47 ms·

Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news

524 points by nreece 6y ago

darwinwhy 6y ago
I wonder how the quoted "royalty-style system" would work. If it's anything like reverse ads where Google and Facebook pay per click/impression, what's to stop them from simply boycotting Australian news sites?
- 1f60c 6y ago
  I think this is going to happen/has happened in Europe. It hurts publishers most of all, IMHO.
- postingawayonhn 6y ago
  Apparently they'll have to boycott all news sites. I hope they are able to challenge this law in the courts. > "They can't discriminate between international and Australian news. So they can't turn off Australian news and just use international news. That's discrimination. This is a mandatory code, the platforms must participate. They could stop showing news media on their platforms completely – that is, no local or international media – but short of that, they are compelled." https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-and-google-face-10m-for-media-code-breaches-20200731-p55h6p https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-a...
42droids 6y ago
“In 2019, Google stopped showing news snippets from European publishers on search results for its French users, while Germany’s biggest news publisher, Axel Springer, allowed the search engine to run snippets of its articles after traffic to its sites to plunged.“ This is the sad reality, this is why these companies can do whatever they want. There is always someone who sells out and forces everyone to give in.
- smabie 6y ago
  Making money for investors isn't 'selling out'. It's like how, you know, a business should be operating.
ferros 6y ago
What implications will this have elsewhere. Where is the line drawn? I don’t disagree with this but it feels like this will open a hornets nest.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  It depends on if others follow. Australia and New Zealand are outliers when it comes to freedom of speech/expression anyway. They officially censor the media through a censorship office. I believe this doesn't affect the news directly, but movies and video games (I don't know about books) can't be published without government approval. That hasn't really had much of an effect for the rest of the world other than people making fun of Australia.
postingawayonhn 6y ago
I really hope they just block all the news sites from their platforms. Let's see how they like it when thier traffic dries up. From other reporting I've read the law does say they have to treat domestic and international news the same so it could cause an issue with that approach.
- smabie 6y ago
  Yeah, honestly, that's what I hope they do. The amount of entitlement and this holier than thou attitude among the media is pretty annoying. Figure out how to make money like any other business. And if you can't, we'll then I guess you don't matter that much. This decision is crony capitalism at its worst.
  - simias 6y ago
    I would 100% support this mindset if tech giants paid taxes where they make their money. I don't know what the situation is like in Australia but in Europe it's pretty insane. You can't abuse the system on one side and then argue the "efficient market hypothesis" on the other. Google&friends are not making money and competing "like any other business".
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      > Google&friends are not making money and competing "like any other business". I don't understand this. Can you explain, please?
      - jokethrowaway 6y ago
        Several big-enough companies use tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes or lobby the government themselves. This is not specific to big tech though, it's a single point of failure of having a centralised government that is easily corrupted by rich corporations.
        marcus_holmes 6y ago
chrismsimpson 6y ago
Don't be fooled. This is merely a ploy from a conservative government to keep Rupert relevant. He owns 70% of the print journalism here.
- ipsum2 6y ago
  I mean, it's in the article: > Media companies including News Corp Australia, a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA.O), lobbied hard for the government to force the U.S. companies to the negotiating table amid a long decline in advertising revenue.
- stevenjohns 6y ago
  Your suggestion aside, I find it odd that people call the Australian Liberal Party conservative. They banned firearms, introduced the GST and made same-sex marriage legal. They've now introduced the largest welfare package in Australian history. In comparison to most governments in the world, they're probably considered center-left at worst.
  - leadingthenet 6y ago
    Liberal does not mean left-wing. Thankfully, that particular Americanism hasn’t penetrated into Australia yet.
    - vidarh 6y ago
      Well, it did back in the 18th century when the left/right split was first named and well into the 19th - it represented the split between monarchists and opponents in the French assembly after the revolution, and so the liberals made up most of the original left. You see the after-effects in e.g. Norway, where the liberal party is literally named "Venstre" ("Left") It's just that most places the liberals have been firmly out-flanked on the left since.
      - leadingthenet 6y ago
        Yes, you're right. I concede that point.
ma2rten 6y ago
Didn't Spain try to do the same thing with Google News, which just ended up with them shutting down the product in Spain? https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9609687?hl=en https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9609...
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  Yup. I was in Spain from March to May. It was annoying to be in the habit of typing "news.google.com" when trying to get news on COVID-19. It wasn't hard to bypass, but it was annoying.
  - auggierose 6y ago
    I like how they recommend the Mexican edition instead
    - bzb3 6y ago
      Which makes no sense, except for international news... And maybe not even that
  - Uberphallus 6y ago
    It wasn't for me it's hard, in reverse. I no longer live in Spain, haven't for 10 years. But every time I go to Google News I get the message of it not being available in my country. My primary language in my Google account isn't Spanish, my address isn't in Spain, my Google Wallet has a non Spanish card on it, so on and so forth, yet I can only access Google News when I'm logged out.
    - Cantbekhan 6y ago
      Off topic but I had the same issue. Did you change your Google payment profile? (which has nothing to do with all the profile addresses you can set in various places) https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/9028746?hl=en https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/9028746?hl=... Because you can't actually change your country on your Google payment profile. You need to create a new one and then switch the new one. I had to do this to switch my US account to an EU account with the EU GDPR user consent options. Your Google account is tied to the payment profile country AFAIK.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Google will probably eliminate Google News for Australians. Why exactly would Google pay money for a service which earns nothing?
- ing33k 6y ago
  most of the news sites will use some form of programmatic ads which will involve Google in some form inevitably.
- grayhatter 6y ago
  Doesn't the news you choose to read tell Google a lot about you? Google is very good about shuttering projects that doesn't make them money. I'm sure if they're still running the service. It's making them money some how.
  - lrem 6y ago
    Brand recognition? Customer goodwill? Not everything needs to be outright profitable. Google has a lot of money to spend on sending small gifts in random directions. Source: as a Googler I got paid to literally "go find some vulnerable projects on Github and send a PR to patch them"[1]. Google does not make money in any way from things like that, but keeps doing them, just because they can. [1]: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2017/03/operation-rosehub.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2017/03/operation-rosehub....
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    Nowhere near as much as shopping searches. It's kind of hard to monetize an interest in (say) Singaporean politics or space rockets.
    - MajorBee 6y ago
      It's not that hard to monetize interest in damn near _anything_ (as long as it is not clearly illegal, I guess). For the two examples you've posted, maybe advertise flights/vacations to Singapore if you show a persistent interest in Singapore, and market model rockets, space flight simulator toys, really all sorts of consumer-grade commodity products adjacent to the space industry.
imgabe 6y ago
Business idea: Get GPT-3 to churn out newsy-sounding stories for next to nothing and host them in Australia where the government forces other companies to pay you for them. Free money.
ehnto 6y ago
Another flailing grasp at new media as Rupert Murdoch's tabloid empire loses its grip on the future. I am only disappointed that our government would be complicit. Make no mistake, I am no new media fan boy. In fact I hope this has the side effect of cleaning up the misinformation that spins around Facebook et al. But it is still sad to see such an obvious manipulation of our government.
- quink 6y ago
  > I am only disappointed that our government woild be complicit. Hell, Uncle Rupert is the reason why we've had more of the coalition in power than we otherwise would have. Why would they bite the hand that feeds them when they can bite of a piece of Google's pie and regurgitate it into Murdoch's ugly maw instead. Google, shut down Google News the second this passes, please. I don't want a single cent to go to the conglomerate that was at least partially responsible for bringing us Trump, Johnson and Morrison. And Bush, Thatcher and Howard.
  - quink 6y ago
    Hmmm... been downvoted and flagged. Here's my personal playlist I made for the day when Rupert Murdoch finally bites the dust, just a collection of ideas for those who read this article and are pushed to finally make their own if his actions over 89 hate-fuelled years haven't been enough already: "Fanfare for the Common Man", "Beautiful Day", "I gotta feeling", "Celebration", "Walking On Sunshine", "We Are The Champions", "Holiday", "Heal the World", "Lovely Day", "Another One Bites The Dust", "Don't Stop Believin'", "Chariots Of Fire".
    - SiempreViernes 6y ago
      Don't you think "we are the champions" is way overplayed? I suggest "Don't stop me now" if you want to stick Queen. Or maybe "I'm Still Standing" by Elton John if you want something a more gloating in this context.
      - quink 6y ago
guidedlight 6y ago
Unfortunately this will just cause more misinformation and conspiracy theories to circulate. Fake news is free. Real news is behind paywalls.
- quink 6y ago
  The main benefactor would be News Corp Australia. Apart from some snippets of tolerable local coverage it's all a big pile of shit that stinks from Uncle Rupert's ugly head down. Misinformation and conspiracy theories are what they peddle. This single company controls 70% of the newspaper market and lies, misleading and cheating are part of their DNA. I hope they don't see a single red cent out of this and if it takes the shutdown of Google News then so be it.
grayhatter 6y ago
My first instinct was this is a bad move. But given how Google is so quick to kill projects that don't make them money. (And they're still running the service... for now at least) Paired with how I personally detest how they pushed AMP giving them more control and more user data. I can't say I'm convinced they didn't do this to themselves. Nor am I convinced this isn't somehow better. I'm sure at the very least the results will be interesting.
HugThem 6y ago
Is this about copyright? Aka "If you copy more then X words, your violate the authors copyright" so that one has to negotiate with the author about copying more then X words? Or do they force Google and Facebook to publish those snippets and pay for them? Making media kind of state controlled? If so, who decides which news have to be included? Or what is this about?
- inopinatus 6y ago
  It’s about News Corporation’s exceptionally close ties to the party that currently holds the majority in Australian federal parliament. This grants them the opportunity to use Australia as a licensing model test venue, as well as hoping to normalise the idea as acceptable rather than farcical in at least one western laissez-faire capitalist democracy in the hope this can be leveraged into others.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    Also about journalism's complete failure to adapt to a changing business landscape and find a different business model. In one way, this is good. It will fail miserably, and demonstrate to newspaper CEO's that "Big Tech" is not stealing their revenues. Then they can move on to try something different.
