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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

#241

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #140
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?

Very few people have the ability to influence the success or failure of every business on the planet. Those that do are heavily scrutinized for racist or sexist behavior. (Sometimes they also don't get convicted anyways, but that's another matter.)

> Very few people have the ability to influence the success or failure of every business on the planet.

In other words the solution to this should be antitrust enforcement and decentralization of power.

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

#242

Post by shruubi »

I'm glad that Facebook is standing its ground compared to Google, who ended up capitulating to Murdoch's sock-puppet government.

For those who are outside Australia, it bears mentioning that Murdoch-owned media in Australia by far and away dominates the media landscape, and has a blatant bias towards the current sitting government (the conservative liberal party), and the liberals have for decades now returned the favour by consistently legislating in favour of News Corp.

The only way that the government will back down is when they are confronted with a much bigger fish than News Corp, in which case, chances are better than none that the government will go scurrying back into their little holes.

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

#243

Post by srcreigh »

docdeek wrote: post #173
srcreigh wrote: post #129

I haven't read the bill, but this looks like a huge win. FB has abused our brain chemistry with addictive content. Their platform makes discussions more impulsive, passionate and careless not unlike any other addictive substance. People crave "the goods" ie browsing their bite sized feeds, and neglect the responsibility of actually learning about the news. Not unlike how if you're addicted to sugar/unhealthy foods yo…

Facebook's statement says that news is only 4% of what is shared on their platform. I'm not sure 4% is a major hit to their platform. On the other hand, they delivered 5.1 billion views to Australian media sites last year. That would seem to me to be a big hit to media sites.

The 4% number is a cover. This announcement represents a new fundamental limitation to FB's capabilities. Normal people can no longer share anything on FB.

Previously FB sharing was limited with regards to specific taboo movements and it was called censorship. Now it's all news, even good news and great content. It's not censorship this time because FB is no longer "the place" where you share and connect.

FB is no longer a universal platform. Now it's just a website. This is a good thing.

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

#244

Post by MarkMc »

indymike wrote: post #126
pb7 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

What I'm looking for is what percentage of engagement is attributed to that 4% of the feed content.

Without that 4% Facebook runs the risk that users migrate to another social media platform, which could have a huge impact.

Milk might only account for 4% of a supermarket's sales, but a supermarket that doesn't sell milk is at a huge disadvantage to one that does.

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

#245

Post by roganartu »

djoldman wrote: post #221
sjy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are we really saying that people cannot stop using social media? Are we saying that people don't think it's bad for them? Yes, that’s part of the definition of ‘addictive.’ Internet and social media addiction is well documented, even though not all users are addicted. Like gambling.

Should we force casinos to change in order to be less addictive?

Many countries, including Australia, do in fact regulate various aspects of casinos and gambling facilities in order to protect the vulnerable. Things like not allowing ATMs in particular areas, lots of signage about addiction and help, mandatory (and audited) return rates etc.

I’m not saying I agree with my government’s approach to this particular problem (tbh it seems like curbing social media addiction, if it happens, will be more of an accident than the intent of this legislation), but the suggestion that we do not regulate other predatory industries is rather misguided.

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

#246

Post by rurp »

quink wrote: post #5
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.

One recent quote from the former prime minister when Australia was planning to introduce backdoors to end-to-end encryption: > "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"

Heh, this reminds me of the Indiana Pi Bill[0] which tried to legislate the value of Pi. The Indiana bill at least happened a long time ago, unlike the prime minister's statement.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

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

#247

Post by clouddrover »

jsnell wrote: post #84
nostromo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First, Cloudrover's link has nothing to do with the law, nor on linking to news content. It's about showing news content inline in some new app that nobody has heard of, nor will use. Second, the Australian law does not apply to all companies. It just applies to the companies the current government decides it applies to. (It's not that it will even be selectively enforced. It literally only applies to a specific set…

> First, Cloudrover's link has nothing to do with the law

It has everything to do with the new legislation. I can only suggest you read the article start to finish.

Facebook will be making similar deals soon enough.

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

#248

Post by skissane »

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…

> 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 subscriptions

I'm sure I'm not the only person here who subscribes to LWN. People with a special interest in a particular topic are willing to pay subscriptions to specialist news outfits covering that topic. Not enough for them to grow rich but enough for many of them to survive. The real struggle is retaining subscribers to mass-market generalist news as opposed to niche speciality news sources.

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

#249

Post by kgog »

ta89489544 wrote: post #92
kgog wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what you find bizarre about it?

I found it bizarre that the Treasurer gets to (arbitrarily?) pick which platforms this applies to and that only 2 platforms, Facebook and Google, were chosen. Maybe I'm just missing the information, but why isn't there just a definition of a platform this should apply to? I'm pretty far removed from this issues, but it smells like some large news organization decided they wanted to get some free money from Facebook a…

To me it sounds like they went after the symptoms and not the root cause. Which doesn't sound too bad to me.

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

#250

Post by clouddrover »

gambiting wrote: post #19
clouddrover wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It was of no value to them anyway. That's what the legislation is about: preventing platforms with market dominance capturing most of the advertising revenue with no real return to the organizations producing the content.

Sure, but now no one is getting the advertising revenue. So the domestic news companies are not better off, the best case scenario is that they are exactly as they were, but most likely they are worse off since they simply don't even get the traffic.

They weren't getting it anyway. Both Google and Facebook represented poor deals for news media and their market power made it impossible to get a better deal.

Miraculously, after the Australian government gets involved, Google is now making deals with news media. Facebook will do the same eventually.

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