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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

#311
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.

Explainable models do not preclude the systemic problems you highlight. Plenty of systems before the advent of non-explanatory ML models had those defects. One option is to define test and validation sets and encourage 3P validation, somewhat like how accreditation works in other contexts.

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

#312
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I think this is why GP said "especially international news". The more producers capable of producing the content, the lower value the content is.

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

#313
post #9

In contrast, Google has been making deals with Australian media companies: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-...

So disappointed that Google is caving into a government-enforced shake down.

Pretty sure Google was doing this regardless.

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

#314
post #38

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…

I'm willing to pay for news that treats me as a relatively intelligent person who needs well-sourced information to make decisions, not as an unprincipled sucker who should be convinced of what the author thinks is true by any rhetoric possible.

The two I'm looking at paying for in the near future are https://thebrowser.com/ and https://www.slow-journalism.com/, but I'd pay a lot more than that for some kind of Realpolitik executive summary which gave overviews of the most important trends, including the most common mainstream opinions and an analysis of any available evidence.

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

#315

Wow 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.

The legislation was subsequently amended to include ABC: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/abc-sbs-included-in-... (Hopefully YC doesn't have to pay for this link one day)

Good good. I'm all for making fb a barren content free wasteland. It was a mistake for public sector to build engagement on a platform where they were tenants without rights. They could have put the rights in with legislation first, but were always at mercy of the algorithm and having to pay for placement.

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

#316

Wow 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

It seems such a broad interpretation that they block satire of events too (Betoota, Chaser), but strangely not dis/mis information crackpots like Friendly J##dies, even though he claims to be independent media.

I would check if you can 'like us on Facebook' but I can't find any buttons! What happened, they used to be everywhere?

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about all the other examples he listed. What about cancer detection? Or viral spread prediction? Drug discovery or medical imaging diagnosis? Physics research? Machine learning is very widely used in the sciences and extremely beneficial to humanity in uncountably many ways and assuredly countless more to come. Of course technologies can be used for evil but so can nearly everything that exists. I believe your p…

At best, you may be able to justify black boxes providing secondary indicators: Maybe using AI to study cancer detection might lead you to a new solid discovery, but "we use AI to determine if you have cancer" should never be the mission, as it fails to generate useful information about how it is detected.

> fails to generate useful information about how it is detected

Patients don’t care how cancer is detected. Patients care if the diagnosis is correct.

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

#318
> Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.

This is technically not correct. Publishers can opt out from Google Search if they want to, so one may also argue that they willingly choose to be on Google as well.

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

#319

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…

> 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…

(Assuming all of this is a matter of Google and Facebook not "playing fair")

I think it's very likely Facebook would still find profit in this arrangement, just less profit than before, but since they do business with other countries as well they don't want to give in. "OK we'll start playing fair and reduce profit in your market" = "OK we'll start playing fair and reduce profit in all markets"

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

#320
post #232

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. 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 tha…

No.

I agree that Facebook and Google need reigning in on their data and privacy invasiveness, as well as their offshore business structures that avoid Australian taxes. But this law is not that.

This law is sponsored by dying dinosaur media company News Corp because they have lots of mates in, and power over, Australian Government.

There's also a danger that, if this fight ends up being essentially lost by the Australian Government, it will vaporise any and all political will to go after Facebook and Google for anything else (eg. Data privacy, tax avoidance).

Don't support stupid laws that don't do the thing you want it to. Just because you (and I) don't like Facebook and Google doesn't mean they're wrong (in this particular case).

Edited to add: News Corp has fucked Australia throughout its history, if you support this Government action then you're tacitly supporting News Corp.

There are no good guys in this fight, so all that's left is the logic (or lack thereof) of the proposed laws. That's the key issue in this case.

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