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Facebook rejects calls to share advertising revenue with Australian media
- dannyw 6y agoAustralian here. We really are the testing ground for draconian laws to be tested and proven out before it makes its way to the west.
- mrath 6y agoI hope something good is implemented to favor local news agencies. I don't use facebook but I see how google get benefits of the other news channels. I mostly go to abc, news.com.au directly for news headlines. But I know lot of my friends use facebook for the latest news. This does not benefit the original content creator.
- umeshunni 6y agoNobody makes any money off of news these days. Publishers are just looking for someone to milk and they, of course, go after whoever has the biggest pocketbooks. Here's a good read on the fate of a US publisher that illustrates what has happened over the last 10 years to publishers https://digiday.com/media/caught-in-the-mushy-middle-how-quartz-fell-to-earth/ https://digiday.com/media/caught-in-the-mushy-middle-how-qua...
- perilunar 6y agoWhy? I have no sympathy at all News Corp and Nine Entertainment. No one is forcing them to share content on Facebook if they don't like the deal. This is pretty clearly old media trying to shake down new media. (And tell your friends to stop using Facebook for news and go to a real news site.)
- Closi 6y agoI think one argument is that the news papers do the recording, then if you share a link Facebook scrapes it, takes the image and puts it on their site (regardless of copyright/licensing status) and takes the news headline. Most users then don’t click through, but the content is stolen to fill up facebooks timeline.
- dmortin 6y agoYou can stop Facebook scraping your site via robots.txt, so the control is at the publisher. If FB crawler is blocked then it can't scrape anything and only the link is posted.
- smcleod 6y agoIt's not local news pushing for this, it's being pushed by Murdoch's media empire. Based on the poor (some would say downright disgusting) quality of their content - they absolutely do not deserve even the funding they currently have.
- nsonha 6y agoI don't really watch the news and not from Australia originally even though I live here, so forgive my stupid question: is there local news in Australia? I've never heard of any.
- ehnto 6y agoThere are a bunch of different TV networks, some with local news. I must admit I haven't kept track for a good decade or so, it's possible they've all died out. I would say local newspapers and radio are the majority of local news sources though.
- perilunar 6y agoThe ABC also has a strong local presence, with 50+ regional radio stations and their websites.
- octodog 6y agoThere's definitely local news but you'll find more locally specific programming on radio or in newspapers than on TV. On TV the ABC, Channel 7, Channel 9 and Channel 10 all have state-specific broadcasts and newsrooms while SBS runs a single national program. Because the capital cities in Australia make up such a large proportion of the population you will rarely get "local news" on TV if you live in a regional town or area. Most regional and local papers are owned by either News Corp or Australia Community Media (which was formerly owned by Fairfax before they were acquired by Nine) though, so even these local news outlets rely on the big players. If you live in Melbourne's north I recommend trying to get a hold of "The Local Paper", which is an independent paper that focuses on things like what the local council gets up to. It's a pretty different experience to reading one of the big mastheads.
- ehnto 6y agoFor anyone confused, ABC here is the Australian Broadcast Corporation, which is Australia's national news network, mostly government funded. Not to be confused with the ABC, the American Broadcast Company.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pmontra 6y agoThis is similar to what Spain did in 2014 when passed a law to make Google pay for the news they published on Google News. Google closed the Spanish version of the site. There hasn't been a Google News for Spain since then. https://www.rt.com/news/201031-spain-google-tax-law/ https://www.rt.com/news/201031-spain-google-tax-law/
- jacobush 6y agoGood
- andrewshadura 6y agoPlease, don't use RT to support your point, since it may create an impression they're a trustworthy source of information.
- pmontra 6y agoI reply because this illustrates a part of the problem, actually many of the problems with news and Google and FB. I have no idea about who RT is. For me it's only a random site linked from a search engine. It could be a news giant or a one man company. I remember the original fact so I trust the article. If this was new to me I would have to cross check with other sources but I don't always have the time to do it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoPlease point us to a trustworthy source of information. You can’t. There aren’t any.
- Traster 6y agoThat's not really the point is it, of course no organisation can be trusted 100%, but that doesn't mean that Russia's state sponsored propaganda network and actual commercial news organisations are the same. I can literally provide you links to RT doing exclusive interviews with people who have carried out chemical weapons attacks in the UK to provide a cover for the Russian government[1]. Let's not pretend that's the same as real news organisations who sometimes get things wrong. [1]: https://www.rt.com/news/438350-petrov-boshirov-interview-simonyan/ https://www.rt.com/news/438350-petrov-boshirov-interview-sim...