    - sjy 6y ago
      If the system fails, and consequently newspapers fail, while tech companies thrive, how will that demonstrate to newspaper CEOs that big tech isn’t stealing their revenue?
      - marcus_holmes 6y ago
        Because newspapers are failing anyway, and tech companies are thriving anyway. So if this system fails, nothing changed. If this system works, and suddenly Australian newspapers are viable while newspapers elsewhere are still struggling, then it will prove that forcing tech to pay for content works, and that therefore tech was probably stealing media's revenue.
deleted 6y ago
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Jedd 6y ago
> For every A$100 spent on online advertising in Australia, excluding classifieds, nearly a third goes to Google and Facebook, according to Frydenberg. This from the Treasurer of Australia. I hope he understands that the same holds true for every A$1000 spent, too. But the local Murdoch outpost's eagerness for this to happen certainly explains the motivation here.
gok 6y ago
They should comply and just delist all News Corp content.
- jackjeff 6y ago
  Exactly what happened for google news in Spain. I suppose this includes the search engine. So if these people don’t want their thing to turn up in text results, why not update the robots.txt and close shop the next month? I have no sympathy for Google and even less for Facebook. But that’s a shitty argument to make. It makes me want to create a client side google news clone, but that actually steal all the article content and remove all ads. Try blocking that.
ipsum2 6y ago
People in this thread seem to believe that this is only relevant to Google News. This is actually for all of Google, including Search. According to https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-and-google-face-10m-for-media-code-breaches-20200731-p55h6p https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-a... > Mr Sims said if Google took a similar approach to its actions in Spain when it was asked to pay for news on its Google News tab, it would be irrelevant because the code covered news content in Google's primary function, search. So it seems like the ultimatum is: pay Australia media companies ~$1b or don't list any news media (including international news) on Google Search for Australian users. Interesting dilemma.
- quink 6y ago
  Mr Sims here is ACCC chairman Rod Sims. The same who rammed through so many terrible decisions around the NBN, just as one example, including the POI decision which in one fell swoop eradicated all bits of ISP competition that had arisen in the ADSL2+ space. Funny thing for a "Competition and Consumer Commission" to do, yet here we are. Internode's blood is on his hands.
  - doctor_eval 6y ago
    Well I agree re the PoI, but internode did pretty well, they got a $100M exit; lots of other ISPs and suppliers hit the wall. It was a nightmare decision to go from what, 7 POIs to over 200? Made no sense at all. Mind you the entire NBN from soup to nuts has been and remains a disaster. Sent from my faulty HFC NBN (gone down 4 times in the last 2 days)
- rosege 6y ago
  So does that mean having a hyper-link to a news article needs to be paid for? (Genuine question!)
  - ipsum2 6y ago
    That's what I wondered too. From the article, it seems like they're only targeting Facebook and Google for now. To apply the law equally, it seems like it should affect all websites that link to or copy the meta description tag of a news site.
dantheman 6y ago
Isn't this something the publishers can just stop with a robots.txt? Or do they want Google to continue to link to them and just charge them for it? I hope Google just drops them from the index.
- kevsim 6y ago
  It's definitely the latter. They still want to be indexed of course and I'd assume they'd rather be included in Google News and paid for it rather than not included.
- criddell 6y ago
  I hope Google and Facebook recognize the value they get from news publishers and understand the value society gets from journalism and they do more to support that journalism that benefits everybody.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Haha, I went to the websites of the guys pushing for this. News.com.au Hoo boy am I glad I don’t get value from that. Oof. Dang. Look at that. Oh boy.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I recognize the value I get from news publishers and try to support them. It would never in a million years occur to me that, when I tell someone "here's this neat article I read about new studies on the minimum wage", I owe the newspaper for being allowed to do that.
    - criddell 6y ago
      Sure. If telling people about the news is making you money, why not share some of the profit from doing that with the newspaper? If you don't do that, aren't you in effect killing the golden goose?
      - Nasrudith 6y ago
travisoneill1 6y ago
This seems absurd. Companies typically pay Google to drive traffic through ads, but in this case they are legislating that Google pay them for driving traffic? This sounds like the store paying the customer to take its product. Wouldn't the obvious solution be for Google to just stop listing these news sites? Am I missing something here?
- lopis 6y ago
  You can make a case that Google wouldn't make any money if they didn't have content. They have trained the market into believing we need them and to pay them unholy amounts of money to be on top of all search results. But without content and search results, no one uses Google.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    Google has also started to show generated answers/summaries in the search to make the user not visit the external site. Answers and image search should be opt in for copright holder.
  - travisoneill1 6y ago
    Right, but site owners are already able to opt out of being indexed by google, and almost all choose to be indexed.
biggidywiggidy 6y ago
So much stockholm syndrome here on HN.
beilabs 6y ago
I'm wondering if this will cause a further reduction in traffic to certain Murdoch publications. The only profitable parts of their newspaper divisions seem to be centered around gambling.
raxxorrax 6y ago
I think it is wrong that these platforms promote certain content and even pay for the articles. This is how you get an unhealthy, nepotistic media landscape.
m0zg 6y ago
A year or two from now: Australia doesn't have mainstream news anymore after Google and Facebook ban links to them from its properties to avoid paying "for news".
- sjy 6y ago
  It’s now been a year or two since various HN commenters proclaimed that Australia had “nuked its tech industry from orbit” when the new encryption laws came in, but that doesn’t seem to have come true. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18616303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18616303
  - m0zg 6y ago
    That's because the tech industry doesn't really care about their users' privacy. It does care very much about profits, however.
ekianjo 6y ago
Is that a world first? I thought they enacted the same thing in France before? https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/france-and-australia-to-google-and-facebook-pay-for-news/ https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/france-and-australia-to...
ajxs 6y ago
Lots of the comments here are criticising this decision on the basis of News Corporation's very clear political involvement. While I share their sentiment regarding News Corporation and their blatant partisanship, I would like to highlight that Facebook is not an apolitical entity. My view is that anyone concerned about the blatant partisan politics of the Australian news media should be equally concerned about the political overreach of big tech. The latter being far more equipped for the propagation of information benefiting their own agenda.
- stevenjohns 6y ago
  Completely spot on. They are both two sides of failure: one creating the garbage and the other that takes center-stage in its distribution. What the Australian government can do about News Corp becomes a question of media freedom, whereas Facebook and Google peddling it doesn't introduce that ethical or legal complication. I could be wrong here though -- happy to be corrected.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- makomk 6y ago
  The two aren't comparable. News Corporation is political in the sense that they effectively decide who wins the next election in countries like Australia and the UK and all the political parties have to seek out their favour and pursue policies that meet with their approval to win. Facebook is political in the sense that they refused to use their power to tilt the last US presidential election towards the candidate the mainstream media wanted. That the media considers the latter to be the threat to democracy says a lot about who they think should actually control the country.
  - ajxs 6y ago
    It would be extremely foolish to think that Facebook is an organisation without its own political agenda. Even this article itself contains an extremely politicised statement from the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, criticising the Australian government for their intervention in the free market. These companies make decisions like any other to maximise their power and profit. Unlike most companies however, they're in a position to use information to leverage their position. I presume your post is talking about Clinton? Alphabet Inc. has made almost $27mil in campaign contributions, including contributing $1.6mil to Clinton's campaign in 2016. They've spent almost $89mil in lobbying since 1990. These big tech companies obviously have a stake in our democracy and choose to take an active role. Thinking they're impartial is incredibly naive. > That the media considers the latter to be the threat to democracy says a lot about who they think should actually control the country. I think they're both a threat to democracy. I believe that the Australian government should do all it can to limit the influence that multinational corporations have on our local political landscape, categorically. The only thing I fear more than partisan local media organisations, are partisan international media organisations that wield even more power. I don't for one second trust Facebook's own hidden agenda any more than I trust News Corporation's.
deleted 6y ago
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erikrothoff 6y ago
What does this mean for RSS feeds and feed readers? I guess a case can be made for non-cloud readers to be excempt from this logic, but readers like Feedly or our feeder.co?
- sjy 6y ago
  The code would only apply to Google and Facebook, but may be applied to other digital platforms in the future “where fundamental bargaining power imbalances with Australian news businesses emerge.”
gl3nnleblanc 6y ago
Why doesn't this incentivize Facebook/Google to create their own news service, with reporters and all? That would certainly be a bleak outcome.
mmahemoff 6y ago
Typical mainstream coverage of a tech story that glosses over all the detail, leaving everyone in this thread to speculate about all the details, such as which results it applies to and how will they distribute the revenue. My 2p guess is it's all about snippets and any other displayed information which would stop the user proceeding to an external result. Some % of total revenue distributed to owners of the snippet content, though it would be hard to determine the breakdown even for a single result page.
- mxxx 6y ago
  Yeah, can anyone explain to me how FB/G are actually accused of giving paid content away for free? All the Murdoch content is behind paywalls in Aus. Is it literally just headlines and the free 3 sentences or whatever a scraper/aggregator would display?
  - kyleee 6y ago
    Isn't that the perennial problem even with sites like HN? A significant amount of people derive value from reading headlines and short snippets of content?
    - dazc 6y ago
      Isn't this also a method pay-walled sites use to get subscribers? Otherwise, why not just block Google in robots.txt?
      - onli 6y ago
        They still want to be found. They just also want to be paid for the privilege of being listed on a search result page.
      - paulie_a 6y ago
        Google should just start putting a huge red box around pay walled articles. It would basically indicate "don't bother with this site"
acd 6y ago
