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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.
The gall of FB mentioning the importance of news in a democratic society. They have arguably done irreversible net bad for democracies. Let em bow out.
Did you RTFA? They're having to put content moderation guards in-place: - To stop Australian publishers from sharing any content on FB - Prevent International or Australian news from being viewed or shared by Australians Failing to see how this benefits Australians or Australian news publishers.
And yes I did read it. And I thought critically about it :)
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?
The government literally stated that with a heavy heart they were putting in a crude approach towards forcing both giants to finally step up and start to discuss this. That oblique reference to the new “Facebook news tool and their announcement of it in the last month or so” is part of this, and will be rolled out depending how their hand is forced from here.
The essence of the case against the social media giants is that journalism is dying. Not just newsprint but paid journalism itself. The profession is under massive attack and papers worldwide are being affected and it’s clear there is a value extraction occurring with the social media giants, who are in one framing benefiting from the content produced by news outlets and show it in their “listings” (feeds/search results) and further compete directly with the news organisations for advertising dollars all without having to include any remuneration to the content creator, in this case professional news outlets who still have an important social function to provide and are providing less and less due to the market dominance of these two ‘aggregation advertising companies’.
The Australian government is firstly fighting around this principle of ensuring fair competition in the advertising space, two large companies are exploiting newspapers due to their market dominance, ok excuse me, you folks need to adjust your market practices so that everyone can play. Their dominance is like a duopoply and is being criticised as such even though this economoic language has become foreign in recent times where dominance of American mega corporations is assumed as somewhow right and therefore fair. Google & Fb know they are very powerful with limited obligations to Australians and so they are acting arrogantly and oppressively in their approach.
The other side of this humerously is that while in principle it’s important to have an open and fair press and to ensure healthy competition and a healthy media space in the digital era, Australian media is largely owned by two major media moguls. I’m sorry to say that Rupert Murdock began his life right here in Australia. These moguls having done very poorly with their own digital strategies over the years are also pressuring the government to take action in this space, and while no-one loves these companies either, the prospect of the total breakdown of the local newspaper and media landscape and the related loss of local journalism jobs drives the government to get involved.
There’s more nuisance and moves and details on this but that’s the gist as best I can capture it.
I’m in support of the social media giants being forced to the negotiation table and working out platform options that do provide a content producers fee to media companies both big and small that might be a great model to help us move back away from crap spam content back towards a modern from journalism. Facebooks new newstool is headed this direction if they feel pressured in the right way to have to roll it out and create a Spotify of news redirecting some of the insane advertising revenue the receive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They're still going to talk about it with friends and family. Except, instead of at least linking to an article, now they'll have to share it via selected bits and pieces that FB can't censor (or via pure interpretation).
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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.
Facebook can say a lot of things, but I bet the publishers also have their own numbers and they are the ones who pushed for this deal.
What they want is for Facebook and Google to be forced to list them, but also forced to pay for the privilege. If they failed to craft or pay for legislation to that end, it was nothing more than a mistake.
Most of the times I visit newspapers websites I was sent there from social media.
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.
What is the Australian government misunderstanding? They wanted a better deal for domestic news media, they are getting a better deal for domestic news media: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56101859 The Australian government's approach is working.
Google can afford to pay for the right to link to publishers. New startups can't.
Australia has strengthened Google's monopoly, all in the guise of "taking on" big tech.
Given the current Australian government's cosy relationship with a particular media company that currently dominates the media landscape here, I don't think it is coincidence.