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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

#61

Post by thu2111 »

Urgh, great. So Facebook presumably think this won't spread to other places, but now they folded it will.

So the news industry is going to fix the problem of falling trust and falling revenues by becoming subsidy junkies extracting wealth from tech firms. And this works because apparently politicians fear the press's ability to distort and manipulate the voter base so much that they can get whatever they want, which means that in practice both tech firms and politicians are controlled by the press, who are in turn accountable to nobody - not even anymore the market of their readers. The reputation of journalists will get much worse before it gets better (if it ever does).

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

#62

Post by 0xy »

asymptosis wrote: post #9

So Murdoch's empire gets propped up to the tune of over $300 million per year and needs nothing in exchange except keep sending traffic to his sites. Bad news for Australia for starters, but don't think Murdoch will be content just with drinking our blood. He's coming for USA and UK too, and now he has a tested playbook for getting Facebook & Friends on the leash.

The fact it's bipartisan proves both sides sell you out every time, similar to Labor giving a full-throated endorsement to the encryption ban as well as metadata retention.

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

#63

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

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.

The party is elected, and then they can change the prime minister at will. The two major parties are almost exactly the same: they both vote to pass the worst laws like anything under the national security umbrella. There is no real constitution like USA has. The people are much less engaged with politics, will never do serious protests and care much less about their rights and freedoms.

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

#64

Post by reaperducer »

SilverRed wrote: post #13
reaperducer wrote: post #8

$1 billion doesn't sound like a lot, considering the way Facebook user doom scroll. How much is that per headline+summary viewed? Maybe $0.00001?

How much do you think a headline is actually worth? The vast majority of viewers didn't chose or even want to see it. It was automatically pushed on them and they would normally have paid $0 without facebook

I know what it costs to make that headline, and Facebook got off cheap.

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

#65

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

asymptosis wrote: post #43
bdcravens wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the comment you're replying to was talking about a political agenda, but rather, replicating the financial rewards they received in Australia: "The announcement comes days after the tech giant struck a deal with Australian lawmakers to pay local publishers for their news content"

I had in mind that the political power and monetary kickbacks go hand-in-hand. Yes, it is probably widely acknowledged across USA that Murdoch wants more political power over there. But what we've seen here is what he does when he gets that power. It doesn't sit idle. He has demonstrated that with his political power in Australia, he can make Facebook bend the knee within Australia. And once he has completed his cont…

> But what we've seen here is what he does when he gets that power. It doesn't sit idle.

Of course not. He's malicious, not stupid. Unused power is pointless. He'd have to be an utter moron to waste enormous amounts of money and effort and then do nothing with the results. He wants a return on that investment. Of course he's going to try to get more money by using his power.

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

#66

Post by pests »

mythz wrote: post #52
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?

Sell the money makers. Keep the propaganda.

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

#67

Post by sofixa »

jedberg wrote: post #29
sircastor wrote: post #20

I don’t like Facebook, and I think the way it abuses its position is awful, but I don’t understand the position of the news industry or the judiciary supporting the industry. If I were to stand on a corner and tell people what was on the menu and the daily special of a cafe down the block, I cannot think of a situation where that cafe would think they were owed money for my doing this. I understand that Facebook and…

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…

> But see, this is why I think Facebook was right here. If the stores really didn't want you doing this, they could just not give you a free sample. I'm not sure why the government needs to step in here at all. If you're providing a benefit to the other stores (more foot traffic) than why should they get paid? And if the traffic you are providing isn't good, why should they let you get the free samples

Because it's neither here nor there. The traffic that trickles down to news sites is minimal because for a lot of people the title, photo and description are enough, but it's still more than the nothing they'd get if they block Google/Facebook indexing, because most people use the latter for news.

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

#68

Post by rstuart4133 »

asymptosis wrote: post #9

So Murdoch's empire gets propped up to the tune of over $300 million per year and needs nothing in exchange except keep sending traffic to his sites. Bad news for Australia for starters, but don't think Murdoch will be content just with drinking our blood. He's coming for USA and UK too, and now he has a tested playbook for getting Facebook & Friends on the leash.

You divided $1 billion by 3 years to come up with $300 million per year?

This has been a political campaign featuring truck loads of bluff and bullshit from the very start. Google's threat to "ban search in Australia" was the highlight for me. So they were going to disable the "Hay Google, navigate to ..." feature of Android phones, since as we all know that that uses search. Yeah right, pull the other one, it plays jingle bells.

If I was Facebook I want want to take the "Facebook steals news" heat off me using the punchy'ist headline I can justify, using I'd be scrounging every dollar we pay every news organisation over the entire planet, including advertising.

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

#69

Post by austhrow743 »

jedberg wrote: post #29
sircastor wrote: post #20

I don’t like Facebook, and I think the way it abuses its position is awful, but I don’t understand the position of the news industry or the judiciary supporting the industry. If I were to stand on a corner and tell people what was on the menu and the daily special of a cafe down the block, I cannot think of a situation where that cafe would think they were owed money for my doing this. I understand that Facebook and…

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…

Collaborating with the free sample store gets them more business than if they don't and others do, but less than if no one did. So "If the stores really didn't want you doing this, they could just not give you a free sample" doesn't really work.

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

#70

Post by asymptosis »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #68
asymptosis wrote: post #9

So Murdoch's empire gets propped up to the tune of over $300 million per year and needs nothing in exchange except keep sending traffic to his sites. Bad news for Australia for starters, but don't think Murdoch will be content just with drinking our blood. He's coming for USA and UK too, and now he has a tested playbook for getting Facebook & Friends on the leash.

You divided $1 billion by 3 years to come up with $300 million per year? This has been a political campaign featuring truck loads of bluff and bullshit from the very start. Google's threat to "ban search in Australia" was the highlight for me. So they were going to disable the "Hay Google, navigate to ..." feature of Android phones, since as we all know that that uses search. Yeah right, pull the other one, it plays…

I said over 300 million.

$33.333333333 recurring million per year is small change to these people.

Not sure why I would need to explain basic math on hacker news ...

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