I have an issue with that people consume news from these sites through recommendations algorithms. Recommendations algorithms just suggest news that you might be interested in, so you miss reading the rest. Ie you consume news through filter bubbles. A filter bubble is where you see the world through your personal curated filter glasses. I would argue that such filtering creates polarized world views where you get less accommodating for views which does not match your own filtered world view. In summary these platforms may in some sense undermine democracy where we respect other with different view points than our own. Plus it’s essential for democracy that we pay for local news journalists which dig and investigate local politicians decisions. Local news feed national news networks which in turn feed international news. Filter bubble article mentioning news filtering https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble Article that social media may cause polarized views https://scholar.harvard.edu/sounman_hong/political-polarization-twitter-social-media-may-contribute-online-extremism https://scholar.harvard.edu/sounman_hong/political-polarizat... Local journalism https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/28/local-journalism-democracy-us-newspapers https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/28/local-journali...
nl 6y ago
Notably this doesn't apply to news from non-Australian operating companies or to the publicly funded broadcasters. If I was Google or FB I know what I'd be thinking about doing now.
peignoir 6y ago
And with GPT-3 or any similar technology coming journalism will be even more under pressure of displacement. I guess the future will be data collectors
- baq 6y ago
  wonder if you could use GPT-3 to rephrase snippets or whole articles and avoid the new fee...
  - rydre 6y ago
    Yeah, I have built a proof of concept for this, but without GPT-3. Works well except for the edge cases. Aka not fully automatable yet so I never showed it to anyone.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > wonder if you could use GPT-3 to rephrase snippets or whole articles and avoid the new fee... That'd be just wonderful once someone builds an adversarial model to trick the GPT-3 summarizer to output disinformation or other garbage.
quink 6y ago
Just another point of interest for our international friends and because 'Ctrl-F' for 'Costello' hasn't brought up anything either: Peter Costello was, until 2007, the deputy leader and treasurer of the federal government, consisting then of the same parties that are pushing for this legislation. Peter Costello, the same, is also since 2016 chairman of Nine Entertainment Co., the media company that would get the second highest amount of money under this legislation, right after Murdoch's own. Yeah, Australia's kind of screwed up like that.
Bloggerzune 6y ago
While it's not the selling point politically, I think those lobbying for things like this are very much happy with any monoculture that results. With services like Google News, people can get exposed to news from various media outlets, but by killing it through lobbying for absurd regulatory burdens on aggregators the well known larger outlets can choke out access to their competition. This of course is hampered to some extent by the reality that many will just rely on other users posting on social media for news updates, and if that too is choked out through regulation on platforms, many will probably just skip the news or reduce their consumption in favor of other things like entertainment. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/How-to-improve-your-blog.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/How-to-improve-your-blog...
ehmish 6y ago
FYI for those interested this is the announcement of the policy on the site of the organisation that wrote the policy https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code/draft-legislation https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...
shmerl 6y ago
Sounds like failing legacy businesses trying to use the government to ensure profits while facing inability to compete. That's going to work so well for them. Why does Australian public allow such laws to pass?
urthor 6y ago
Google and Facebook will just stop showing results from participating news outlets. Frankly they have enough user generated content already they don't need these companies. If it bans snippets and allows headlines for free then they'll do that, but honestly they have no need to pay a cent.
marban 6y ago
I'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product. But then they always say that they're helping you, and that's true too, but still, if people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news. So I guess you should pay each other. But I haven't figured it out fully yet. -- Andy Warhol
- alexmingoia 6y ago
  Says the guy who took other people’s images and sold them...
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    Warhol had a fascinating perspective on mass-produced pop culture, having enough insight to pretty much game the system
  - slim 6y ago
    every artist does that. he just did it in a straight, sorryless way. hence the concept in his conceptual art.
    - yesenadam 6y ago
      > every artist does that. Um, no.
  - marban 6y ago
    You should read his bio.
  - nix23 6y ago
    That's why Macintosh and he was a perfect match, one took pictures the other took windows-es (xerox) ;)
  - montjoy 6y ago
PostThisTooFast 6y ago
This is as stupid as the U.S. broadcasters' caterwauling about Aereo. Google is only showing ABSTRACTS of a story, which incites people to visit the publisher's site and INCREASE its traffic (and thus revenue). Google does plenty of despicable and underhanded things, but providing FREE TRAFFIC is one of them? NO.
zmmmmm 6y ago
Some of the most interesting part is not even about paying. For example, they must notify the news providers of algorithmic changes 28 days in advance before making them, and enable the news organisation to "filter or remove" comments on their content. It is oddly self-contradictory as it both states that a digital platform may not discrimminate b/w a "registered news organisation" and non-registered news org, but also mandates a whole raft of areas where it must discrimminate and give special consideration to a "registered news organisastion". This almost seems like a legal trap so they are in violation no matter what they do. Interestingly, when all else fails, the arbitration panel must make a decision that is "in the public interest" - which seems to open a loophole where Google / Facebook could argue that the value of free / open information is more in the public interest than supporting proprietary news organisation to paywall their content. It would be hilarious if it backfired, though I am sure the arbitration panel will be carefully constructed to ensure it is not sympathetic to tech companies. See: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill%20-%20TREASURY%20LAWS%20AMENDENT%20%28NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%29%20BILL%202020.pdf https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...
rswail 6y ago
So before anyone goes off half-cocked, the proposed legislation applies to: 1. News businesses that are registered with ACMA and comply with the codes for print/TV/radio regarding content, eg press council etc and publish predominantly Australian content for Australian audiences 2. Have revenue over $150K/year 3. Digital platforms (as determined by the Treasurer) It requires both sides to: a) provide each other with information, b) negotiate in good faith, c) submit to formal arbitration if they can't agree. The platforms are required (as a minimum) to not discriminate between news sources, what they collect about users that click on the news sources (where that is different to what they normally collect), and how they make that information available to the news source. They're required to explain how they display paywalled contant, how they display non-paywall content, how they display advertising, and, if they change that, how the change will affect the news sources. It also requires the platform to, if they allow user comments (eg a FB page), allow the news source to control/disable/moderate those comments. The news sources are allowed to co-operate in the negotiations. It's not a long bill and it's in plain(-ish) English. https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill%20-%20TREASURY%20LAWS%20AMENDENT%20%28NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%29%20BILL%202020.pdf https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...
- Majromax 6y ago
  > b) negotiate in good faith, That's part of the problem, though -- it doesn't define what they're to negotiate in good faith over. Ordinary negotiations involve some kind of proprietary, property, or contract right. I negotiate with my employer to provide my services in exchange for a salary, because absent an agreement neither party is compelled to do anything. I can also negotiate with my neighbour over compensation to my fence when he damages it, because that damage was contrary to law -- an action was taken without legal right. I can't force my neighbour into negotiations when he throws a party and doesn't invite me (because of the stick up my ass about the fence, see above), because he had no obligation to do so in the first place. So, how does this apply to Foogle? The negotiations in the bill appear to be related to news content 'made available' by the platform, but that term does not appear to be defined. In particular, it does not appear to be restricted to actions that would be covered by property-like copyright rights. Instead, this bill appears to be taking a stance based on anticompetitive/monopolistic behaviours. There is a reasonable basis for this argument, but in my opinion any action would require much more groundwork to set out just what behaviours are allegedly harmful. This legislation seems to sidestep that entirely, and in particular the list of "must-consider" items for an arbitrator (52ZP) is entirely to the benefit of news corporations over Foogle. > It also requires the platform to, if they allow user comments (eg a FB page), To be scrupulously fair here, this doesn't seem to require that Foogle allow moderation of all user comments on a news story, only those on stories submitted by the news agency itself (52S.1(a)(ii)). So News Corp gets to moderate its own Facebook page, but it can't moderate comments on users' walls when they just discuss a News Corp article.
hmottestad 6y ago
I remember back when the music business thought that pirated music would ruin them and forced governments to put an extra tax on blank cassettes and CDs. Seems like it's based on the same concept. Newspapers are loosing readers and they are blaming google and facebook. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
- raverbashing 6y ago
  And of course if the legal system was slightly fair, if the levy is being applied then private copying should have been made instantly legal. Not to mention you're just charging everybody, regardless of the use they will make of the media But of course the lobbying is strong
kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
Large technology companies are creating large market failures, one of which is the erosion of the print media business model. With Facebook and Google favouring trending content over high value content state intervention is probably necessary to save the industry.
rzmnzm 6y ago
These news organisations should pay twitter every time they source a story from there. Hopefully it would stop journos from writting such gripping stories as "According to some blowhard on twitter...", "These is my opinions, and to back it up here are three people on twitter who agree with me,...", "Twitter was OUTRAGED by... (several posts with five likes and one reshare)" etc, etc, etc
chimichangga 6y ago
socialism at work
imron 6y ago
What chance to Facebook and Google have when even the laws of mathematics must bow to Australian law [0]. Be careful what you wish for though. As an Australian, I fear that Australian news media needs Facebook and Google far more than the other way around. 0: https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-laws-of-australia-will-trump-the-laws-of-mathematics-turnbull/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-laws-of-australia-will-tru...
- koheripbal 6y ago
  At the end of the day, you still need a reporter on the ground at location. That's the origination of any reputable news source.
OMGCable 6y ago
How exactly is this going to work?
pabs3 6y ago
Are Google and Facebook also going to charge news organisations per click for the traffic they send their way?
logseman 6y ago
Not sure how this is "world first" when Spain already did this (and Google withdrew the News service as a result).
bobthechef 6y ago
Seems like a great opportunity to entrench Google's and Facebook's power. A corollary of free market principles, whoever pays for the news decides which news outlet flourishes and which one fades into nonexistence, or, what the news outlet reports. News outlets have always been sensitive to advertisers and moneyed patrons because they make next to nothing from the readership. All of this is to say that as Google and Facebook become a bigger share of the revenue of news outlets, the more sway they'll have over what those news outlets publish, whether they stand or fall, etc.
cblconfederate 6y ago
