Facebook to restore news pages in Australia • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#51

Post by berndi » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 8:03 AM UTC

johnnyYen wrote: post #45

berndi wrote: post #36

So we're now at a point where Big Tech can overtly strong-arm a nation into changing legislation proposed by their democratically elected government. Facebook didn't bat an eye before blocking the pages of food banks and emergency service providers in the middle of a pandemic for an entire county, all in service of avoiding a drop in their advertising revenue [1]. That should tell you a lot. You might not like the pr…

"Facebook didn't bat an eye before blocking the pages of food banks and emergency service providers..." No, FB obeyed the law. The legislation of what constitutes a "news organisation" is opaque. The legislation said pay for links or don't show them. FB complied with the law and elected not to show them. I cannot see the problem here - FB obeyed the law.

The alternative would have been for FB to clarify what you say is opaque about the legislation. The fact that FB would rather outright ban charities and emergency service providers instead of clarifying the spirit of the law shows you that they are not operating in good faith and will maximize their profits at all societal costs.

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#52

Post by MertsA » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

"Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won't automatically be subject to forced negotiation,"

I bet Google wishes they would have waited a bit longer before negotiating those agreements. It's nice that the government finally caved on the most egregious part of the legislation. Looking at the media response over the past few days has been absolutely shameful. Just about every piece out there completely glosses over the fact that the legislation originally outright forced Google and Facebook to pay and still host content even if a mutual agreement wasn't reached. It was a deal you can't say no to.... legally.

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#53

Post by MertsA » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 8:18 AM UTC

Clewza313 wrote: post #23

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so it looks like Facebook won in the game of chicken between them and the Australian government From my understanding of the situation, there was no game. FB didn't give a shit about pulling news from Australia because it was a tiny proportion of their content. The government/politicians were trying to strong arm FB into coughing up with zero leverage. It was insanely stupid. Here's FB's post for context: https://a…

Why did Google blink when FB didn't then?

Google came to the conclusion that they couldn't legally extricate themselves without pulling out of Australia entirely. Since the bill forced companies to treat the news content in question the same it's all or nothing for removal. Facebook faced losing all news content in Australia, Google faced losing the golden goose in Australia. They had more incentive to come to an agreement.

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#54

Post by steve_taylor » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 8:28 AM UTC

King-Aaron wrote: post #9

TheSmiddy wrote: post #8

"The tech giant drew a wide backlash from Australian users." This is patently false, the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook. On this particular issue Facebook is clearly in the right, it is straight up insane to expect them to pay for links to news that users choose to share.

Not quite. You look at any of the posts by politicians and you'd see vast numbers of people lapping up the anti-facebook rhetoric. The sad part is that it's not entirely unjustified. It's just in this instance Facebook was objectively not being the bad guy, yet there's enough mistrust in the population that it's easy to be told that they (facebook) were in the wrong.

You look at any of the posts by politicians and you'd see vast numbers of people lapping up the anti-facebook rhetoric.

There was already a lot of anti-facebook rhetoric here in Australia as a result of perceived left-wing bias and censorship on Facebook’s part during and after the US election. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed it’s basically the same type of people in both cases – uneducated right-wing anti-vax flat-earthers.

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#55

Post by alfiedotwtf » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 8:49 AM UTC

Facebook had all the leverage here, so I find it really really odd that Zuck caved to Murdoch^WThe Liberal Party.

Related: given the new proposed Australian law, I would love to see Twitter use this against News Corp - a hell of a lot of their articles is just commentary on a few tweets (i.e the actual news source of the story). Twitter should start demanding payment from News Corp because they’re stealing their revenue.

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#56

Post by stubish » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

King-Aaron wrote: post #13

throwaway69123 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old media saw their traffic stats crater, I think.

I would be interested to know what the net loss in click/ad revenue was over this period

I don't know about revenue, but Chartbeat said a drop in total traffic of 13%

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-facebook-...

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#57

Post by berndi » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #47

berndi wrote: post #36

So we're now at a point where Big Tech can overtly strong-arm a nation into changing legislation proposed by their democratically elected government. Facebook didn't bat an eye before blocking the pages of food banks and emergency service providers in the middle of a pandemic for an entire county, all in service of avoiding a drop in their advertising revenue [1]. That should tell you a lot. You might not like the pr…

I just don't get that viewpoint at all. Removing all news content was one of the two possible outcomes of that law. And the drafters of that law very intentionally made the definition of news content as vague and broad as possible, to maximize the damage and thus minimize the odds of Facebook actually doing it. If you're outraged that "Facebook did this in the middle of a pandemic", why not be at least as outraged at…

Its more like FB decided to go with the nuclear option, Z, instead of X or Y. This is reminiscent of mob-like extortion tactics, not of good-faith engagement with the legislative process of a democracy.

>And the drafters of that law very intentionally made the definition of news content as vague and broad as possible, to maximize the damage and thus minimize the odds of Facebook actually doing it.

Did you get that narrative straight from FB's PR department?

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#58

Post by nickpp » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

f6v wrote: post #43

nickpp wrote: post #33

From all this, Microsoft stance was the worst: using the power of Big Government to attack competition. Shameful.

This is the reason people get frustrated, right here. Having expectations that a for-profit tech company doesn’t behave one. Why wouldn’t they use everything at their disposal to slam the competitors?

Well, its like in sports: there are some things that you could do to win, but you don't - because you are not scum and you know the game would be worse for all if everybody would do them. It's called fair play.

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#59

Post by gorgoiler » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

yarcob wrote: post #49

gorgoiler wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s market value for news then news sellers should stop giving it away for free and starting charging a price. If press barons instead want to leverage free news to gain power and influence then who cares if the cost of doing so in 2021 is much higher than in 1981? So what if the emergence of Google et al indirectly pushed up the price of tabloid influence over democracy?

> news sellers should stop giving it away for free and starting charging a price But that's exactly what they are trying to do? The news stories obviously have a value for Facebook, and the publishers are trying to get them to pay for it. Radio stations also pay royalties to play music, why shouldn't websites have to pay royalties for content they show in their feeds?

I’m not sure the analogy holds. Radio in its current form is a marketing device for new music and stations get paid by record labels in order to feature new releases.

Re: Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

#60

Post by DoreenMichele » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 9:13 AM UTC

f6v wrote: post #43

nickpp wrote: post #33

From all this, Microsoft stance was the worst: using the power of Big Government to attack competition. Shameful.

This is the reason people get frustrated, right here. Having expectations that a for-profit tech company doesn’t behave one. Why wouldn’t they use everything at their disposal to slam the competitors?

When people get tired enough of crappy behavior from other people, regardless of the excuse, people tend to do something about it.

This is why we have sayings like "what goes around comes around."

Business exists to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humans created it to serve human needs. Humans can exist without business. Business doesn't exist without humans.

Historically, the honey bee was revered as a symbol of a civilizing force and the force it symbolized was trade. Trade -- aka business -- is how you make the world better pragmatically. It operates on the idea that both sides gain something of value.

I don't know how or why, but we seem to have collectively forgotten that.