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An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

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Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#111

Post by hnick »

ryan-allen wrote: post #107
hnick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the ABC/SBS will not benefit from payments if this goes through. Nor will independents. Only the largest for-profit companies will. The gap ever widens. I guess the level of science and technological literacy in our government here proves we are truly a representative democracy.

Would that mean that ABC/SBS news would feature on FB/Google and the large companies would not?

I don't think that would be legal.

"Digital platforms must participate in the code if the Treasurer makes a determination specifying that the code would apply to them. The Government has announced that the code would initially apply only to Facebook and Google."

This means they can't pick and choose. They are either a news platform or not. That's why FB is warning us they'd get out of the news game entirely.

https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/draft-...

Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#112

Post by ocdtrekkie »

joshuamorton wrote: post #99
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're stripping your information to hand out to users via their scraping mechanics, absolutely. That's what news companies, and plenty of other sites, have been subject to for years: "Google would like to scrape your content and serve it on their own site. Agree or delist yourself from search." https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynet... Google's monopoly position gives them complete negotiat…

Right but we're talking about news, where that isn't the case. I open Google news and I see a list of headlines. I click one one and go to the full article. I mean, if you're arguing that news provides zero value beyond a headline, that's certainly an indictment, but not of Google and facebook. Extending this, any aggregator would need to pay to link to things. Hackernews included. It's the link-tax all over again.

Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.)

Is Google News ripping off the monetizeable property of every news site's homepage for zero cost? Yes. Sure, it may not present the full text of every article, but you've stolen the front page of every newspaper, at minimum.

It is the link-tax "all over again"... because it's still what needs to happen. (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.) The problem is Google is so immense, and so powerful, it is able to obliterate any one nation's attempts to do this.

We actually need a unified front of governments stating that Google and Facebook need to pay for the content they scrape, or go out of business. And it probably won't be successful until a large enough contingent of governments can do it at once. (This is why the EU as a whole has generally been successful whereas attempts at regulation from France or Spain independently have failed.)

Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#113

Post by themacguffinman »

jakecopp wrote: post #49
pawnednow wrote: post #4

Australian government and more specifically Rod sims, the chair of ACCC should get some counselling. Really good counselling. They clearly don't understand how publishing works and have a biased understanding of who is benefitting from this relationship. However, the entire Australian media has been nothing but puppets controlled by murdoch. The one true less biased source is ABC which has been muddied by constant fe…

I encourage everyone to have a read of the actual draft legislation along with hearing Facebook's reaction to new regulations being imposed on them. The actual legislation sounds well thought out to me: https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... The FAQs: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/DPB%20-%20Draft%20news%... See also the ACCC response to Google's open letter, which contained misinformat…

Stratechery quotes and rebuts the official sources you linked. It's hard for me to imagine a more poorly thought out legislation. [1]

It completely unfairly favor news orgs over the rest of the web, it gives publishers extensive control of user discussion about content that they own which is an affront to the principle of free speech, the terms of the forced binding arbitration are incredibly vague and, well, arbitrary.

The ACCC response is also nonsense.

> 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's letter didn't mention anything about charging Australians for the user of its free services at all. If you actually read the open letter [2], it doesn't even contain the words "charge" or "price" or "cost" or "fee" or imply anything about charging users.

> Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so.

Google never said it had to share "additional user data", whatever that means. It is quite clear in claiming that "Under this law, Google has to tell news media businesses “how they can gain access” to data about your use of our products. There’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses." [2] which is absolutely true.

The ACCC is responding to fictitious claims. It's the ACCC response that contained misinformation, not Google's open letter.

[1] https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-bargainin...

[2] https://about.google/intl/ALL_au/google-in-australia/an-open...

Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#114

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

Barrin92 wrote: post #109
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have Facebook or Google compelled you to use their services? If not, then there is no parallel. It is not about "feeling bad" for companies or not. It's about whether the policy is sound.

I have certainly been compelled to use both, Facebook for vital student groups during my time in university (it's also in many developing countries the only digital place to run a business), and Google for similar reasons, including a work account. There's DDG now for search I suppose but Google used to be the only player in town. Technically if I had to avoid Google I couldn't use Uber because it depends on Google m…

Facebook for vital student groups during my time in university

I.e. your colleagues compelled you to use Facebook.

(it's also in many developing countries the only digital place to run a business),

I doubt very much there is any such country, but even if so, it's not a compulsion.

and Google for similar reasons, including a work account

Your workplace compelled you to use Google.

There's DDG now for search I suppose

Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu . . .

but Google used to be the only player in town.

There was never any such time.

Technically if I had to avoid Google I couldn't use Uber because it depends on Google maps

It is still your choice to use Uber or not. You could use Lyft, hail a cab, drive yourself, walk, ride a bike . . .

Google Cloud

I don't see this as you using Google, but rather you using someone who uses Google. This just isn't something you have any reasonable expectation of control over. There is nothing wrong with Google providing a service that some businesses choose to use, who you happen to also do business with.

Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#115

Post by shakna »

jakecopp wrote: post #49
pawnednow wrote: post #4

Australian government and more specifically Rod sims, the chair of ACCC should get some counselling. Really good counselling. They clearly don't understand how publishing works and have a biased understanding of who is benefitting from this relationship. However, the entire Australian media has been nothing but puppets controlled by murdoch. The one true less biased source is ABC which has been muddied by constant fe…

I encourage everyone to have a read of the actual draft legislation along with hearing Facebook's reaction to new regulations being imposed on them. The actual legislation sounds well thought out to me: https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... The FAQs: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/DPB%20-%20Draft%20news%... See also the ACCC response to Google's open letter, which contained misinformat…

This nice and vague part of the legislation sounds like an insurmountable hurdle to me:

> a) a list and explanation of the data that the digital platform service collects (whether or not it shares the data with the registered news business) about the registered news business’ users through their engagement with covered news content made available by the digital platform service;

> c) a list and explanatio nof the data that the digital platform service currently has a practice of making available to registered news businesses;

> e) information about how the registered news business corporation can gain access to the data mentioned in paragraphs (a)and (c).

Google/Facebook may not even have the architecture to supply all that information to begin with. And if they did, this is beyond just analytics. It seems to be requiring the companies hand over what allows them to be competitive at all.

Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#116

Post by joshuamorton »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #112
joshuamorton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but we're talking about news, where that isn't the case. I open Google news and I see a list of headlines. I click one one and go to the full article. I mean, if you're arguing that news provides zero value beyond a headline, that's certainly an indictment, but not of Google and facebook. Extending this, any aggregator would need to pay to link to things. Hackernews included. It's the link-tax all over again.

Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.) Is Google News ripping off the monetizeable property of every news site's homepage for zero cost? Yes. Sure, it may not…

> Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.)

For me the answer is, either I get a headline that I don't care about, or I read at least some of the article.

> (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.)

It's absolutely a link tax and not a scraping tax. A scraping tax would apply to anyone scraping the site. But the link tax proposals don't apply to people scraping the site, they only apply to sites linking. Why? Because if I go and scrape CNN.com, they just block me. But if Google does it, they don't want to block the scraping, because the net value of the scraping is nonzero, but they want to be paid anyway.

You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense.

And "scraping" doesn't even apply at all to Facebook's case, where if I post a link to CNN on facebook, now Facebook owes CNN money. WHAT?!? It's literally a cost on links. It's antithetical to the internet. But you're right, it's not a link tax. It's more akin to link-licensing. Which should sound even scarier.

Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#117

Post by stephen_g »

catmanjan wrote: post #68
stephen_g wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the main driving force is lobbying from an American multinational that pays no tax in Australia but controls 70% of our news (News Corp), and ABC, SBS and small independent news sources are specifically excluded... No, they're not on the right track. I mean, that's even before you consider that there isn't really any logical consistency to the claims that Google and Facebook are making huge profits directly from…

Were it not for the parens, your first paragraph could have been talking about any of the players Why is it a false assumption? The users are the product, and the user want news

Tax evasion is a separate matter - I agree we do need to work on that, not just for Google and Facebook but all multinationals (resource companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Woodside etc. leave Google in the dust in that respect).

With the assumption - at the moment, these publishers the ability to not be indexed using robots.txt, sitemap.xml etc.. If Google and Facebook were making huge profits directly from Australian news content, they could pretty easily organise to all boycott them. If the assumption behind this law was true, then that would be extremely effective because of the money apparently at stake. Or if the news sources just felt they were being unfairly used, they could just cut them off on principal. But they haven't done either. Why not?

Secondly, Facebook couldn't credibly come out with a threat like this. Why would they cut off what News Corp and Nine tell us is apparently a huge revenue stream? But as we know, they're not really making huge profits directly from news, and not even much indirectly, so Facebook can threaten this.

Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#118

Post by stephen_g »

johnnyYen wrote: post #97
jakecopp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage everyone to have a read of the actual draft legislation along with hearing Facebook's reaction to new regulations being imposed on them. The actual legislation sounds well thought out to me: https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... The FAQs: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/DPB%20-%20Draft%20news%... See also the ACCC response to Google's open letter, which contained misinformat…

The ACCC response if disingenuous. It fails to mention the requirement that Google and FB must give news entities 28 days of any changes to their ranking algorithm. I mean WTF. It's the most brain dead piece of legislation you could imagine.

I think it actually misrepresents Google's statements too - the ACCC response makes it sound like Google are saying they would be required to charge for their services, but Google actually said that the code might make it no longer worthwhile for them to provide their services for free in Australia.

It would have been fair to say that part of Google's statement is probably an exaggeration, but the ACCC instead muddies the waters by rebutting something Google didn't actually say...

Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia

#119

Post by stephen_g »

chrismsimpson wrote: post #82
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is not taking anyones content. News companies willingly submit their content to facebook and now demand that facebook should pay for the stuff they submitted. So facebook is taking the logical step by stopping them from submitting the content. I can't walk up to someone and hand them the keys to my car and then demand that they now owe me the value of the car.

This is exactly what Facebook are doing (as evidenced by Facebook stating they'll block this feature for Australian users if the proposed law goes ahead). A third party generates the content then Facebook's user base shares it within their network. Any advertising revenue generated in the meantime is pocketed solely by Facebook. My point still stands. The state of online advertising as of 2020 is such that there are…

The point is though that Google and Facebook don't put ads on news content. The user still has to go to the news site to actually read the news article, and the news site can put their ads on that or have a paywall. Google and Facebook only have ads on pages that might also link to news sources. (This bill is specifically about Google search results and Facebook's news feed - not Google/Facebook's ad sales businesses). So it's not, for example, like Spotify where the music is played from Spotify's servers and the user stays in the Spotify app/site.

Note also that this bill specifically exempts ABC and SBS, as well as most independent news sources from being able to get any benefit.

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