I wonder why there aren't better news search engine than google? A google search doesnt bring up any substantial project, and google news itself is pretty basic and biased and limited. I find myself often wondering "where could i read about <thing>", and feeling underwhelmed with google searches.
- fagan_m 6y ago
  There are actually quite a few news search engines. I've tried to include the best and most comprehensive ones on https://www.faganfinder.com/ https://www.faganfinder.com/ , although I have since found some more that I haven't reviewed.
deleted 6y ago
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Waterfall 6y ago
If only they could encrypt the links! Austria had them beat though, they outlawed it before this one two punch! Google is over!
jelder 6y ago
So Facebook has a choice between complying with the spirit of this law, or just appending some Australian news domains to their block list. Facebook has not shown a genuine interest in promoting the spread of truth over lies. What an incredibly stupid move.
tantalor 6y ago
It's more likely FB/G are operating their news aggregation services at a loss rather than a profit.
throwaway3699 6y ago
HN: Google isn't entitled to it's current business model. Also HN: Decade old, failing Murdoch empire should be funded by Big Tech under the law.
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  That's definitely not what I'm seeing in these comments.
lawrenceyan 6y ago
Does Australia really have either the purchasing power and/or political clout to make sweeping statements like these and still have people actually care?
- newsclues 6y ago
  $25million people? Probably not
mensetmanusman 6y ago
We need to figure out how to do this correctly. We don’t want Google subsidizing trash like the Sun, we would rather it subsidize high quality information sites like Quanta. I wonder if Google could create some metric where they would be more than happy to never show results from the Sun, but show results from some places and pay those entities. Sounds like a win-win-win. Google wins because it’s search results are higher quality, the high quality news sites win because they can have better journalists, and the public wins because they have better information.
- bognition 6y ago
  So we let google build an algorithm that tells us which news sources are trusted? No thanks
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    It’s not about trust, it’s about quality and who should get funds to make higher quality information.
jerf 6y ago
Thank you to the several people who have posted a link to the bill itself. I'll add to the pile to make it easier to see: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20EM%20-%20NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%20BILL%202020.pdf https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20EM%2... There's something interesting in there that nobody in this discussion has yet mentioned, nor does the original news article, section 52S: Subsection (2) applies if the registered news business corporation for the registered news business makes a request, in writing, to the responsible digital platform corporation for the digital platform service to do any of the following: (a) ensure that the registered news business corporation is provided with flexible content moderation tools that allow the registered news business corporation to remove or filter comments on the registered news business’ covered news content that: (i) are made using the digital platform service; and (ii) are made on a part of the digital platform service that is set up and able to be edited by the registered news business; (b) ensure that the registered news business corporation can disable the making of such comments; (c) ensure that the registered news business corporation can block the making of such comments: (i) by particular persons; or (ii) in particular circumstances. If I am reading this correctly (a big if!), this gives the news corporations the right to exert complete control over all "comments" on their news articles on these "digital platform services", meaning that, for instance, Hacker News or Reddit, if covered by this law, would no longer be independent sites to discuss news, but would be forcibly placed under the control of the news site. (Not sure those sites would be covered, just using that as an example.) So if the newspaper leans X, they can shut down all the comments from people who lean the other way, or people who disagree with the article, or anything they like (possibly subject to other laws, but certainly no restrictions are placed here). That's... full of implications, to say the least.
- profmonocle 6y ago
  Unless I'm misreading, "and are made on a part of the digital platform service that is set up and able to be edited by the registered news business" suggests this only applies to the news agency's own social media pages. I.E. they wouldn't be able to censor comments on links to their content posted by third parties.
odc 6y ago
This looks a lot like what France Press did in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News#EU_copyright_and_database_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News#EU_copyright_and_d...
alkonaut 6y ago
To be clear, this is about snippets that are displayed and lets users consume the content without ever clicking the link to visit the page? How is Google normally handling the fact that what they display in excerpts is copyrighted material? Do they just assume their snippet is short enough to be fair use everywhere? And couldn’t these sites just detect the crawlers and display article bodies that are a smaller, (0-10 words body)?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sidibe 6y ago
  You can choose whether Google can use snippets or how big they are.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    What does that mean for the regulation in question? That it’s unnecessary because there is a technical solution? Or that it’s not written in good faith because they know it’s possible to solve technically but want funding from Google rather than actually solve it?
belushi 6y ago
I’ve long been a proponent—as both a user and an advocate of these companies’ interests—of paid premium (ad-free, tracker-free, priority support) tiers for the “Internet essentials,” i.e., Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. There is, I believe, a surprisingly sizable (and rapidly growing) contingent of these platforms’ respective user bases willing to pay for privacy and user experience, and by insisting so stubbornly on maintaining a uniformly ad-subsidized model, without so much as even experimenting with subscription tier offerings, these companies are leaving billions of dollars a year in additional revenue on the table. Perhaps the increasing cost of supply-side content will finally spur a rethinking of these platforms’ fundamental business models. Here’s hoping…
- abrowne 6y ago
  > paid premium (ad-free, tracker-free, priority support) tiers Does that risk making privacy only available for those with the means to pay for it?
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    That's the wrong way to frame it. A product has to be paid for somehow. You could just as easily think of "paid premium" as the default, similar to the way you pay for a physical newspaper, magazine, etc. Or you can pay by giving up your privacy instead. It's your choice. Why shouldn't people who want to give up their privacy in exchange for personalized ads be allowed to?
    - rpastuszak 6y ago
      > A product has to be paid for somehow. Yes, but maybe businesses like Facebook shouldn't exist in their current shape given the amount of data required to make them profitable? Is the return worth the cost? > Why shouldn't people who want to give up their privacy in exchange for personalized ads be allowed to? Of course, but how many people are educated on what it actually means? How many people know that Google is an advertising business, not "just a search engine"? We all know that the incentives of companies like this are not compatible with consent. Stronger regulatory actions and waaaay more emphasis on education is prob. the best we have at the moment.
surajs 6y ago
a brilliant piece of legislation too by the looks of it, commendable job.
rvr_ 6y ago
Sooner or later Google will just "AI-parse" the same news story from many sources and generate a new headline plus snippet.
deleted 6y ago
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estebarb 6y ago
Honestly I don't get it. Media made a lot of money publishing dead bodies, but they don't pay a dime to victim's family.
iamben 6y ago
Aren't a lot of these newspaper sites funded with AdSense as opposed to direct buys/other ad networks? So this would end up Google paying the publisher to send traffic to their site, so the publisher (potentially) earns money from Google for visitor Google has just paid for? Or something like that?!
Bloggerzune 6y ago
We weren't discussing the uniqueness of low-quality content or clickbait, nor were we even discussing politics. We are discussing the introduction of changes which will largely benefit News Corp who owns 70% of newspaper circulation, Rupert Murdoch isn't even Australian. It boggles my mind an American media mogul (with clear historically proven cases of political bias) cannot only have plenty of influence in the USA, but also here in Australia.https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/Off-page-seo.html?m=1 https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/Off-page-seo.html?m=1
known 6y ago
Sounds rational since somebody has to pay the 'source' of news
badrchoubai 6y ago
I hope other countries follow suit.
iammru 6y ago
Pay who?.. Facebook should pay the users as well.
iRomain 6y ago
Now what would be great is to see Google pay websites it’s stealing content from to populate its snippet blocks
jpollock 6y ago
Will this create a new copyright license? Will I be able to pay a license fee and reprint news stories? That could be really cool.
jccooper 6y ago
Google search is basically all "news" now for way too many keywords, due to their high rankings for "fresh content". I really wouldn't mind if that disappeared entirely. The product would be better. Facebook would also be much more pleasant.
- ttmb 6y ago
  The recency bias is painful. If you read a recent article and want more information on some background from the story, the results are mostly a flood of more articles on the recent story, with no new info. Your best bet is to find one of the new articles that actually cited and linked to some older work.
CrankyBear 6y ago
Yeah, I've heard this before. Ask anyone in Spanish journalism how well their laws asking for the same thing worked out for them. Spoiler: It's a complete fail.
georgespencer 6y ago
Spain tried this in 2014. Google simply removed "Google News" and cut off the healthy supply of clicks they send to the news outlets. From memory, news outlets soon relented because they needed Google more than Google needed them. When France followed Spain, they stopped Google from removing "Google News" by insisting that it was an abuse of market position to do so. Never mind the fact that it seems like an abuse of power to compel a company to do business in your region on terms it doesn't like, and to prevent it from backing out of the market. Ben Thompson from Stratechery has some good summaries of this behind his paywall.
throwaway29102 6y ago
The plus side to this is that it’ll kill (some) off-platform link sharing, which kills the “drive traffic to make money” strategy, which may reduce the amount of outrage porn circulating in the English-speaking world. Best of luck to the Aussies, and maybe we’ll catch up sooner or later.
NicoJuicy 6y ago
So, Google would index the social media pages of those corporations. With even declining revenue
varispeed 6y ago
Why such corporate lobbying isn't illegal?
lanevorockz 6y ago
It's very disturbing that Silicon Valley controls so much of public discourse. Hate Trump as much as you like but having all discourse controlled by faceless billionaires is not good to anyone. It would be the same if Bernie Sanders was the president and he did something that would affect them. It's not moral, it's just money for billionaires.
RockmanZero 6y ago
nice move! Australia
la6471 6y ago
Time for FG to invest in local reporters and hire them for original content ie original news reporting and also get some royalty out of it :)
johnnyYen 6y ago
Seems like massive legislative over-reach. 1.100 Discrimination in this context will be considered to occur if the news content of a registered news business is disadvantaged incomparison to other news content in terms of the crawling, indexing,ranking, display, presentation or other process undertaken by the digital platform on any service provided by the digital platform, on the basis ofthe registered news business’ participation in the code. IANAL, but my simple reading of this seems to imply it will be illegal for Google to NOT crawl and index News Corps content.

