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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

#341

Post by baash05 »

shock-value wrote: post #32
pantsforbirds wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook showed in their release the monetary value of they provided the news companies. I can't see how you could possible argue they do not provide value to the classic media companies by allowing them to be linked and discussed freely on their feeds.

Is it really any additive value? News companies and consumption certainly existed before social media.

I'd say the only time I ever read SMH is when there's a link in my FB. When mates or groups I'm a part of drop a link in. To be honest, I don't remember the last time I read general news that wasn't in my feed. Apart from a few other aggregators (hackers news included)

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

#342

Post by alfiedotwtf »

gkmcd wrote: post #60

A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech companies to provide selected news organisations with advance notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I believe it is the actually the most important part of the legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an enormous advantage over other companies not included and prote…

I wonder why Josh Frysenberg didn’t mention this at his presser today. Contrast this to him repeatedly saying “digital giants must pay traditional news”... I was waiting for him to slip once and say “tradition news must pay my boss Murdoch”

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

#343

Post by denismi »

jedberg wrote: post #290
denismi wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't that like saying "it's not owned by Google, it's owned by Alphabet"?

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

#344

Post by alfiedotwtf »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #187
Jonanin wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. S…

I absolutely want to ban self-driving cars that behave in ways no human can explain or understand! The mere idea that anyone would think that should be legal is borderline insane . All you are doing here is convincing me that tech companies are just runaway trains with nobody at the controls!

Continue this line of thinking, would you want all algorithms banned? Might as well shut everything down :shrug:

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

#346

Post by hilbert42 »

manfredo wrote: post #328
hilbert42 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Calling this blackmail seems hyperbolic. Australia is imposing a tax on serving links to Australians, so Facebook is no longer serving those links. If the US imposes a tariff on BMWs and BMW stops selling cars in the US is it blackmail? This is the same deal with Google News in Spain. Spain imposed a tax, so Google stopped doing business there (at least insofar as Google News is concerned). This isn't blackmail any m…

"Calling this blackmail seems hyperbolic."

It's interesting to note that none of the key points I made about these corporations' very dubious place in history penetrated. Therefore I'll have to assume their behavior is acceptable with you.

It seems you also missed the point that Australian users like everyone else were cajoled from an open web to a closed system. The fact is they had no choice whatsoever and that Facebook knows it. If it's not blackmail then perhaps extortion is a better word.

To say users were not cajoled when they had no other choice, I suggest you refer to my point in the nearby post about the fact that everyone's telephone, like it or not, went from an inviolable private service on a government utility to 'ownership' by Facebook and Google. If you say this never happened then I've nothing more to say to you.

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

#347

Post by King-Aaron »

It's not just news they blocked today.

The DFES (Department of Fire and Emergency Services) page is down - i.e. no bushfire or flood alerts showing up. Their entire page is gutted.

There's some government run domestic violence and community service pages that are wiped.

Though hilariously, the local LNP candidate's page is gone, which in the midst of a state election campaign is probably pretty hard for them.

I get that facebook have a bone to pick with the government, but does a) blocking crucial emergency service pages have a benefit, and b) does wiping a campaign page have some worrying connotations?

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

#348

Post by King-Aaron »

coffenjam wrote: post #326
angry_octet wrote: post #233

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.

They're banning emergency services as well ("by mistake"). They probably just want to increase the backlash. The emergency services Facebook pages will obviously be back within hours. I live in Australia but I don't have a Facebook account and I don't read the fake news media, so I actually don't have a horse in this race. I hope they both mutually destruct each other.

> fake news media

Uuugh we all know that media is undoubtedly biased, and a lot is quite skewed to match an agenda.. But can we please refrain from regurgitating that Trump campaign catchphrase?

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

#349

Post by angry_octet »

coffenjam wrote: post #326
angry_octet wrote: post #233

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.

They're banning emergency services as well ("by mistake"). They probably just want to increase the backlash. The emergency services Facebook pages will obviously be back within hours. I live in Australia but I don't have a Facebook account and I don't read the fake news media, so I actually don't have a horse in this race. I hope they both mutually destruct each other.

Pretty much the same, deleted the apps years ago, I log on with an isolated browser profile every few months to see what madness the crazy uncle posts.

FB Messenger is hard to dislodge though, for so many people it is their main comms system. Likewise WhatsApp. Luckily I have a burner phone for those, location features turned off.

Govt will probably come crawling back to fb on its belly. If they don't the ALP will.

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

#350

Post by jedberg »

denismi wrote: post #343
jedberg wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and then send Condé Nast the bill. Just so you know, Conde Nast hasn't owned reddit for over a decade.

Isn't that like saying "it's not owned by Google, it's owned by Alphabet"?

No, it would be more like saying Nest owns Google because they have the same parent company. If anything, reddit is the larger of the two. And the parent company that own Conde Nast (Advance publications) does not own all of reddit, unlike how Alphabet owns all of Google.
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