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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

#471

Post by brokenmachine »

abiogenesis wrote: post #362
kgog wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what you find bizarre about it?

The law is not bizarre in essence (there are details that are bizarre though): You are free to ask money for your content. On the other hand, Facebook is free to not buy your it.

No, with this law Facebook is not free to not buy the content. They are specifically forbidden from excluding those media companies from results, and lets not forget the cherry on top of the shit sandwich which is being forced to share their algorithm with the media companies, and even having to give advance notice of changes to their algorithm, something which is probably not even possible.

On top of all this, the definition of "core news" in the bill is ridiculously broad.

It's completely untenable, and IMO Facebook would surely (and predictably) have to leave the Australian market under those conditions.

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

#472

Post by brokenmachine »

endisneigh wrote: post #15

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?

They can't say no under this law. They are specifically banned from excluding the news sites from results.

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

#473

Post by brokenmachine »

adamjb wrote: post #272
andrewinardeer wrote: post #266

The Bureau of Meteorology, a government department that provides forecasts has just tweeted that their Facebook page has been impacted by this change which is odd as this is not a media company and provides arguably vitally important information to mariners and other transport modes. It looks like the blast radius from this decision is impacting organizations that is out of scope of this legislation. https://twitter.…

The BOM provides vitally important information in disasters too. This will kill people.

I'm Australian.

If I want to read important disaster information from the BOM, I will go to the BOM site, not Facebook.

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

#474

Post by brokenmachine »

ekimekim wrote: post #177
panda21 wrote: post #144

If FB and Google are the only two on the naughty list, does this give opportunity for smaller startups to take advantage, or have they made it clear that startups can easily be added to the list as well?

The law is being made under the auspices of anti-monopoly legislation, so adding a company to the list requires they hold a monopolistic position.

No, according to the law it's an arbitrary decision by the Treasurer. No mention of monopoly.

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

#475

Post by rafaelturk »

SilverRed wrote: post #402
rafaelturk wrote: post #24

I'm going to side with FB on this. This law is so bizarre.

Its not bizarre. Its protectionism, the government has strong relations with people whos business models are failing and rather than help them on a path to being successful organically, they chose to simply suck money from other successful businesses.

I beg to differ. If you read the wording was designed to affect only two companies, not an industry neither a concept. This is illegal or legally null in most democracies, hence bizarre.

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

#476

Post by exporectomy »

konjin wrote: post #455
exporectomy wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so the constitution's optional. No problem violating it then. If you don't like what the government did, I don't mind you sharing your opinion. But how does it logically connect with my comment that you replied to? I thought you were giving an example showing that voters are not well informed and I pointed out that it's not objectively wrong, just different from what you want.

No thats literally part of the constitution. The prime minister can get fired by the queen legally and its happened iniving memory.

So just wait for that to happen then elect a new one and repeat until he/she stops violating it. Voters can still vote for a prime minister who violates the constitution if they want. That's their right, and it's a good part of democracy. Hopefully the country has other institutions to prevent that but it sounds like Australia doesn't because the queen isn't doing her job, so it ends up de-facto allowed if the voters want it.

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

#477

Post by Sephr »

mda wrote: post #298
Sephr wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why? Even if Google closes shop in Australia they can still use Google, web is quite big.

> they can still use Google

How? Nobody in Australia can access Google without a proxy if Google blocks Australia. Google is entirely capable of doing this.

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

#478

Post by 60secz »

wvenable wrote: post #134
60secz wrote: 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…

The problem isn't so much that people don't want to pay for news. But if the competition is giving away news for free, news now has a price of zero. You have a global network of individuals and companies producing news. If you offer good news for $5 but someone else is offering acceptable news for $0 that acceptable news is going to win every time.

Exactly

> Hence, the key effect of commoditization is that the pricing power of the manufacturer or brand owner is weakened: when products become more similar from a buyer's point of view, they will tend to buy the cheapest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commoditization

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