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Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

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Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#51

Post by mullingitover »

It's telling that the response to pulling all content from news sites wasn't "This is a fair outcome since we're accusing Facebook of profiting from our content in a one-sided fashion."

It's pretty obvious that the news publishers are desperately dependent of facebook traffic, so this move was a breathtaking act of chutzpah on their part. Facebook wasn't harmed in the slightest by losing news publishers content, but they were facing doom. It was amusing that this was painted as censorship, as if somehow facebook took them off the internet entirely.

I'm not even a fan of Facebook, but they were in a fight with even worse people so it was with a lot of reservations that I was rooting for them in this fight. I would've preferred to see Facebook route around the major publishers entirely and just give grants and promotion directly to smaller independent news publishers.

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#52

Post by mythz »

shanecp wrote: post #50

This is a very (bad) political strategy, well played by Murdoch. To get some insight, read Bob Iger's (Disney ex-CEO) book. He explains how Murdoch was worried about the rising tech-giants, how news is losing edge and his decision to sell to Disney. The sale to Disney happened as a direct result of Murdoch seeing the threat (i.e people moving away from news). Unfortunately for Australia, they cover over 50% of media,…

> The sale to Disney happened as a direct result of Murdoch seeing the threat (i.e people moving away from news).

Then why did Murdoch effectively choose to only keep their news channels (inc. Fox News), but sell the rest of 21st Century Fox (Film & TV) to Disney?

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#53

Post by jedberg »

harikb wrote: post #37
jedberg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy isn't quite right. More like this: There are a bunch of stores in your area that offer free samples. You open your own store where people can tell you what stores they like, you go and grab the free sample, and then give the sample out at your store for free in exchange for there person's email and phone number and filing out a survey on which samples they like. Then you tell them where the sample came f…

I thought news sites maintained their own pages and followers on Facebook. How does your analogy account for that?

That’s separate. I’m just talking about when a user posts a link to the news in their feed.

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#54

Post by jedberg »

jbob2000 wrote: post #45
jedberg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy isn't quite right. More like this: There are a bunch of stores in your area that offer free samples. You open your own store where people can tell you what stores they like, you go and grab the free sample, and then give the sample out at your store for free in exchange for there person's email and phone number and filing out a survey on which samples they like. Then you tell them where the sample came f…

This analogy doesn't work because information is not a limited commodity. Once you've "printed" the news, its value drops to 0. This isn't the old days where you had to physically print 1,000,000 papers if you wanted the message to get to 1,000,000 people. You can "print" the news once now, and EVERYONE can see it.

No analogy is perfect. :)

But even still, it costs them money to research and write the news. Distribution is free but creation is not.

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#55

Post by thrixton »

hnick wrote: post #32
arthurcolle wrote: post #10

RIP Fourth Estate

It sure is a lot of money for their spin machines. Making it even easier to drown out the independents who, if I understood it when I looked into it earlier, aren't getting a cent [in Australia at least]. I hope I am wrong about that last part at least.

Adds another bar to independent startups. Have to have revenue of minimum $150K before they can be considered as a news outlet. Just more consolidation, disgrace.

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#56

Post by wyqydsyq »

drenvuk wrote: post #39

As an American I'm standing in a glass house when I ask this question but how does an Australian end up voting for these politicians? How do they get elected? There have been a couple of baffling laws that have passed and I'm wondering if Australians by and large are ok with them.

Like USA, Australia's politics are dominated by two major parties most people feel compelled to vote for, and even if you do vote for some independent third party, our preferential voting system ends in your votes going towards one of the two major parties when the independent you actually voted for gets "knocked out" anyway. The two major parties nominate whoever they like to lead them, generally their candidates are whoever will obediently follow the party line and be a good patsy.

So similarly to the USA, every election cycle is a meaningless facade where we pretend we still live in a democracy and that we have any control at all over who our "elected" leaders are. I'm sure the majority of Americans don't want Biden as their leader, but they're stuck with him because ultimately the two major parties gave the voters two bad choices. Oh you wanted a national leader who wasn't an out-of-touch old white man beholden to the desires of his lobbyist benefactors? Well bad luck, because your only two choices are out-of-touch old white men beholden to the desires of their lobbyist benefactors.

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#57

Post by tqi »

beachy wrote: post #15
tqi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB doesn't make 80bn in Australia

TFA does not say that $1B is for Australia - implies it's worldwide.

Yeah TFA does no such thing. This whole thing is due to the new Australian law, which it is clearly what this deal is intended to satisfy.

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#58

Post by drenvuk »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #56
drenvuk wrote: post #39

As an American I'm standing in a glass house when I ask this question but how does an Australian end up voting for these politicians? How do they get elected? There have been a couple of baffling laws that have passed and I'm wondering if Australians by and large are ok with them.

Like USA, Australia's politics are dominated by two major parties most people feel compelled to vote for, and even if you do vote for some independent third party, our preferential voting system ends in your votes going towards one of the two major parties when the independent you actually voted for gets "knocked out" anyway. The two major parties nominate whoever they like to lead them, generally their candidates ar…

Thank you for this.

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#59

Post by jeeeb »

shanecp wrote: post #47
catmanjan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably, Facebook pays zero tax in Australia, and I'm sure the government will be taxing this tithe...

That assumption is incorrect. They already pay taxes, both directly and indirectly (collected from people as GST).

Nitpick: It would be more correct to say that FB collects GST for the Australian Tax Office. In an accounting sense only consumers actually pay GST.

Also worth pointing out that FB’s tax bill in Australia is pretty minimal (rightly or wrongly). The tax on these payments could easily end up being worth more than Facebook’s tax bill in Australia.

FB’s Australian revenue last year was $2.2 billion on which they paid $13.5 million in tax (https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/google-fac...).

Actually if you think of these measures as a creative way around US strong arming on a digital services tax they make a lot more sense despite the legislation itself being a weird mess.

Re: Facebook says it will pay news industry $1B over 3 years

#60

Post by thu2111 »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #56
drenvuk wrote: post #39

As an American I'm standing in a glass house when I ask this question but how does an Australian end up voting for these politicians? How do they get elected? There have been a couple of baffling laws that have passed and I'm wondering if Australians by and large are ok with them.

Like USA, Australia's politics are dominated by two major parties most people feel compelled to vote for, and even if you do vote for some independent third party, our preferential voting system ends in your votes going towards one of the two major parties when the independent you actually voted for gets "knocked out" anyway. The two major parties nominate whoever they like to lead them, generally their candidates ar…

In fairness to the USA, Biden was selected via the primary system. In fact voters very much did want 'out of touch old white men'. If the Democratic party had been able to simply pick the leader themselves it would be black women from here on out forever - see how Hillary ended up being nominated and losing to Trump for a taste of what the primary system usually manages to avoid.
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