registered news business corporation to remove or filter comments on the registered news business covered news content that: > . . (i) are made using the digital platform service;and > . . (ii) are made on a part of the digi…

Someone brought that up the last time this came up on HN. In the explanatory materials, they clarified that (ii) is indeed meant to restrict this to posts on their own Facebook page: > 1.89 In the case of a social media service such as Facebook, this rule deals with the situation where the news business has posted its covered news content on the news business’ own social media page. Comments on the news business’ art…

That still carves them out a protected niche in what otherwise was an independent service, that in no other case provides that level of autonomy.

If I were in FAANG's place, I'd tell the AU government to get stuffed by turning every response page into a "Tell your government that this bill is ridiculous and we'll be back when it's repealed. So long and thanks for all the fish."

Re: Response to Google open letter

#194

Post by [deleted] »

stephen_g wrote: post #116
nocturnial wrote: post #53

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…

[deleted]

Re: Response to Google open letter

#195

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

throwaway45349 wrote: post #186
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The actual org is small, but it's caused thousands to pull their license fee, which is no small sum of money for the Beeb. It's not like they're rolling in profit.

There are around 65 million UK residents. Even if thousands pull their license fee it's not gonna move the needle that much. And if it did move the needle, I suspect the government would address the issue by enforcing the license fee more aggressively, or by doing the sensible thing and funding the BBC via the general fund.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#196

Post by romanovcode »

dannyr wrote: post #45
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #20

Google is totally in the wrong here, and ACCC is doing its usual good work of protecting the Aussie consumer. It's interesting to watch Google try to squirm out of this though - they probably see it for the precedent it is. Google relies heavily on third-party content that they don't pay for in search results. If this law forces them to negotiate payment for that practice then I'm all for it.

I mean it's a search engine so it should rely heavily on third-party content in its search results. Google links to these news sites in search results and drives traffic to them. If Google grabs significant parts of news articles that users don't need to visit the sites, then Google should pay them. But Google is not doing that.

> But Google is not doing that.

Google is doing that. Google is doing exactly that with AMP. Or with "in-page" results e.g. recent RapGenius lyrics scandal.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#197

Post by NamTaf »

mattoxic wrote: post #113
jacquesm wrote: post #98

When Murdoch and Google duke it out using the Australian people as their human shield I find nothing to be happy about and plenty to be sad about. Both parties here are disingenuous about their stated positions, both are rather cynical in how the perform their negotiations. In the end the public, no matter what, will end up the loser because neither of these parties has their best interest at heart. Murdoch just want…

The Australian consumer has already lost. This whole country is an exercise in trussing up the public and making sure they pay the very most for the very least. I've long given up on Australian journalism - at least in the main stream. Obviously the Murdoch papers are garbage, but the Age and SMH are almost (and becoming) as appalling. The ABC and SBS have been cowered to the extent that they jump at their own shadow…

You and the parent post both sum up my feelings better than I can. We Aussies are being used as meat in the grinder between two companies that are each pretty awful in their own ways. I struggle to feel bad for either of them, really.

Probably the most depressing of all of this is how the ACCC - what has always been a very closely treasured and respected independent government body - has been used here as a pawn by the government-media oligarchy. It really soils all the really good work they've done to give us very robust and fair consumer laws and protections we enjoy. They've been used as the shitkickers for what is obviously a Murdoch-driven government play, where (not unlike the Five Eyes playbook) he hopes to ram through some draconian bullshit here as a proving ground, to which he can later point in the UK and US for similar laws there.

One of the best decisions I ever made was adding Newscorp's bullshit to my ad blocker so accidentally clicking URLs to it fails to load. One of the other best was disconecting myself from Google as much as I have.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#198

Post by jchook »

lolinder wrote: post #174
rstuart4133 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow everyone misses this little gem in the draft bill [0]: > 52S.(1).(a) ensure that the registered news business corporation is provided with flexible content moderation tools that allow the registered news business corporation to remove or filter comments on the registered news business covered news content that: > . . (i) are made using the digital platform service;and > . . (ii) are made on a part of the digi…

Someone brought that up the last time this came up on HN. In the explanatory materials, they clarified that (ii) is indeed meant to restrict this to posts on their own Facebook page: > 1.89 In the case of a social media service such as Facebook, this rule deals with the situation where the news business has posted its covered news content on the news business’ own social media page. Comments on the news business’ art…

Wow legislating “your” Facebook page as though it’s property sounds like a slippery slope.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#199

Post by clouddrover »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #149
clouddrover wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about funding journalism. What's Mike Cannon-Brooke's solution for funding journalism?

Could do like the UK does with the BBC and fund it via ordinary taxes. It seems like a relatively simple solution.

The ABC is government funded: https://www.abc.net.au/

And SBS is partially government funded: https://www.sbs.com.au

But it's not enough to have just two news organisations.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#200

Post by JoshTriplett »

harryf wrote: post #146
vermilingua wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand... why not? You must be unfamiliar with NewsCorp. This is the cesspool that spawned Fox News, Sky News, and The Sun. That hacked the phones of journalists, celebrities, and royalty just to get a scoop. That routinely and as a core function of business interferes in democratic process. That effectively pioneered fake news, and has singlehandedly destroyed the credibility of the entire media industr…

I'm well aware of NewsCorp, having grown up in the UK and seen them basically decide every election since perhaps Thatcher. Despite that, this particular point in the draft legislation in an interesting idea, at least to discuss. "Why Not?" was short for "Why not require Google and Facebook to inform affected businesses when they're making changes to their ranking algorithms?" ... that's a discussion that can be had…

Because the ranking algorithms are likely changed regularly, in opaque ways. Because many of the changes will be things like "reran the training algorithm on a new data set". Because it's a foot in the door to making them justify such changes. Because the purpose of a good search algorithm is to serve the people searching and not the people writing sites. Because it's an inherently adversarial process between search engines and bad "SEO". Because no good can possibly come from sites having more insight into how to affect their ranking, other than "make content people want". And those are just the reasons off the top of my head.
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