524 points by nreece 6y ago

I wonder how the quoted "royalty-style system" would work. If it's anything like reverse ads where Google and Facebook pay per click/impression, what's to stop them from simply boycotting Australian news sites?

1f60c 6y ago
I think this is going to happen/has happened in Europe. It hurts publishers most of all, IMHO.
postingawayonhn 6y ago
Apparently they'll have to boycott all news sites. I hope they are able to challenge this law in the courts. > "They can't discriminate between international and Australian news. So they can't turn off Australian news and just use international news. That's discrimination. This is a mandatory code, the platforms must participate. They could stop showing news media on their platforms completely – that is, no local or international media – but short of that, they are compelled." https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-and-google-face-10m-for-media-code-breaches-20200731-p55h6p https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-a...

42droids 6y ago

“In 2019, Google stopped showing news snippets from European publishers on search results for its French users, while Germany’s biggest news publisher, Axel Springer, allowed the search engine to run snippets of its articles after traffic to its sites to plunged.“ This is the sad reality, this is why these companies can do whatever they want. There is always someone who sells out and forces everyone to give in.

smabie 6y ago
Making money for investors isn't 'selling out'. It's like how, you know, a business should be operating.

ferros 6y ago

What implications will this have elsewhere. Where is the line drawn? I don’t disagree with this but it feels like this will open a hornets nest.

Aerroon 6y ago
It depends on if others follow. Australia and New Zealand are outliers when it comes to freedom of speech/expression anyway. They officially censor the media through a censorship office. I believe this doesn't affect the news directly, but movies and video games (I don't know about books) can't be published without government approval. That hasn't really had much of an effect for the rest of the world other than people making fun of Australia.

postingawayonhn 6y ago

I really hope they just block all the news sites from their platforms. Let's see how they like it when thier traffic dries up. From other reporting I've read the law does say they have to treat domestic and international news the same so it could cause an issue with that approach.

smabie 6y ago
Yeah, honestly, that's what I hope they do. The amount of entitlement and this holier than thou attitude among the media is pretty annoying. Figure out how to make money like any other business. And if you can't, we'll then I guess you don't matter that much. This decision is crony capitalism at its worst.
- simias 6y ago
  I would 100% support this mindset if tech giants paid taxes where they make their money. I don't know what the situation is like in Australia but in Europe it's pretty insane. You can't abuse the system on one side and then argue the "efficient market hypothesis" on the other. Google&friends are not making money and competing "like any other business".
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    > Google&friends are not making money and competing "like any other business". I don't understand this. Can you explain, please?
    - jokethrowaway 6y ago
      Several big-enough companies use tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes or lobby the government themselves. This is not specific to big tech though, it's a single point of failure of having a centralised government that is easily corrupted by rich corporations.
      - marcus_holmes 6y ago

chrismsimpson 6y ago

Don't be fooled. This is merely a ploy from a conservative government to keep Rupert relevant. He owns 70% of the print journalism here.

ipsum2 6y ago
I mean, it's in the article: > Media companies including News Corp Australia, a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA.O), lobbied hard for the government to force the U.S. companies to the negotiating table amid a long decline in advertising revenue.
stevenjohns 6y ago
Your suggestion aside, I find it odd that people call the Australian Liberal Party conservative. They banned firearms, introduced the GST and made same-sex marriage legal. They've now introduced the largest welfare package in Australian history. In comparison to most governments in the world, they're probably considered center-left at worst.
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  Liberal does not mean left-wing. Thankfully, that particular Americanism hasn’t penetrated into Australia yet.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    Well, it did back in the 18th century when the left/right split was first named and well into the 19th - it represented the split between monarchists and opponents in the French assembly after the revolution, and so the liberals made up most of the original left. You see the after-effects in e.g. Norway, where the liberal party is literally named "Venstre" ("Left") It's just that most places the liberals have been firmly out-flanked on the left since.
    - leadingthenet 6y ago
      Yes, you're right. I concede that point.

ma2rten 6y ago

Didn't Spain try to do the same thing with Google News, which just ended up with them shutting down the product in Spain? https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9609687?hl=en https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9609...

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
Yup. I was in Spain from March to May. It was annoying to be in the habit of typing "news.google.com" when trying to get news on COVID-19. It wasn't hard to bypass, but it was annoying.
- auggierose 6y ago
  I like how they recommend the Mexican edition instead
  - bzb3 6y ago
    Which makes no sense, except for international news... And maybe not even that
- Uberphallus 6y ago
  It wasn't for me it's hard, in reverse. I no longer live in Spain, haven't for 10 years. But every time I go to Google News I get the message of it not being available in my country. My primary language in my Google account isn't Spanish, my address isn't in Spain, my Google Wallet has a non Spanish card on it, so on and so forth, yet I can only access Google News when I'm logged out.
  - Cantbekhan 6y ago
    Off topic but I had the same issue. Did you change your Google payment profile? (which has nothing to do with all the profile addresses you can set in various places) https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/9028746?hl=en https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/9028746?hl=... Because you can't actually change your country on your Google payment profile. You need to create a new one and then switch the new one. I had to do this to switch my US account to an EU account with the EU GDPR user consent options. Your Google account is tied to the payment profile country AFAIK.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Google will probably eliminate Google News for Australians. Why exactly would Google pay money for a service which earns nothing?

ing33k 6y ago
most of the news sites will use some form of programmatic ads which will involve Google in some form inevitably.
grayhatter 6y ago
Doesn't the news you choose to read tell Google a lot about you? Google is very good about shuttering projects that doesn't make them money. I'm sure if they're still running the service. It's making them money some how.
- lrem 6y ago
  Brand recognition? Customer goodwill? Not everything needs to be outright profitable. Google has a lot of money to spend on sending small gifts in random directions. Source: as a Googler I got paid to literally "go find some vulnerable projects on Github and send a PR to patch them"[1]. Google does not make money in any way from things like that, but keeps doing them, just because they can. [1]: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2017/03/operation-rosehub.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2017/03/operation-rosehub....
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Nowhere near as much as shopping searches. It's kind of hard to monetize an interest in (say) Singaporean politics or space rockets.
  - MajorBee 6y ago
    It's not that hard to monetize interest in damn near _anything_ (as long as it is not clearly illegal, I guess). For the two examples you've posted, maybe advertise flights/vacations to Singapore if you show a persistent interest in Singapore, and market model rockets, space flight simulator toys, really all sorts of consumer-grade commodity products adjacent to the space industry.

imgabe 6y ago

Business idea: Get GPT-3 to churn out newsy-sounding stories for next to nothing and host them in Australia where the government forces other companies to pay you for them. Free money.

ehnto 6y ago

Another flailing grasp at new media as Rupert Murdoch's tabloid empire loses its grip on the future. I am only disappointed that our government would be complicit. Make no mistake, I am no new media fan boy. In fact I hope this has the side effect of cleaning up the misinformation that spins around Facebook et al. But it is still sad to see such an obvious manipulation of our government.

quink 6y ago
> I am only disappointed that our government woild be complicit. Hell, Uncle Rupert is the reason why we've had more of the coalition in power than we otherwise would have. Why would they bite the hand that feeds them when they can bite of a piece of Google's pie and regurgitate it into Murdoch's ugly maw instead. Google, shut down Google News the second this passes, please. I don't want a single cent to go to the conglomerate that was at least partially responsible for bringing us Trump, Johnson and Morrison. And Bush, Thatcher and Howard.
- quink 6y ago
  Hmmm... been downvoted and flagged. Here's my personal playlist I made for the day when Rupert Murdoch finally bites the dust, just a collection of ideas for those who read this article and are pushed to finally make their own if his actions over 89 hate-fuelled years haven't been enough already: "Fanfare for the Common Man", "Beautiful Day", "I gotta feeling", "Celebration", "Walking On Sunshine", "We Are The Champions", "Holiday", "Heal the World", "Lovely Day", "Another One Bites The Dust", "Don't Stop Believin'", "Chariots Of Fire".
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    Don't you think "we are the champions" is way overplayed? I suggest "Don't stop me now" if you want to stick Queen. Or maybe "I'm Still Standing" by Elton John if you want something a more gloating in this context.
    - quink 6y ago

guidedlight 6y ago

Unfortunately this will just cause more misinformation and conspiracy theories to circulate. Fake news is free. Real news is behind paywalls.

quink 6y ago
The main benefactor would be News Corp Australia. Apart from some snippets of tolerable local coverage it's all a big pile of shit that stinks from Uncle Rupert's ugly head down. Misinformation and conspiracy theories are what they peddle. This single company controls 70% of the newspaper market and lies, misleading and cheating are part of their DNA. I hope they don't see a single red cent out of this and if it takes the shutdown of Google News then so be it.

grayhatter 6y ago

My first instinct was this is a bad move. But given how Google is so quick to kill projects that don't make them money. (And they're still running the service... for now at least) Paired with how I personally detest how they pushed AMP giving them more control and more user data. I can't say I'm convinced they didn't do this to themselves. Nor am I convinced this isn't somehow better. I'm sure at the very least the results will be interesting.

