Without reading the legislation in detail, I have to say that I'm inclined to just take the side of whoever News Corp is upset at.
If you change your mind, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337359
An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
121–130 of 165 posts
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is a monopoly. Facebook is not. If google pushes their weight around they get targeted for anti competitive behavior.
They can avoid such issues by simply leaving the Australian market; a non-participant in a market clearly isn't monopolizing it. It just isn't that much money they would be giving up, and if the government tries to force them to operate at a loss it is no money at all.
They're not going to pull out of Australia. The market share of English speaking countries is more important. And the loss of revenue from Australia is higher than the cost of paying up.
Why do you think they're behaving in the way they are?
If they could drop them they would.
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Austral…
The only thing Facebook risks by banning all news for Australian users is engagement - that is, if the site doesn't instantly become better without the largely grim narratives put out by News Corp and most all modern news stations.
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Instead, we are left with a choice of either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits. Tbh I think FB's comment here is too binary. It seems to me they're implying that news needs to either be free, or they will get charged "unlimited amount". I'm sure other industries have faced a similar issue (e.g. music?) and have…
How exactly are Facebook and Google 'using' news content though? What we're talking about here is a link - a headline, maybe a sentence or two and a thumbnail image... The people pushing this bill are trying to make similar comparisons as you, to things like music, but there's no sense in which Google or Facebook are using news content in the way Spotify uses music content, for instance. If you look at the bill, bits…
Whether or not Google or Facebook directly profit from the use of news content isn't, and arguably shouldn't, be a consideration as to if they should be required to pay or not. This is copyright logic we're working with here: the harm isn't that Google or Facebook found gold in someone else's sandbox, it's that they were digging there at all. We create the law specifically to make money move from one pocket to another, not to satisfy an underlying concept of justice.
The thing is, if this was just a new related right, like the EU Copyright Directive, we'd see the market play out as usual. News corporations would realize that Google and Facebook actually are paying them in valuable exposure, and sign away their aggregation rights for free or little cost to the aggregators. Australia appears to be trying to do an end run around that by taking away as many negotiating options from Google as possible. Effectively, there's one massive news collection society and anyone who carries news at all, regardless of who it's from, has to play ball with them. They also are legally required to get what is effectively most-favored-nation status. This is such an oddball way of doing things that I see this either crashing and burning so hard that the courts have to bail out Australian Parliament, or it works perfectly, becomes the new model regime for funding news, and winds up in the next set of WTO treaties (whenever those come around).
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#125Australian 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…
> the entire Australian media has been nothing but puppets controlled by murdoch You're going a bit heavy on hyperbole there. There's a decent amount of non-murdoch news; ABC, SBS, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, The Conversation, etc.
The Age and SMH (as well as Nine) are owned by the same company, which is chaired by Peter Costello.
Though non-Murdoch, it's rare to see anything non-friendly to the Liberal party on there.
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#126I don’t like FB as a company. However I have to admit, they are correct that news organizations benefit the most from this relationship. Why doesn’t google do the same thing? Don’t index news sites. Googles response seemed less effective than FB’s.
Google is a monopoly. Facebook is not. If google pushes their weight around they get targeted for anti competitive behavior.
Google is a monopoly for what service? I don't use Google (directly) for search. I use Google for some email accounts and other providers for other email accounts. I use Firefox instead of Chrome. I use Android, mainly because it's far more open than ios, and it's possible to use a de-Googled Android (although the useful-ness is reduced). None of the above is related to news, however, which is what this particular discussion is centred around. I don't go anywhere near Google for news. I know Australia's media websites, and I use them directly, and attempt to focus on the more independent ones because they're less likely to be unduly influenced.
If you think Google is a monopoly, then how is Facebook not? Either in direct relation to this discussion of News or in relation to the greater internet?
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#127What I find funny about this reaction is that most Australians are actually either quite blase about this situation, or actually are quietly enjoying the fact that massive multinationals who will do anything to avoid paying taxes in Australia have finally discovered that their power is quite limited in Australia.
Most Australians have seen what Facebook was up to during the 2016 election. They have seen the rise of Trumpism and, despite the incredibly conservative government, don't want that sort of crazy in their nation.
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#128Earlier 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…
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, arbitra…
Speaking as an Australian who has been following this closely, the Stratechery post is the best analysis I have seen of the situation, and cuts through the spin that F and G have put on it.
It checks out with the ongoing relationship Murdoch has with the LNP who are in government.
I encourage anyone interested in the topic to check out the Stratechery article on it.
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#129It really does feel like Murdoch has reached Bond villain status with this one.
He's has made the Australian government write a law that specifically and only targets two multi-billion dollar global companies (Facebook and Google) and forces them to give him more money.
It specifically isn't going after other online companies that don't have a huge net worth, and it specifically isn't even attempting to hide the intent by also giving money to the not-for-profit news outlets in Australia (ABC, SBS).
Because he controls the very vast majority of media in Australia he can obviously force the government to do his bidding - one by ensuring all his government buddies stay rich, and two by promising not to publish anything that would result in them getting voted out.
A fiction writer couldn't come up with such an outrageous idea.
As an Aussie, I can confidently say Australia has utterly lost the plot, and I applaud Facebook for standing up to them. I sincerely hope Google follow suit, and they both refuse to come back even if the legislation is scrapped. I hope News Corp. dies a rapid death without the 2.3B clicks
Re: An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is a monopoly. Facebook is not. If google pushes their weight around they get targeted for anti competitive behavior.
Google is a monopoly for what service? I don't use Google (directly) for search. I use Google for some email accounts and other providers for other email accounts. I use Firefox instead of Chrome. I use Android, mainly because it's far more open than ios, and it's possible to use a de-Googled Android (although the useful-ness is reduced). None of the above is related to news, however, which is what this particular di…
You're not serious? Antitrust is about optics, google is clearly monopolistic. Facebook is likely also but it's not perceived that way, Facebook has a lot of real alternatives, people use more than one social platform, whereas people only use one google, oops sorry, I mean search engine.
https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/au...