Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia • Hacker News Board

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#101

Post by extropy » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

gkmcd wrote: post #60

A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech companies to provide selected news organisations with advance notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I believe it is the actually the most important part of the legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an enormous advantage over other companies not included and prote…

The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving only news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information. Google and Facebook's algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should demand that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on…

Publicly disclosing the algorithms would drastically increase the pace of gaming them and resulting in pay to play system where the fanciest SEO wins.

Google and Facebook partially relies on the obscurity to keep the fighting the spam battle. IMO we don't have the technology yet to have fully open ranking algorithms that are not quickly broken.

To think of it - similar to crypto around WW2.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#102

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

Jonanin wrote: post #89

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving only news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information. Google and Facebook's algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should demand that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on…

These algorithms are not human readable code. They are massively complex interconnected systems of many black box ML models. I don't understand what clarity people think releasing the "algorithms" will bring. In fact, describing ranking as a single algorithm is pretty misleading.

I also believe any algorithm that isn't human-readable should be banned. If it can't be understood, nobody can validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm.

The fact that technology companies have been grossly negligent and irresponsible isn't a reason to not regulate them: It's proof regulation needs to be much, much stronger.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#103

Post by xyzzy123 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

gkmcd wrote: post #60

A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech companies to provide selected news organisations with advance notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I believe it is the actually the most important part of the legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an enormous advantage over other companies not included and prote…

The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving only news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information. Google and Facebook's algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should demand that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on…

I'm curious how this advance update thing is supposed to work. What does disclosing those details look like, actually?

The reason I'm asking is that as these things grow in complexity, it's quite possible that even if you join the team that works on these systems it will probably take you a pretty long time to understand how they really work. Their actual behaviour is likely to still be mysterious a lot of the time because they're driven by data.

Is a high-level description in english OK? Do we need to see pseudocode? The source code code? Do they have to open source it? What parts, if it's tied to internal frameworks? If there is ML, do they have to disclose all their sauce there? The trained network / weights? The training data, if the alg alone is useless without a data set?

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#104

Post by jsnell » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

marcod wrote: post #86

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google & Fb know they are very powerful with limited obligations to Australians and so they are acting arrogantly and oppressively in their approach. I don't see what's arrogant about Facebook's approach here. They say they do not derive much value from this content, and the government is proposing to charge them much more than the value they do derive. So they are left with the only rational choice: to not have th…

I could totally see news orgs come crawling back to FB and ask them to put all the traffic back.

Of course. But the law will not allow for that.

If FB allows any news content (e.g. from news orgs that want their content to be listd for free), they must allow all news content (e.g. from news orgs that will want to be paid unrealistic amounts for it).

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#105

Post by xylophoner » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

scribu wrote: post #18

endisneigh wrote: post #15

Could someone summarize both positions? It seems pretty reasonable to me - my understanding is that Australia wants Google and Facebook to pay lump sums to have their content on their platforms (as opposed to per-click). Google and Facebook can basically say yes or no. How is this different than, say, The New York Times saying the same thing about their content?

I think this article on simple linking vs. previewing sums up the issue: https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-ba...

I wonder if FB ever offered or considered letting users link without previews (e.g., choose a word or words of their post to become the link text). It would defuse the way users scan headline/preview/image on the feed (instead of going to the publisher and reading the content). Not sure Australia would have accepted this but I believe it addresses some of their concerns.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#106

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

extropy wrote: post #101

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving only news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information. Google and Facebook's algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should demand that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on…

Publicly disclosing the algorithms would drastically increase the pace of gaming them and resulting in pay to play system where the fanciest SEO wins. Google and Facebook partially relies on the obscurity to keep the fighting the spam battle. IMO we don't have the technology yet to have fully open ranking algorithms that are not quickly broken. To think of it - similar to crypto around WW2.

This excuse has been used to protect Google and Facebook for decades, but considering disinformation campaigns, civil unrest, and outright genocide has been the cost... I think the price of using obscurity to prevent SEO tactics is way too high.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#107

Post by creaghpatr » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

Cyclone_ wrote: post #7

Will be interesting to see the social impact on this. I kind of wish sometimes there was a plug-in that could just block news postings on facebook, since I don't go to facebook to see what friends are saying about the news

There used to be, you could hide all from certain sources when you looked at the options on a given post but they sunset that feature. The sources I hid then still don't show up in my feed, though.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#108

Post by smolder » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

Sephr wrote: post #54

Honestly wish Google did this as well instead of bowing down to unjust laws.

Who is deciding what laws are just? Hopefully not Google or Facebook, as they are amoral profit-motivated behemoths who will annex your home and life if they're allowed.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#109

Post by March_f6 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

mythz wrote: post #88

March_f6 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It benefits them by reducing their exposure to online echo chambers reinforced by fake or extremely biased news that are endemic to Facebook. It benefits them by forcing them to get their news directly from the source rather than wrapped in a context Facebook decides upon. It sounds as though you presuppose FB is or should be the only source of news. And yes I did read it. And I thought critically about it :)

I'd say it's wishful thinking that you believe a majority of the population is going to visit all their news sources directly rather than simply ignore they exist. News publishers were voluntarily posting on FB themselves to generate traffic to their own sites, it's some warped tough love view to think removing their ability to share content is somehow for their own benefit. > It sounds as though you presuppose FB is…

People won't stop consuming news and they will go where they need to to get it. With FB out of the running I think that means they will likely end up on some mixed diet like a forum (like HN) and getting it from various sources (local,national,etc.) Essentially, I'm less worried about people being uninformed than I am about them being misinformed and I'm afraid that FB has shown to enable misinformation at unprecedented scale thus far. If we can't agree that FB has uniquely played a large role in that then our discussion is rather moot I'm afraid.

Also, that's why I said it "sounds like". I was inferring while being fully aware of your ability to clarify.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#110

Post by nostromo » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

extropy wrote: post #101

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving only news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information. Google and Facebook's algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should demand that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on…

Publicly disclosing the algorithms would drastically increase the pace of gaming them and resulting in pay to play system where the fanciest SEO wins. Google and Facebook partially relies on the obscurity to keep the fighting the spam battle. IMO we don't have the technology yet to have fully open ranking algorithms that are not quickly broken. To think of it - similar to crypto around WW2.

This isn't as true as it once was.

Google's best asset for ranking is their user data. Even if you had the exact algorithm, you couldn't game it without massive amounts of user traffic. (At least not for popular searches.)