Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

about.fb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 478 posts

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

#111

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

jsnell wrote: post #104
marcod wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

One also wonders whether Google would have put a termination clause in their contract with the news orgs in the event the law is repealed. And is Google really going to provide them notice of algorithm changes? Very interesting to see how that's going to be done if so.

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

#112

Post by drstewart »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #102
Jonanin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>If it can't be understood, nobody can validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm.

This is quite a bizarre claim as there is famously an entire category of problems that are hard to solve but easy to verify: P vs NP

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

#113

Post by offby37years »

worik wrote: post #58

Can anybody explain to me what the problem is with Facebook et el driving traffic to news sites? Most of the times I visit newspapers websites I was sent there from social media.

The complaint is that many users just read the headline and never click to leave the Facebook walled garden, generating 0 income or traffic for the news media.

They complain that big tech gets the reward (content that drives user engagement) and further, it detracts from the potential traffic they would otherwise receive.

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

#114

Post by ocdtrekkie »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #103
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…

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 b…

Any human-initiated change to search algorithms is presumably human-understandable. Someone writes a rule to downrank some terms or traits of a website, they presumably document it somewhere.

That documentation will need to be shared, and the implementation of the rule change will need to be delayed until the disclosure window has passed.

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

#115

Post by drstewart »

bwb wrote: post #50
bpodgursky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will just ensure that all news is transmitted via memes, screenshots, and unsourced copy-pasted quotes. It won't be an improvement.

Why wouldn't people just visit news sites like normal? You go to cnn.com or nytimes.com or your local newspaper. Thats it, just don't allow it at FB. People post so many fake stories from fakes sites, or outrage stories with headlines for clicks, stop incentivizing that behaviour. Just ban all politics/news and let people talk about other stuff.

Should this article and discussion be allowed on HN?

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

#116

Post by _2d30 »

tw04 wrote: post #78

Oh no, not that, anything but that. In all seriousness I hope this drives the less informed in Australia to seek out actual news sources and break out of the echo chamber that is Facebook. And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it. You can't have a robust democracy without a robust fourth estate.

> And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it.

Not unreasonable arguments could be made that it's journalism that leeches off of FB. FB drives huge traffic and provides a massive platform.

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

#117

Post by cool_dude85 »

bawolff wrote: post #90
evolve2k wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Australian Government for ages has been trying to get the news organisations and the social media giants to come together and establish a voluntary media code that addresses concerns of multiple parties in a reasonable way. I’m sure each of you will be shocked to hear that Google & FB each have been hostile to the process form the start and have missed meetings and general behaved poorly and arrogantly in their d…

> I’m sure each of you will be shocked to hear that Google & FB each have been hostile to the process form the start and have missed meetings A powerful company resisting a process from which they have nothing to gain. Shocking! If you want people to come together, you need to give both sides something to gain (or put a (metaphorical) gun to one sides head). Of course fb is going to resist a process where they only s…

No, if you're the guy who writes the laws, you're allowed to just tell people what to do. That's the deal with laws.

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

#118

Post by t0mas88 »

pochamago wrote: post #70
worik wrote: post #58

Can anybody explain to me what the problem is with Facebook et el driving traffic to news sites? Most of the times I visit newspapers websites I was sent there from social media.

The cynical streak in me would suggest that now is a popular time to criticize major tech organs for their relationship to news, and the Australian government is hoping to use that to funnel money from US companies to Australian ones.

You could argue that taxes were designed before the "you are the product" age. If Apple sells a phone in Australia to a local customer, they pay Australian sales tax and possibly import dues to get the phone into the country. When Facebook sells data from an Australian user to a random advertiser, all tax is due in Ireland/Netherlands or some other tax haven and Australia makes nothing.

So while this approach with news media is a strange one, I think there is an argument to be made for taxing things differently. Make Facebook/Google pay a fair tax in all countries they're active in. Then each country can decide how they want to use that, if a democratically elected government in Australia wants to subsidize news using taxes they should be able to do so.

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

#120

Post by pb7 »

indymike wrote: post #119

News adds little value to Facebook. I wonder how much of Facebook's engagement is actually from news versus user-generated content.

The post says news makes up 4% of the feed content.[0]

[0] https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-vie...

Post reply on HN