HugThem 6y ago

Is this about copyright? Aka "If you copy more then X words, your violate the authors copyright" so that one has to negotiate with the author about copying more then X words? Or do they force Google and Facebook to publish those snippets and pay for them? Making media kind of state controlled? If so, who decides which news have to be included? Or what is this about?

inopinatus 6y ago
It’s about News Corporation’s exceptionally close ties to the party that currently holds the majority in Australian federal parliament. This grants them the opportunity to use Australia as a licensing model test venue, as well as hoping to normalise the idea as acceptable rather than farcical in at least one western laissez-faire capitalist democracy in the hope this can be leveraged into others.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Also about journalism's complete failure to adapt to a changing business landscape and find a different business model. In one way, this is good. It will fail miserably, and demonstrate to newspaper CEO's that "Big Tech" is not stealing their revenues. Then they can move on to try something different.
  - sjy 6y ago
    If the system fails, and consequently newspapers fail, while tech companies thrive, how will that demonstrate to newspaper CEOs that big tech isn’t stealing their revenue?
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      Because newspapers are failing anyway, and tech companies are thriving anyway. So if this system fails, nothing changed. If this system works, and suddenly Australian newspapers are viable while newspapers elsewhere are still struggling, then it will prove that forcing tech to pay for content works, and that therefore tech was probably stealing media's revenue.

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Jedd 6y ago

> For every A$100 spent on online advertising in Australia, excluding classifieds, nearly a third goes to Google and Facebook, according to Frydenberg. This from the Treasurer of Australia. I hope he understands that the same holds true for every A$1000 spent, too. But the local Murdoch outpost's eagerness for this to happen certainly explains the motivation here.

gok 6y ago

They should comply and just delist all News Corp content.

jackjeff 6y ago
Exactly what happened for google news in Spain. I suppose this includes the search engine. So if these people don’t want their thing to turn up in text results, why not update the robots.txt and close shop the next month? I have no sympathy for Google and even less for Facebook. But that’s a shitty argument to make. It makes me want to create a client side google news clone, but that actually steal all the article content and remove all ads. Try blocking that.

ipsum2 6y ago

People in this thread seem to believe that this is only relevant to Google News. This is actually for all of Google, including Search. According to https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-and-google-face-10m-for-media-code-breaches-20200731-p55h6p https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-a... > Mr Sims said if Google took a similar approach to its actions in Spain when it was asked to pay for news on its Google News tab, it would be irrelevant because the code covered news content in Google's primary function, search. So it seems like the ultimatum is: pay Australia media companies ~$1b or don't list any news media (including international news) on Google Search for Australian users. Interesting dilemma.

quink 6y ago
Mr Sims here is ACCC chairman Rod Sims. The same who rammed through so many terrible decisions around the NBN, just as one example, including the POI decision which in one fell swoop eradicated all bits of ISP competition that had arisen in the ADSL2+ space. Funny thing for a "Competition and Consumer Commission" to do, yet here we are. Internode's blood is on his hands.
- doctor_eval 6y ago
  Well I agree re the PoI, but internode did pretty well, they got a $100M exit; lots of other ISPs and suppliers hit the wall. It was a nightmare decision to go from what, 7 POIs to over 200? Made no sense at all. Mind you the entire NBN from soup to nuts has been and remains a disaster. Sent from my faulty HFC NBN (gone down 4 times in the last 2 days)
rosege 6y ago
So does that mean having a hyper-link to a news article needs to be paid for? (Genuine question!)
- ipsum2 6y ago
  That's what I wondered too. From the article, it seems like they're only targeting Facebook and Google for now. To apply the law equally, it seems like it should affect all websites that link to or copy the meta description tag of a news site.

dantheman 6y ago

Isn't this something the publishers can just stop with a robots.txt? Or do they want Google to continue to link to them and just charge them for it? I hope Google just drops them from the index.

kevsim 6y ago
It's definitely the latter. They still want to be indexed of course and I'd assume they'd rather be included in Google News and paid for it rather than not included.
criddell 6y ago
I hope Google and Facebook recognize the value they get from news publishers and understand the value society gets from journalism and they do more to support that journalism that benefits everybody.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Haha, I went to the websites of the guys pushing for this. News.com.au Hoo boy am I glad I don’t get value from that. Oof. Dang. Look at that. Oh boy.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I recognize the value I get from news publishers and try to support them. It would never in a million years occur to me that, when I tell someone "here's this neat article I read about new studies on the minimum wage", I owe the newspaper for being allowed to do that.
  - criddell 6y ago
    Sure. If telling people about the news is making you money, why not share some of the profit from doing that with the newspaper? If you don't do that, aren't you in effect killing the golden goose?
    - Nasrudith 6y ago

travisoneill1 6y ago

This seems absurd. Companies typically pay Google to drive traffic through ads, but in this case they are legislating that Google pay them for driving traffic? This sounds like the store paying the customer to take its product. Wouldn't the obvious solution be for Google to just stop listing these news sites? Am I missing something here?

lopis 6y ago
You can make a case that Google wouldn't make any money if they didn't have content. They have trained the market into believing we need them and to pay them unholy amounts of money to be on top of all search results. But without content and search results, no one uses Google.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Google has also started to show generated answers/summaries in the search to make the user not visit the external site. Answers and image search should be opt in for copright holder.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  Right, but site owners are already able to opt out of being indexed by google, and almost all choose to be indexed.

biggidywiggidy 6y ago

So much stockholm syndrome here on HN.

beilabs 6y ago

I'm wondering if this will cause a further reduction in traffic to certain Murdoch publications. The only profitable parts of their newspaper divisions seem to be centered around gambling.

raxxorrax 6y ago

I think it is wrong that these platforms promote certain content and even pay for the articles. This is how you get an unhealthy, nepotistic media landscape.

m0zg 6y ago

A year or two from now: Australia doesn't have mainstream news anymore after Google and Facebook ban links to them from its properties to avoid paying "for news".

sjy 6y ago
It’s now been a year or two since various HN commenters proclaimed that Australia had “nuked its tech industry from orbit” when the new encryption laws came in, but that doesn’t seem to have come true. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18616303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18616303
- m0zg 6y ago
  That's because the tech industry doesn't really care about their users' privacy. It does care very much about profits, however.

ekianjo 6y ago

Is that a world first? I thought they enacted the same thing in France before? https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/france-and-australia-to-google-and-facebook-pay-for-news/ https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/france-and-australia-to...

ajxs 6y ago

Lots of the comments here are criticising this decision on the basis of News Corporation's very clear political involvement. While I share their sentiment regarding News Corporation and their blatant partisanship, I would like to highlight that Facebook is not an apolitical entity. My view is that anyone concerned about the blatant partisan politics of the Australian news media should be equally concerned about the political overreach of big tech. The latter being far more equipped for the propagation of information benefiting their own agenda.

stevenjohns 6y ago
Completely spot on. They are both two sides of failure: one creating the garbage and the other that takes center-stage in its distribution. What the Australian government can do about News Corp becomes a question of media freedom, whereas Facebook and Google peddling it doesn't introduce that ethical or legal complication. I could be wrong here though -- happy to be corrected.
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makomk 6y ago
The two aren't comparable. News Corporation is political in the sense that they effectively decide who wins the next election in countries like Australia and the UK and all the political parties have to seek out their favour and pursue policies that meet with their approval to win. Facebook is political in the sense that they refused to use their power to tilt the last US presidential election towards the candidate the mainstream media wanted. That the media considers the latter to be the threat to democracy says a lot about who they think should actually control the country.
- ajxs 6y ago
  It would be extremely foolish to think that Facebook is an organisation without its own political agenda. Even this article itself contains an extremely politicised statement from the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, criticising the Australian government for their intervention in the free market. These companies make decisions like any other to maximise their power and profit. Unlike most companies however, they're in a position to use information to leverage their position. I presume your post is talking about Clinton? Alphabet Inc. has made almost $27mil in campaign contributions, including contributing $1.6mil to Clinton's campaign in 2016. They've spent almost $89mil in lobbying since 1990. These big tech companies obviously have a stake in our democracy and choose to take an active role. Thinking they're impartial is incredibly naive. > That the media considers the latter to be the threat to democracy says a lot about who they think should actually control the country. I think they're both a threat to democracy. I believe that the Australian government should do all it can to limit the influence that multinational corporations have on our local political landscape, categorically. The only thing I fear more than partisan local media organisations, are partisan international media organisations that wield even more power. I don't for one second trust Facebook's own hidden agenda any more than I trust News Corporation's.

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erikrothoff 6y ago

What does this mean for RSS feeds and feed readers? I guess a case can be made for non-cloud readers to be excempt from this logic, but readers like Feedly or our feeder.co?

sjy 6y ago
The code would only apply to Google and Facebook, but may be applied to other digital platforms in the future “where fundamental bargaining power imbalances with Australian news businesses emerge.”

gl3nnleblanc 6y ago

Why doesn't this incentivize Facebook/Google to create their own news service, with reporters and all? That would certainly be a bleak outcome.

mmahemoff 6y ago

Typical mainstream coverage of a tech story that glosses over all the detail, leaving everyone in this thread to speculate about all the details, such as which results it applies to and how will they distribute the revenue. My 2p guess is it's all about snippets and any other displayed information which would stop the user proceeding to an external result. Some % of total revenue distributed to owners of the snippet content, though it would be hard to determine the breakdown even for a single result page.

mxxx 6y ago
Yeah, can anyone explain to me how FB/G are actually accused of giving paid content away for free? All the Murdoch content is behind paywalls in Aus. Is it literally just headlines and the free 3 sentences or whatever a scraper/aggregator would display?
- kyleee 6y ago
  Isn't that the perennial problem even with sites like HN? A significant amount of people derive value from reading headlines and short snippets of content?
  - dazc 6y ago
    Isn't this also a method pay-walled sites use to get subscribers? Otherwise, why not just block Google in robots.txt?
    - onli 6y ago
      They still want to be found. They just also want to be paid for the privilege of being listed on a search result page.
    - paulie_a 6y ago
      Google should just start putting a huge red box around pay walled articles. It would basically indicate "don't bother with this site"

acd 6y ago

I have an issue with that people consume news from these sites through recommendations algorithms. Recommendations algorithms just suggest news that you might be interested in, so you miss reading the rest. Ie you consume news through filter bubbles. A filter bubble is where you see the world through your personal curated filter glasses. I would argue that such filtering creates polarized world views where you get less accommodating for views which does not match your own filtered world view. In summary these platforms may in some sense undermine democracy where we respect other with different view points than our own. Plus it’s essential for democracy that we pay for local news journalists which dig and investigate local politicians decisions. Local news feed national news networks which in turn feed international news. Filter bubble article mentioning news filtering https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble Article that social media may cause polarized views https://scholar.harvard.edu/sounman_hong/political-polarization-twitter-social-media-may-contribute-online-extremism https://scholar.harvard.edu/sounman_hong/political-polarizat... Local journalism https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/28/local-journalism-democracy-us-newspapers https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/28/local-journali...