- Fiveplus 6y agoWhich begs me to question the eternal ambiguity about Facebook trying to position itself as a self publishing platform or that with a news arregator/personal communication hybrid model.
- readams 6y agoSuggesting that Google pay 10% of revenue to news organizations is frankly risible.
- thundergolfer 6y ago> The initiative has been strongly pushed by Australia’s two biggest media companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Nine Entertainment. These two companies are scum, and the fact that this proposal was taken seriously by the Australian government is embarrassing. Murdoch's News Corp already interfered with the country's internet infrastructure plans in order to protect its profits from cable television; this is just another attempt to stem the bleeding. If Facebook wasn't so effective a platform for Fox News, The Daily Wire, and Breitbart, I'd genuinely celebrate their role in strangling News Corp.
- nugget 6y agoThis law would establish de facto unit economics for some to-be-defined unit of news/content consumption. Clever entrepreneurs could then scale up new properties focused on the optimization of whatever that unit is, with much lower overhead/content production costs than traditional media companies. An unintended and potentially quite painful consequence follows for the two named incumbents: tremendous amounts of new, nimble, well-funded competition. Be careful what you wish for.
- chii 6y agoFacebook's effectiveness is neutral to the side of politics it pushes unfortunately. It's just that some people are not beneath using facebook to push an agenda.
- adrianN 6y agoIt's not so surprising that Australia's government listens to what Murdoch wants. After all Murdoch played an important role in their election.
- MattGaiser 6y agoWhat is it that causes news companies to lose money because of Google and Facebook? I am still visiting their site to read the article. If you only read the headline, you aren't a serious consumer of news anyway.
- ta17711771 6y ago> you aren't a serious consumer of news anyway. This is basically all of their ad dollars, what you described there.
- MattGaiser 6y agoSo do they believe that FB users will instead go to their site specifically to search for the article?
- Larrikin 6y agoWhen you come from a Google search they remove the pay wall apparently. I searched for an extension for specifically the wall street journal since people regularly post workarounds for their site on here and found the leading extension just puts the referrer as a Google search for dozens of sites. They warn you to blacklist any organizations you actually pay for or have a login for since the extension deletes all cookies as well. I assume Facebook works similarly.
- MattGaiser 6y agoIs that not something the news organization does though? Google isn't removing the paywall, they are.
- yung0 6y agoOn mobile, for example, some news sites are hosted via Google's AMP service. I think that's at least one of the avenues for this supposed 'misuse'.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoAustralia’s competition regulator, the ACCC, has estimated that Google and Facebook together earn some A$6 billion (US$4 billion) a year from advertising in the country. Leading news publishers have demanded the two companies pay at least 10% of that money each year to local news organizations. News organizations want ten percent of FB and Goog's advertising revenue? I guess I do too but this concept is facially absurd.
- fxtentacle 6y agoI don't find it too absurd if you consider that many older people go to Facebook to read the news. And by now, the young crowd is moving on, which means those older people are Facebooks main user base.
- missedthecue 6y agoSo a company getting outcompeted wants the government to force its competiton to give it free money. And you don't think that's absurd?
- asdfaoeu 6y agoCountries protect their domestic companies all the time.
- Mirioron 6y agoSure, but you generally don't want to be blatant about it. If the US decides to start swinging its weight around to protect Google/Facebook from this (or as retaliation) then Australia is most definitely going to come out on the losing side.
- lenkite 6y agoThis is happening in the US too. Google/Facebook should pay for the news they use: https://www.editorandpublisher.com/columns/shoptalk-google-facebook-should-pay-for-news-they-use/ https://www.editorandpublisher.com/columns/shoptalk-google-f...
- rrdharan 6y agoWon’t this just play out the same way it did in Germany and Spain?
- ehnto 6y agoThe only difference here is that Rupert Murdoch's media empire has a fair bit of political influence in Australia, and they are the ones behind this.
- foepys 6y agoFor the uninitiated: Germany passed legislation that requires websites to pay a fee even to show headlines. Google said they won't pay and will pull the plug on Google News in Germany if they need to pay a single cent. The media organizations then granted an exclusion to Google News, giving Google News a competitive advantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_publishers#Comparisons_with_other_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_...
- Mirioron 6y agoTo note: one company tried going without Google, saw the number of visitors drop, and went back to Google for the deal.
