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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 servic

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.)
        joshuamorton 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.) For me the answer is, either I get a headline that I don't care about, or I read at least some of the article. > (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.) It's absolutely a link tax and not a scraping tax. A scraping tax would apply to anyone scraping the site. But the link tax proposals don't apply to people scraping the site, they only apply to sites linking. Why? Because if I go and scrape CNN.com, they just block me. But if Google does it, they don't want to block the scraping, because the net value of the scraping is nonzero, but they want to be paid anyway. You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense. And "scraping" doesn't even apply at all to Facebook's case, where if I post a link to CNN on facebook, now Facebook owes CNN money. WHAT?!? It's literally a cost on links. It's antithetical to the internet. But you're right, it's not a link tax. It's more akin to link-licensing. Which should sound even scarier.
  - hnick 6y ago
    I think there is an argument that they should for rich snippets at least. They go a bit beyond being an index then.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  > normally platforms also have to pay for content ? This doesn't seem generically true to me. Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Instagram, Vine, FourSquare, Yelp, Pinterest, DeviantArt, LiveJournal, Xanga, Medium, etc. None of these platforms pay for user-generated content like link posting. When analyzing this issue you can't get away from considering what the platform is a platform for. If it's a platform for UGC, the general rule is that the sharing of the content is a service provided to users at no cost. The vast majority of users receive no monetary payment from these platforms. Some of them rev share if they advertise on content, but that's about as far as it goes. Facebook should rev share on any revenue from advertisements they place on news content ($0).
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >If it's a platform for UGC, the general rule is that the sharing of the content is a service provided to users at no cost. The vast majority of users receive no monetary payment from these platforms That is true (although Youtube actually does pay creators reasonably well), but I think you can make the case that they ought to, and that I think is what the central disagreement is about. Facebook/Google and so on basically function as distributors. In the olden days publishers had integrated distribution, which is why they basically owned the market. Now tech firms have basically seized control of distribution, and because they compete for the same revenue source as the publishers (ads) the conflict is very apparent. But I think the issue is general. User generated content isn't paid for because the marginal value added is so low per user, and users have no opportunity to bargain, and property rights for user content are non-existent. Just imagine if there was a sort of data-stewardship, and users could easily collectively bargain for data they submit to facebook, quickly move it, and this was enabled across all regions. I think Google and Facebook would have to very quickly part with some of their economic rents.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      That is true (although Youtube actually does pay creators reasonably well), They pay a tiny, tiny fraction of creators that create most of the economic value. But by count the vast majority of uploaders do not get paid anything, because they produce nothing of economic value, or maybe even negative value. They also have no BATNA (no other site willing to pay them more for the worthless content they generate). I say this as an occasional uploader to YouTube of videos that get in the low thousands of views. My content likely has negative value to YouTube, but they host it because low friction is part of how they attract creators who someday grow big. but I think you can make the case that they ought to . . . You're welcome to. Just imagine if ... users could easily collectively bargain ... If they could, we'd live in a different world. I don't know what to take away from that. It's not the world we live in. Everyone has different standards for "ought," but this argument doesn't meet mine.

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.)
      - joshuamorton 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.) For me the answer is, either I get a headline that I don't care about, or I read at least some of the article. > (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.) It's absolutely a link tax and not a scraping tax. A scraping tax would apply to anyone scraping the site. But the link tax proposals don't apply to people scraping the site, they only apply to sites linking. Why? Because if I go and scrape CNN.com, they just block me. But if Google does it, they don't want to block the scraping, because the net value of the scraping is nonzero, but they want to be paid anyway. You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense. And "scraping" doesn't even apply at all to Facebook's case, where if I post a link to CNN on facebook, now Facebook owes CNN money. WHAT?!? It's literally a cost on links. It's antithetical to the internet. But you're right, it's not a link tax. It's more akin to link-licensing. Which should sound even scarier.
- hnick 6y ago
  I think there is an argument that they should for rich snippets at least. They go a bit beyond being an index then.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
> normally platforms also have to pay for content ? This doesn't seem generically true to me. Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Instagram, Vine, FourSquare, Yelp, Pinterest, DeviantArt, LiveJournal, Xanga, Medium, etc. None of these platforms pay for user-generated content like link posting. When analyzing this issue you can't get away from considering what the platform is a platform for. If it's a platform for UGC, the general rule is that the sharing of the content is a service provided to users at no cost. The vast majority of users receive no monetary payment from these platforms. Some of them rev share if they advertise on content, but that's about as far as it goes. Facebook should rev share on any revenue from advertisements they place on news content ($0).
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >If it's a platform for UGC, the general rule is that the sharing of the content is a service provided to users at no cost. The vast majority of users receive no monetary payment from these platforms That is true (although Youtube actually does pay creators reasonably well), but I think you can make the case that they ought to, and that I think is what the central disagreement is about. Facebook/Google and so on basically function as distributors. In the olden days publishers had integrated distribution, which is why they basically owned the market. Now tech firms have basically seized control of distribution, and because they compete for the same revenue source as the publishers (ads) the conflict is very apparent. But I think the issue is general. User generated content isn't paid for because the marginal value added is so low per user, and users have no opportunity to bargain, and property rights for user content are non-existent. Just imagine if there was a sort of data-stewardship, and users could easily collectively bargain for data they submit to facebook, quickly move it, and this was enabled across all regions. I think Google and Facebook would have to very quickly part with some of their economic rents.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    That is true (although Youtube actually does pay creators reasonably well), They pay a tiny, tiny fraction of creators that create most of the economic value. But by count the vast majority of uploaders do not get paid anything, because they produce nothing of economic value, or maybe even negative value. They also have no BATNA (no other site willing to pay them more for the worthless content they generate). I say this as an occasional uploader to YouTube of videos that get in the low thousands of views. My content likely has negative value to YouTube, but they host it because low friction is part of how they attract creators who someday grow big. but I think you can make the case that they ought to . . . You're welcome to. Just imagine if ... users could easily collectively bargain ... If they could, we'd live in a different world. I don't know what to take away from that. It's not the world we live in. Everyone has different standards for "ought," but this argument doesn't meet mine.