nl 6y ago

Notably this doesn't apply to news from non-Australian operating companies or to the publicly funded broadcasters. If I was Google or FB I know what I'd be thinking about doing now.

peignoir 6y ago

And with GPT-3 or any similar technology coming journalism will be even more under pressure of displacement. I guess the future will be data collectors

baq 6y ago
wonder if you could use GPT-3 to rephrase snippets or whole articles and avoid the new fee...
- rydre 6y ago
  Yeah, I have built a proof of concept for this, but without GPT-3. Works well except for the edge cases. Aka not fully automatable yet so I never showed it to anyone.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > wonder if you could use GPT-3 to rephrase snippets or whole articles and avoid the new fee... That'd be just wonderful once someone builds an adversarial model to trick the GPT-3 summarizer to output disinformation or other garbage.

quink 6y ago

Just another point of interest for our international friends and because 'Ctrl-F' for 'Costello' hasn't brought up anything either: Peter Costello was, until 2007, the deputy leader and treasurer of the federal government, consisting then of the same parties that are pushing for this legislation. Peter Costello, the same, is also since 2016 chairman of Nine Entertainment Co., the media company that would get the second highest amount of money under this legislation, right after Murdoch's own. Yeah, Australia's kind of screwed up like that.

Bloggerzune 6y ago

While it's not the selling point politically, I think those lobbying for things like this are very much happy with any monoculture that results. With services like Google News, people can get exposed to news from various media outlets, but by killing it through lobbying for absurd regulatory burdens on aggregators the well known larger outlets can choke out access to their competition. This of course is hampered to some extent by the reality that many will just rely on other users posting on social media for news updates, and if that too is choked out through regulation on platforms, many will probably just skip the news or reduce their consumption in favor of other things like entertainment. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/How-to-improve-your-blog.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/How-to-improve-your-blog...

ehmish 6y ago

FYI for those interested this is the announcement of the policy on the site of the organisation that wrote the policy https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code/draft-legislation https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...

shmerl 6y ago

Sounds like failing legacy businesses trying to use the government to ensure profits while facing inability to compete. That's going to work so well for them. Why does Australian public allow such laws to pass?

urthor 6y ago

Google and Facebook will just stop showing results from participating news outlets. Frankly they have enough user generated content already they don't need these companies. If it bans snippets and allows headlines for free then they'll do that, but honestly they have no need to pay a cent.

marban 6y ago

I'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product. But then they always say that they're helping you, and that's true too, but still, if people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news. So I guess you should pay each other. But I haven't figured it out fully yet. -- Andy Warhol

alexmingoia 6y ago
Says the guy who took other people’s images and sold them...
- jedimastert 6y ago
  Warhol had a fascinating perspective on mass-produced pop culture, having enough insight to pretty much game the system
- slim 6y ago
  every artist does that. he just did it in a straight, sorryless way. hence the concept in his conceptual art.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    > every artist does that. Um, no.
- marban 6y ago
  You should read his bio.
- nix23 6y ago
  That's why Macintosh and he was a perfect match, one took pictures the other took windows-es (xerox) ;)
- montjoy 6y ago

PostThisTooFast 6y ago

This is as stupid as the U.S. broadcasters' caterwauling about Aereo. Google is only showing ABSTRACTS of a story, which incites people to visit the publisher's site and INCREASE its traffic (and thus revenue). Google does plenty of despicable and underhanded things, but providing FREE TRAFFIC is one of them? NO.

zmmmmm 6y ago

Some of the most interesting part is not even about paying. For example, they must notify the news providers of algorithmic changes 28 days in advance before making them, and enable the news organisation to "filter or remove" comments on their content. It is oddly self-contradictory as it both states that a digital platform may not discrimminate b/w a "registered news organisation" and non-registered news org, but also mandates a whole raft of areas where it must discrimminate and give special consideration to a "registered news organisastion". This almost seems like a legal trap so they are in violation no matter what they do. Interestingly, when all else fails, the arbitration panel must make a decision that is "in the public interest" - which seems to open a loophole where Google / Facebook could argue that the value of free / open information is more in the public interest than supporting proprietary news organisation to paywall their content. It would be hilarious if it backfired, though I am sure the arbitration panel will be carefully constructed to ensure it is not sympathetic to tech companies. See: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill%20-%20TREASURY%20LAWS%20AMENDENT%20%28NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%29%20BILL%202020.pdf https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...

rswail 6y ago

So before anyone goes off half-cocked, the proposed legislation applies to: 1. News businesses that are registered with ACMA and comply with the codes for print/TV/radio regarding content, eg press council etc and publish predominantly Australian content for Australian audiences 2. Have revenue over $150K/year 3. Digital platforms (as determined by the Treasurer) It requires both sides to: a) provide each other with information, b) negotiate in good faith, c) submit to formal arbitration if they can't agree. The platforms are required (as a minimum) to not discriminate between news sources, what they collect about users that click on the news sources (where that is different to what they normally collect), and how they make that information available to the news source. They're required to explain how they display paywalled contant, how they display non-paywall content, how they display advertising, and, if they change that, how the change will affect the news sources. It also requires the platform to, if they allow user comments (eg a FB page), allow the news source to control/disable/moderate those comments. The news sources are allowed to co-operate in the negotiations. It's not a long bill and it's in plain(-ish) English. https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill%20-%20TREASURY%20LAWS%20AMENDENT%20%28NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%29%20BILL%202020.pdf https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...

Majromax 6y ago
> b) negotiate in good faith, That's part of the problem, though -- it doesn't define what they're to negotiate in good faith over. Ordinary negotiations involve some kind of proprietary, property, or contract right. I negotiate with my employer to provide my services in exchange for a salary, because absent an agreement neither party is compelled to do anything. I can also negotiate with my neighbour over compensation to my fence when he damages it, because that damage was contrary to law -- an action was taken without legal right. I can't force my neighbour into negotiations when he throws a party and doesn't invite me (because of the stick up my ass about the fence, see above), because he had no obligation to do so in the first place. So, how does this apply to Foogle? The negotiations in the bill appear to be related to news content 'made available' by the platform, but that term does not appear to be defined. In particular, it does not appear to be restricted to actions that would be covered by property-like copyright rights. Instead, this bill appears to be taking a stance based on anticompetitive/monopolistic behaviours. There is a reasonable basis for this argument, but in my opinion any action would require much more groundwork to set out just what behaviours are allegedly harmful. This legislation seems to sidestep that entirely, and in particular the list of "must-consider" items for an arbitrator (52ZP) is entirely to the benefit of news corporations over Foogle. > It also requires the platform to, if they allow user comments (eg a FB page), To be scrupulously fair here, this doesn't seem to require that Foogle allow moderation of all user comments on a news story, only those on stories submitted by the news agency itself (52S.1(a)(ii)). So News Corp gets to moderate its own Facebook page, but it can't moderate comments on users' walls when they just discuss a News Corp article.

hmottestad 6y ago

I remember back when the music business thought that pirated music would ruin them and forced governments to put an extra tax on blank cassettes and CDs. Seems like it's based on the same concept. Newspapers are loosing readers and they are blaming google and facebook. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

raverbashing 6y ago
And of course if the legal system was slightly fair, if the levy is being applied then private copying should have been made instantly legal. Not to mention you're just charging everybody, regardless of the use they will make of the media But of course the lobbying is strong

kqvamxurcagg 6y ago

Large technology companies are creating large market failures, one of which is the erosion of the print media business model. With Facebook and Google favouring trending content over high value content state intervention is probably necessary to save the industry.

rzmnzm 6y ago

These news organisations should pay twitter every time they source a story from there. Hopefully it would stop journos from writting such gripping stories as "According to some blowhard on twitter...", "These is my opinions, and to back it up here are three people on twitter who agree with me,...", "Twitter was OUTRAGED by... (several posts with five likes and one reshare)" etc, etc, etc

chimichangga 6y ago

socialism at work

imron 6y ago

What chance to Facebook and Google have when even the laws of mathematics must bow to Australian law [0]. Be careful what you wish for though. As an Australian, I fear that Australian news media needs Facebook and Google far more than the other way around. 0: https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-laws-of-australia-will-trump-the-laws-of-mathematics-turnbull/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-laws-of-australia-will-tru...

koheripbal 6y ago
At the end of the day, you still need a reporter on the ground at location. That's the origination of any reputable news source.

OMGCable 6y ago

How exactly is this going to work?

pabs3 6y ago

Are Google and Facebook also going to charge news organisations per click for the traffic they send their way?

logseman 6y ago

Not sure how this is "world first" when Spain already did this (and Google withdrew the News service as a result).

bobthechef 6y ago

Seems like a great opportunity to entrench Google's and Facebook's power. A corollary of free market principles, whoever pays for the news decides which news outlet flourishes and which one fades into nonexistence, or, what the news outlet reports. News outlets have always been sensitive to advertisers and moneyed patrons because they make next to nothing from the readership. All of this is to say that as Google and Facebook become a bigger share of the revenue of news outlets, the more sway they'll have over what those news outlets publish, whether they stand or fall, etc.

cblconfederate 6y ago

I wonder why there aren't better news search engine than google? A google search doesnt bring up any substantial project, and google news itself is pretty basic and biased and limited. I find myself often wondering "where could i read about <thing>", and feeling underwhelmed with google searches.

fagan_m 6y ago
There are actually quite a few news search engines. I've tried to include the best and most comprehensive ones on https://www.faganfinder.com/ https://www.faganfinder.com/ , although I have since found some more that I haven't reviewed.