- forgingahead 6y agoSo the other shoe has finally dropped: If it hasn't been apparent to everyone yet, the vast majority of "anti-tech"/anti-FB articles has been the dying gasps of attempted relevance from an antiquated media ecosystem. Old media is upset and angry that they no longer have a monopoly on controlling the narrative. They're scared that their business model is no longer viable. They're worried about their loss of credibility (of their own making). This is just the latest attempt (as blatant as it may be) to wrangle the state to help them survive. Let's see if it'll work.
- Barrin92 6y agoWhile it's true that this is the reason for companies like Murdoch, the small and mid-sized ad and journalism industry suffers from this consolidation and market power as well and just brushing the issue off by appealing to unsympathetic entities like Murdoch is just as wrong. It's not at all wrong to be concerned about the diversity of the news and ad ecosystem and what Facebooks or others role is in vacuuming up economic rents due to sheer size.
- baryphonic 6y agoI sometimes thought I was a singleton set of people who believed this. I'd add that the old media is also in a vicious cycle wherein they can only attempt to gain dwindling share of attention by reducing their credibility. At the micro level, (e.g. on Twitter, where a pan-outlet collection of journalists "mutually discover" the preferred narrative) this sometimes looks a bit like fixed point iteration about a circular firing squad. I would predict that in this case, Facebook is probably right that news content could be excised from Australia without much cost to the company. It may hasten the demise of the old media in Australia.
- ehnto 6y agoWhile I will celebrate the fall of NewsCorp, old media does include a swath of local television and print media that are doing good work for the communities they're part of. I often hear that concern met with unsympathetic calls to get with the times, but making a media company purely out of social media isn't profitable either. We'll be left with nothing but social media if we're not careful.
- remotists 6y agoThis just feels like the old gatekeepers are envious of the new gatekeepers. Neither of them deserve sympathy for the actions, however NewsCorp and Nine Entertainment might the first ones to buckle under this.
- ehnto 6y agoHere's hoping. NewsCorp have had a tangibly negative impact on my country, and likely everywhere they operate. If only all they wanted was profit, you could at least understand them. But they seem to want division and violence too. Someone needs to tell Rupert that he can't spend his money in a country that has fallen apart.
- remotists 6y agoThey want profit. Everything else is a by-product. If I as businessman want to put money on a media venture, I will choose the conservative side too.
- octodog 6y agoThat's just wrong. News Corp has for years allowed its newspapers and editorial divisions to lose money or operate inefficiently while it can cross-subsidise them from cash cows such as Foxtel. It is quite clear that Murdoch highly values the influence that his media conglomerate can give him. Yes, money is important too, but it is not the only thing that matters to the shareholders (a.k.a. Rupert Murdoch).
- dbuder 6y agoWe are such a banana republic. Can't stand up to FAANG usually but if Murdoch makes a request we'll just invent new types of laws. Ever asked your local member to change or create a law? Might as well tell a tree.
- laingc 6y agoIf I had been trying unsuccessfully to monetise my uninformed, poorly researched, and barely coherent opinions, I too would pivot to a strategy of blaming platforms that peddle similarly poor content for free and demand 10% of their advertising revenue.
- sjy 6y agoIt’s unfortunate that the actual submission by Facebook hasn’t been published and the linked article provides little background on the “mandatory code of conduct” proposal Facebook is responding to. This relates to a concepts paper the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released on 19 May [1], following the government’s announcement on 20 April [2] that it had “directed the ACCC to develop a mandatory code of conduct to address bargaining power imbalances between digital platforms and media companies.” [1] https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code/concepts-paper https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... [2] https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/josh-frydenberg-2018/media-releases/accc-mandatory-code-conduct-govern-commercial https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/josh-frydenberg-... The concepts paper seeks feedback on several alternative proposals and says nothing about appropriating 10% of Google and Facebook’s revenue (this suggestion appears to come from another unpublished submission from a news outlet). The ACCC paper highlights a range of problems faced by news publishers seeking to negotiate with digital platforms, including the difficulty of estimating the value to Facebook and Google of linked and embedded news content (especially without access to Facebook and Google’s internal data), the lack of transparency in the algorithms Facebook and Google use to rank and display content, and the inability of small publishers to meaningfully communicate with these companies through automated support systems. The paper also points out that the threat of government intervention appears to have triggered a response from Facebook and Google on some of these issues. Addressing information asymmetry and other market imperfections is part of the ACCC’s purpose of “enhancing the welfare of Australians through the promotion of competition and fair trading” [3]. Let’s not immediately write this off as an anti-competitive attempt to entrench “old media.” [3] https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/caca2010265/s2.html https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/caca20102...
- freakynit 6y agoJust stop these social/tech giants from including anything more than a headline and a link from their platforms. If they don't want to include that either, even better.