Good guy Facebook for the first time in perhaps...forever?
Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
281–290 of 478 posts
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should we force casinos to change in order to be less addictive?
Casinos are highly regulated and must follow a number of restrictions on how they market their products and handle troubled players. So yes, our society has indeed already decided that casinos should be forced to be less predatory.
Certainly. My question was aimed at the current state of regulation: should casinos be further restricted? (people are still getting addicted, as far as I know).
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#283Could 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?
My understanding is that even a headline with a link counts. I've also heard that, unlike Facebook, Google doesn't have the option to say no. It'll be interesting to see if the newspapers start arguing that Facebook should be exempt, once all of their traffic from Facebook dries up.
> Google doesn't have the option to say no
What does that mean? Surely Google could remove their entire presence from Australia if they felt like it.
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not really sure what you mean by impossible
How would you craft legislation that force Google and Facebook to do business with you under terms that you dictate? Ultimately how can you prevent said companies from pulling out of your country entirely if that's the better option for them?
I couldn't; I believe I originally thought you were suggesting these companies can't be expected to exert political will/make consequential decisions for some bizarre reason
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#285I live in Australia and while I'm excited to see less Facebook use, I see a lot of comments saying things like, "good, Facebook monetized an addiction model and this curbs that". While true, the proposed law that has pushed them to do this is incredibly dangerous. The law doesn't just apply to Facebook, it applies to whoever the Treasurer of Australia[0] says it applies to - it isn't metrics/rules based: https://i.im…
"I live in Australia and while I'm excited to see less Facebook use, I see a lot of comments saying things like, "good, Facebook monetized an addiction model and this curbs that". While true, the proposed law that has pushed them to do this is incredibly dangerous."
You're absolutely right and I'm also horrified by the implications, and I would be even more so if the circumstances were more normal. The trouble is that Facebook is anything but a normal player and so is Google. These corporations are not normal given that they've usurped normal business practices when both governments and normal ethical businesses weren't looking and they have deliberately and opportunistically profiteered off the backs of millions—billions—of unsuspecting people who haven't a clue what has happened to their data, let alone their privacy!
This is NOT a normal situation, as these carpetbagger corporations have essentially declared 'war' on us by raiding our data without permission—and no one believes all that malarkey stuff about EULAs actually authorizing them to do so. Instead, they did do by sleight-of-hand and deceit alone, everyone knows that. This means we've little choice but to respond the best we can and in kind—and that means we have to play as dirty as them. We not only have to grovel in the ethical dirt and mud but also play by their rules or they'll retaliate and 'mincemeat' us—no questions asked.
Let's not be fooled: any corporation that can not only rival the two most dreadful corporations in all of history—The Dutch East India Company and the [British] East India Company—in its enormous stock value but also that it make profits even more quickly than they did is more than suspect, for their growth as has far, far exceeded the expectations of any normal lawful business—even the most brilliant of them by orders of magnitude! These companies are either engaged in unethical practices, or they are working in a lawless and unregulated domain, and or it's both of these. I'd contend that it's both.
Moreover, Facebook is now threatening us with blackmail, and without compunction they'll play off users as disposable pawns in this dirty war, as we can clearly see here:
"In response to Australia’s proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content."
It's time we acted, and the Australian Government has taken the first step. I grit my teeth to say it, but it needs our support this time around.
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's even broader than that. The law applies to any "alterations to the ways in which a service distributes content". The law never actually defines what this means, but it gives a bunch of examples that go beyond ranking. For example, anything that affects a particular "class of content", such as deciding whether or not to make all videos auto-play, is an alteration. Basically, this law would prevent Facebook from d…
So it's just like GDPR? Guidelines intentionally kept vague so that some bureaucrat can slap a huge fine and collect the rent? I wonder if that rent-seeking attitude will accelerate or curb the current brain drain Australia faces.
That’s not a fair characterisation of GDPR, nor one borne about by examples.
And 2020 put pause to any Australian brain drain and given how well we’ve handled the pandemic, is likely to be seen significant increases in net migration.
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
you don't need any NLP to rank webpages (in fact the entire innovation of Google was that they figured out a way to rank pages completely ignoring that fact). Pagerank works fundamentally by treating the web as a graph and prioritising results based on their connections, that is to say it ranks based on popularity and is agnostic about the content of the actual page. This generally has worked well. On the other hand,…
Pagerank worked fine when it was invented. It's a very elegant algorithm. But in a perfect illustration of Goodhart's law, it fell apart once people realized that they could game it to increase their traffic. Google has been in a constant arms race against unscrupulous SEO practices ever since.
>Google has been in a constant arms race against unscrupulous SEO practices ever since.
One company controls 80% of what is found on the internet. They set rules, restrictions, penalties that are not public. They do not pass any sort of regulatory muster. They rip and tear through businesses standing in their way. They crush out a person's online existence through never explained reasons. They use every advantage they can to tweak a human's emotions, drive and needs to feed more and more advertisements.
You suggest those trying to use every advantage they can to rank higher unscrupulous?
Google's fight to keep search results crisp ended soon after they began selling advertising. Google long ago quit innovating search to be better for people, they've made it better for advertisers.
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a law that's either written by media lobbyists or people unfamiliar with technology. Potentially both at the same time. If the news organisations want people to pay for news, they can change to a subscription model and put their content behind a pay wall. Many companies already to this: I myself pay over a hundred pounds a year for the Economist for their excellent reporting. The old establishment needs to under…
>It's a law that's either written by media lobbyists or people unfamiliar with technology. It's a law written mostly by the ACCC.
> It's a law written mostly by the ACCC.
Which is operated mostly by Murdoch cronies.
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#289Wow they've blocked the Bureau of Meteorology page, no more weather warnings on fb. All of ABC too (our BBC equivalent), though they were not required to pay for ABC content, so it seems pretty bitchy.
Also I believe that to stay within the bounds of the law they have to prevent _any_ news site from being linked and block all Australia news sites from being shown internationally
Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
No, it targets any digital platform at the discretion of a single elected Member of Parliament. If /r/australia got too influential or troublesome to this politician, in the lead up to an election perhaps, then there is no need to get anything through parliament - this individual can essentially add reddit.com to a list and then send Condé Nast the bill.
> and then send Condé Nast the bill.
Just so you know, Conde Nast hasn't owned reddit for over a decade.