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Waterfall 6y ago

If only they could encrypt the links! Austria had them beat though, they outlawed it before this one two punch! Google is over!

jelder 6y ago

So Facebook has a choice between complying with the spirit of this law, or just appending some Australian news domains to their block list. Facebook has not shown a genuine interest in promoting the spread of truth over lies. What an incredibly stupid move.

tantalor 6y ago

It's more likely FB/G are operating their news aggregation services at a loss rather than a profit.

throwaway3699 6y ago

HN: Google isn't entitled to it's current business model. Also HN: Decade old, failing Murdoch empire should be funded by Big Tech under the law.

DangitBobby 6y ago
That's definitely not what I'm seeing in these comments.

lawrenceyan 6y ago

Does Australia really have either the purchasing power and/or political clout to make sweeping statements like these and still have people actually care?

newsclues 6y ago
$25million people? Probably not

mensetmanusman 6y ago

We need to figure out how to do this correctly. We don’t want Google subsidizing trash like the Sun, we would rather it subsidize high quality information sites like Quanta. I wonder if Google could create some metric where they would be more than happy to never show results from the Sun, but show results from some places and pay those entities. Sounds like a win-win-win. Google wins because it’s search results are higher quality, the high quality news sites win because they can have better journalists, and the public wins because they have better information.

bognition 6y ago
So we let google build an algorithm that tells us which news sources are trusted? No thanks
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  It’s not about trust, it’s about quality and who should get funds to make higher quality information.

jerf 6y ago

Thank you to the several people who have posted a link to the bill itself. I'll add to the pile to make it easier to see: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20EM%20-%20NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%20BILL%202020.pdf https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20EM%2... There's something interesting in there that nobody in this discussion has yet mentioned, nor does the original news article, section 52S: Subsection (2) applies if the registered news business corporation for the registered news business makes a request, in writing, to the responsible digital platform corporation for the digital platform service to do any of the following: (a) ensure that the registered news business corporation is provided with flexible content moderation tools that allow the registered news business corporation to remove or filter comments on the registered news business’ covered news content that: (i) are made using the digital platform service; and (ii) are made on a part of the digital platform service that is set up and able to be edited by the registered news business; (b) ensure that the registered news business corporation can disable the making of such comments; (c) ensure that the registered news business corporation can block the making of such comments: (i) by particular persons; or (ii) in particular circumstances. If I am reading this correctly (a big if!), this gives the news corporations the right to exert complete control over all "comments" on their news articles on these "digital platform services", meaning that, for instance, Hacker News or Reddit, if covered by this law, would no longer be independent sites to discuss news, but would be forcibly placed under the control of the news site. (Not sure those sites would be covered, just using that as an example.) So if the newspaper leans X, they can shut down all the comments from people who lean the other way, or people who disagree with the article, or anything they like (possibly subject to other laws, but certainly no restrictions are placed here). That's... full of implications, to say the least.

profmonocle 6y ago
Unless I'm misreading, "and are made on a part of the digital platform service that is set up and able to be edited by the registered news business" suggests this only applies to the news agency's own social media pages. I.E. they wouldn't be able to censor comments on links to their content posted by third parties.

odc 6y ago

This looks a lot like what France Press did in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News#EU_copyright_and_database_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News#EU_copyright_and_d...

alkonaut 6y ago

To be clear, this is about snippets that are displayed and lets users consume the content without ever clicking the link to visit the page? How is Google normally handling the fact that what they display in excerpts is copyrighted material? Do they just assume their snippet is short enough to be fair use everywhere? And couldn’t these sites just detect the crawlers and display article bodies that are a smaller, (0-10 words body)?

deleted 6y ago
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sidibe 6y ago
You can choose whether Google can use snippets or how big they are.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  What does that mean for the regulation in question? That it’s unnecessary because there is a technical solution? Or that it’s not written in good faith because they know it’s possible to solve technically but want funding from Google rather than actually solve it?

belushi 6y ago

I’ve long been a proponent—as both a user and an advocate of these companies’ interests—of paid premium (ad-free, tracker-free, priority support) tiers for the “Internet essentials,” i.e., Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. There is, I believe, a surprisingly sizable (and rapidly growing) contingent of these platforms’ respective user bases willing to pay for privacy and user experience, and by insisting so stubbornly on maintaining a uniformly ad-subsidized model, without so much as even experimenting with subscription tier offerings, these companies are leaving billions of dollars a year in additional revenue on the table. Perhaps the increasing cost of supply-side content will finally spur a rethinking of these platforms’ fundamental business models. Here’s hoping…

abrowne 6y ago
> paid premium (ad-free, tracker-free, priority support) tiers Does that risk making privacy only available for those with the means to pay for it?
- crazygringo 6y ago
  That's the wrong way to frame it. A product has to be paid for somehow. You could just as easily think of "paid premium" as the default, similar to the way you pay for a physical newspaper, magazine, etc. Or you can pay by giving up your privacy instead. It's your choice. Why shouldn't people who want to give up their privacy in exchange for personalized ads be allowed to?
  - rpastuszak 6y ago
    > A product has to be paid for somehow. Yes, but maybe businesses like Facebook shouldn't exist in their current shape given the amount of data required to make them profitable? Is the return worth the cost? > Why shouldn't people who want to give up their privacy in exchange for personalized ads be allowed to? Of course, but how many people are educated on what it actually means? How many people know that Google is an advertising business, not "just a search engine"? We all know that the incentives of companies like this are not compatible with consent. Stronger regulatory actions and waaaay more emphasis on education is prob. the best we have at the moment.

surajs 6y ago

a brilliant piece of legislation too by the looks of it, commendable job.

rvr_ 6y ago

Sooner or later Google will just "AI-parse" the same news story from many sources and generate a new headline plus snippet.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

estebarb 6y ago

Honestly I don't get it. Media made a lot of money publishing dead bodies, but they don't pay a dime to victim's family.

iamben 6y ago

Aren't a lot of these newspaper sites funded with AdSense as opposed to direct buys/other ad networks? So this would end up Google paying the publisher to send traffic to their site, so the publisher (potentially) earns money from Google for visitor Google has just paid for? Or something like that?!

Bloggerzune 6y ago

We weren't discussing the uniqueness of low-quality content or clickbait, nor were we even discussing politics. We are discussing the introduction of changes which will largely benefit News Corp who owns 70% of newspaper circulation, Rupert Murdoch isn't even Australian. It boggles my mind an American media mogul (with clear historically proven cases of political bias) cannot only have plenty of influence in the USA, but also here in Australia.https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/Off-page-seo.html?m=1 https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/Off-page-seo.html?m=1

known 6y ago

Sounds rational since somebody has to pay the 'source' of news

badrchoubai 6y ago

I hope other countries follow suit.

iammru 6y ago

Pay who?.. Facebook should pay the users as well.

iRomain 6y ago

Now what would be great is to see Google pay websites it’s stealing content from to populate its snippet blocks

jpollock 6y ago

Will this create a new copyright license? Will I be able to pay a license fee and reprint news stories? That could be really cool.

jccooper 6y ago

Google search is basically all "news" now for way too many keywords, due to their high rankings for "fresh content". I really wouldn't mind if that disappeared entirely. The product would be better. Facebook would also be much more pleasant.

ttmb 6y ago
The recency bias is painful. If you read a recent article and want more information on some background from the story, the results are mostly a flood of more articles on the recent story, with no new info. Your best bet is to find one of the new articles that actually cited and linked to some older work.

CrankyBear 6y ago

Yeah, I've heard this before. Ask anyone in Spanish journalism how well their laws asking for the same thing worked out for them. Spoiler: It's a complete fail.

georgespencer 6y ago

Spain tried this in 2014. Google simply removed "Google News" and cut off the healthy supply of clicks they send to the news outlets. From memory, news outlets soon relented because they needed Google more than Google needed them. When France followed Spain, they stopped Google from removing "Google News" by insisting that it was an abuse of market position to do so. Never mind the fact that it seems like an abuse of power to compel a company to do business in your region on terms it doesn't like, and to prevent it from backing out of the market. Ben Thompson from Stratechery has some good summaries of this behind his paywall.

throwaway29102 6y ago

The plus side to this is that it’ll kill (some) off-platform link sharing, which kills the “drive traffic to make money” strategy, which may reduce the amount of outrage porn circulating in the English-speaking world. Best of luck to the Aussies, and maybe we’ll catch up sooner or later.

NicoJuicy 6y ago

So, Google would index the social media pages of those corporations. With even declining revenue

varispeed 6y ago

Why such corporate lobbying isn't illegal?

lanevorockz 6y ago

It's very disturbing that Silicon Valley controls so much of public discourse. Hate Trump as much as you like but having all discourse controlled by faceless billionaires is not good to anyone. It would be the same if Bernie Sanders was the president and he did something that would affect them. It's not moral, it's just money for billionaires.

RockmanZero 6y ago

nice move! Australia

la6471 6y ago

Time for FG to invest in local reporters and hire them for original content ie original news reporting and also get some royalty out of it :)

johnnyYen 6y ago

Seems like massive legislative over-reach. 1.100 Discrimination in this context will be considered to occur if the news content of a registered news business is disadvantaged incomparison to other news content in terms of the crawling, indexing,ranking, display, presentation or other process undertaken by the digital platform on any service provided by the digital platform, on the basis ofthe registered news business’ participation in the code. IANAL, but my simple reading of this seems to imply it will be illegal for Google to NOT crawl and index News Corps content.