5 ms·

Facebook can remove news and it will minimally effect engagement. I wonder what happens to the publishers when they lose 2.3BN clicks.

Barrin92 6y ago
Which would indirectly prove the point of the legislation right? That Facebook has immense market power in the social media / ad space with no competitor in sight, which would mean expanding bargaining power for news orgs is legitimate. Because switching to a competitor would actually be the answer to your question in a functioning market.
- Permit 6y ago
  > Because switching to a competitor would actually be the answer to your question in a functioning market. What do you mean by "switching to a competitor"? Me posting an article on Facebook does not create a business relationship between Facebook and CNN.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  No, because the argument being made is that facebook is paying the news orgs less than they're owed. But the reality is that facebook is providing a free service to the news sites. You normally have to pay someone for advertising. Facebook (and Google) give it away for free.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    This seems to miss the point because normally platforms also have to pay for content. Facebook is a platform that hosts user/business produced content. No content, no reason to go to facebook. Likewise, Facebook brings attention to content owners. All of this is 'free' nominally. That's not the question, the question is who has more market power and squeezes who.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      Are you saying that Google should pay me to include my website in it's search results?
      - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        If they're stripping your information to hand out to users via their scraping mechanics, absolutely. That's what news companies, and plenty of other sites, have been subject to for years: "Google would like to scrape your content and serve it on their own site. Agree or delist yourself from search." https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynet... Google's monopoly position gives them complete negotiating power, because you can't survive on the Internet without them. What Australia is doing here seems extreme, but only because you aren't accounting for how extreme Google and Facebook's existing negotiating power is. If you don't understand how abusive Google and Facebook are, you'll think this deal is unfair. It's not.
        joshuamorton 6y ago
        Right but we're talking about news, where that isn't the case. I open Google news and I see a list of headlines. I click one one and go to the full article. I mean, if you're arguing that news provides zero value beyond a headline, that's certainly an indictment, but not of Google and facebook. Extending this, any aggregator would need to pay to link to things. Hackernews included. It's the link-tax all over again.
        ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.) Is Google News ripping off the monetizeable property of every news site's homepage for zero cost? Yes. Sure, it may not present the full text of every article, but you've stolen the front page of every newspaper, at minimum. It is the link-tax "all over again"... because it's still what needs to happen. (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.) The problem is Google is so immense, and so powerful, it is able to obliterate any one nation's attempts to do this. We actually need a unified front of governments stating that Google and Facebook need to pay for the content they scrape, or go out of business. And it probably won't be successful until a large enough contingent of governments can do it at once. (This is why the EU as a whole has generally been successful whereas attempts at regulation from France or Spain independently have failed.)
- paxys 6y ago
  There are lots of arguments for regulation, but that's not really what this law does. It is pure rent seeking.
adrr 6y ago
Isn’t that basically what Instagram is? It seems social networks are cutting 3rd party content and focusing solely on UGC. Question is does it increase or decrease subscriptions to news sites. I can see reasons it going both ways. Lack of traffic to news sites from social decreases subscriptions. Lack of news on social forces people to seek alternatives which increase subscriptions.

Barrin92 6y ago

Which would indirectly prove the point of the legislation right? That Facebook has immense market power in the social media / ad space with no competitor in sight, which would mean expanding bargaining power for news orgs is legitimate. Because switching to a competitor would actually be the answer to your question in a functioning market.

Permit 6y ago
> Because switching to a competitor would actually be the answer to your question in a functioning market. What do you mean by "switching to a competitor"? Me posting an article on Facebook does not create a business relationship between Facebook and CNN.
joshuamorton 6y ago
No, because the argument being made is that facebook is paying the news orgs less than they're owed. But the reality is that facebook is providing a free service to the news sites. You normally have to pay someone for advertising. Facebook (and Google) give it away for free.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  This seems to miss the point because normally platforms also have to pay for content. Facebook is a platform that hosts user/business produced content. No content, no reason to go to facebook. Likewise, Facebook brings attention to content owners. All of this is 'free' nominally. That's not the question, the question is who has more market power and squeezes who.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    Are you saying that Google should pay me to include my website in it's search results?
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      If they're stripping your information to hand out to users via their scraping mechanics, absolutely. That's what news companies, and plenty of other sites, have been subject to for years: "Google would like to scrape your content and serve it on their own site. Agree or delist yourself from search." https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynet... Google's monopoly position gives them complete negotiating power, because you can't survive on the Internet without them. What Australia is doing here seems extreme, but only because you aren't accounting for how extreme Google and Facebook's existing negotiating power is. If you don't understand how abusive Google and Facebook are, you'll think this deal is unfair. It's not.
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        Right but we're talking about news, where that isn't the case. I open Google news and I see a list of headlines. I click one one and go to the full article. I mean, if you're arguing that news provides zero value beyond a headline, that's certainly an indictment, but not of Google and facebook. Extending this, any aggregator would need to pay to link to things. Hackernews included. It's the link-tax all over again.
        ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.) Is Google News ripping off the monetizeable property of every news site's homepage for zero cost? Yes. Sure, it may not present the full text of every article, but you've stolen the front page of every newspaper, at minimum. It is the link-tax "all over again"... because it's still what needs to happen. (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.) The problem is Google is so immense, and so powerful, it is able to obliterate any one nation's attempts to do this. We actually need a unified front of governments stating that Google and Facebook need to pay for the content they scrape, or go out of business. And it probably won't be successful until a large enough contingent of governments can do it at once. (This is why the EU as a whole has generally been successful whereas attempts at regulation from France or Spain independently have failed.)
paxys 6y ago
There are lots of arguments for regulation, but that's not really what this law does. It is pure rent seeking.

adrr 6y ago

Isn’t that basically what Instagram is? It seems social networks are cutting 3rd party content and focusing solely on UGC. Question is does it increase or decrease subscriptions to news sites. I can see reasons it going both ways. Lack of traffic to news sites from social decreases subscriptions. Lack of news on social forces people to seek alternatives which increase subscriptions.