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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

#42

i don't understand. FB claims that this law will hurt australian news outlets more than FB... Why not just let these companies protest themselves?? We saw something similar in facebooks campaign against apples new privacy law. There, too, they pretended to be representing the "small business". I find it pathetic that they are using this same tactic of casting themselves as the protector of smaller, weaker, companies…

FB is always going on justice crusades for those “unheard” voices; their exec team, board members, lobbyists, etc.

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

#44
Facebook won't take any action when its product is used to facilitate genocide, but they absolutely will take drastic action when you threaten to regulate them or threaten their profits in any way:

https://twitter.com/max_fisher/status/1362116659977281538

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

#46

Could 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?

What does "saying no" mean wrt the new law?

I haven't been able to find a source for this (apologies), but my recollection is that before threatening to leave Australia, Google threatened to simply stop linking to news sites in Australia. I believe they were told this would be illegal.

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

#47

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.

Any publisher already had the option of blocking their content from being linked on Facebook and Google, they chose not to do so because the traffic they get from F/G was valuable.

Ben Thompson has a nice analysis of the situation: https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-bargainin...

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

#48
post #39

I would love to see FB ban any news from their platform, especially politics. Globally.

This will just ensure that all news is transmitted via memes, screenshots, and unsourced copy-pasted quotes. It won't be an improvement.

... or worse - government approved news only.

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

#50
post #39

I would love to see FB ban any news from their platform, especially politics. Globally.

This will just ensure that all news is transmitted via memes, screenshots, and unsourced copy-pasted quotes. It won't be an improvement.

Why wouldn't people just visit news sites like normal? You go to cnn.com or nytimes.com or your local newspaper. Thats it, just don't allow it at FB.

People post so many fake stories from fakes sites, or outrage stories with headlines for clicks, stop incentivizing that behaviour. Just ban all politics/news and let people talk about other stuff.

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