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Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

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

#161

Post by ankit219 »

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.

I hope so too. Though I have a different theory on how the public would react. Australian users of FB/Instagram can't share links to any news website. But they can share screenshots and memes about the news. Even videos. The other thing - many summary accounts just popup who would give their version of the news in text or video. Why? because the news is paywalled and not everyone pays.

This is a rabbit hole, and Australian govt wont let it go easily. They will next complain about screenshots being shared - tough to monitor but they are literally taking away the traffic from news sites. People move away from a website if it can't fulfill their needs. But, if they have all the needs (wants?) fulfilled except the part about news, they won't go to another site, they will just find a hack to fulfill the news bit. How far can the content moderation go? Given the motives of publishers are not noble here, asking for money for something they should be paying, not having traffic would hurt them badly. This is what Facebook is betting on, but given the size of the issue, it would be embarrassment for the govt to walk back the proposals after FB has withdrawn. Give it a year, they will come to an agreement where both parties win.

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

#162

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

60secz wrote: post #38
gambiting wrote: post #4

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I think I'm going to side with FB on this. The Australian government is once again showing absolute disregard when it comes to understanding technology, and its signature heavy handed approach to regulation.

Laws of economics are pretty clear on this. News, especially international news, is a commodity. Government can impose monopoly ruls to try to allow distribution channels to extract more, but technology (and users) will find ways to route around this as damage to the network. People don't want to pay for news. They don't like ads, but will tolerate them to a point, and most definitely don't want to pay for subscripti…

Laws are never necessary where economics or physics already lead to the desired outcome.

So, arguing that “these politicians don’t understand economics” is like saying “laws against theft don’t understand how easy it is to break a window”.

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

#163

Post by AniseAbyss »

djoldman wrote: post #156

The messaging on this tech vs news publishers in Australia is pretty intense. Any site that doesn't want google to index a page can add: to the page and it will not be listed when someone searches Google (as far as I know), thereby preventing all the alleged stealing/siphoning/etc of revenue/profits from news sites. Am I wrong here? If the above is true, what's really going on here is that content producers got toget…

You can Google Netflix and still have to pay for it.

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

#164

Post by ACow_Adonis »

xemoka wrote: post #152
Isinlor wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you apply the same standard to people? Tell me, how did your brain come up with what you wrote? How do I validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm?

By asking them. You can't just ask an algorithm, it must be designed to show its own work. Credibility is another problem...

lol. sorry, but that reminds me of a skit by an Australian comedian:

male guest: "now first of all, let me just start by saying I'm not racist..."

female guest: "pfft..."

host: "ah see you made a noise there, but a lot of people accuse him of being a racist, so I think it's very helpful to know that he actually isn't one..."

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

#165

Post by zmmmmm »

This is a fairly important stand Facebook is taking - I'm glad they are doing it. The precedent set here is uncomfortably close to creating a liability simply for linking to content - something that would quite literally destroy the very fabric of the internet if it was applied generally. In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are. If internet services have to assume liability for not just actual content people post but content within things they link to it will create a situation that is simply untenable.

The fact that this law is applied only to two cherry picked companies selected at the pleasure of a government minister does not change the nature of the precedent created, and creates an enormous risk that this will now be lobbied to apply to numerous other industries and circumstances. I would fully expect that to follow in short order if Facebook folded on this - and it probably will happen anyway.

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

#167

Post by djoldman »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #157
djoldman wrote: post #156

The messaging on this tech vs news publishers in Australia is pretty intense. Any site that doesn't want google to index a page can add: to the page and it will not be listed when someone searches Google (as far as I know), thereby preventing all the alleged stealing/siphoning/etc of revenue/profits from news sites. Am I wrong here? If the above is true, what's really going on here is that content producers got toget…

Any single site doesn’t have the power to change Facebook. Your suggestion is equivalent to “no child is forced to work in the mines. If they don’t need the money, they can choose to go to school instead”

It seems to me that Facebook putting an anchor link to a website on a facebook page is materially different from child labor.

Should sites be allowed to link to other sites?

Also, every website has the power to change Google: just put the noindex tag on your pages and you'll effectively prevent links from Google to your website.

For facebook, it's trickier. One thing that might work is sharing something from your website on Facebook and then reporting it as against community standards. It seems like there are a zillion pages of people trying to get their sites UNblocked from Facebook- the cause of which frequently seems to be people flagging content.

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

#168

Post by Jonanin »

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.

This is an incredibly naive perspective. I guess you want to ban search engines, self driving cars, automated filtering of lewd and abusive content (why do you think FB isn’t full of porn? It’s not a hand engineered algorithm), automatic speech recognition for the hearing impaired, and a vast swath of important technology I didn’t list. I don’t think you really understand the implications of what you’re asking for. Sorry - black boxes are here to stay. And they are immeasurably useful. I could spend hours listing important and crucial technologies that you want banned because you are scared of racism.

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

#169

Post by ekimekim »

nostromo wrote: post #59
clouddrover wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the Australian government misunderstanding? They wanted a better deal for domestic news media, they are getting a better deal for domestic news media: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56101859 The Australian government's approach is working.

This is how regulatory capture happens. Google can afford to pay for the right to link to publishers. New startups can't. Australia has strengthened Google's monopoly, all in the guise of "taking on" big tech.

> Google can afford to pay for the right to link to publishers. New startups can't.

The law specifically only targets Google and Facebook due to their monopoly power. New startups are not affected.

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

#170

Post by teruakohatu »

zmmmmm wrote: post #165

This is a fairly important stand Facebook is taking - I'm glad they are doing it. The precedent set here is uncomfortably close to creating a liability simply for linking to content - something that would quite literally destroy the very fabric of the internet if it was applied generally. In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are. If internet services have…

> In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are.

It is much worse than that. The publishers themselves often share the links on Facebook themselves.

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