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When the main driving force is lobbying from an American multinational that pays no tax in Australia but controls 70% of our news (News Corp), and ABC, SBS and

When the main driving force is lobbying from an American multinational that pays no tax in Australia but controls 70% of our news (News Corp), and ABC, SBS and small independent news sources are specifically excluded... No, they're not on the right track. I mean, that's even before you consider that there isn't really any logical consistency to the claims that Google and Facebook are making huge profits directly from Australian news content. It's just a ludicrous false assumption...

catmanjan 6y ago
Were it not for the parens, your first paragraph could have been talking about any of the players Why is it a false assumption? The users are the product, and the user want news
- stephen_g 6y ago
  Tax evasion is a separate matter - I agree we do need to work on that, not just for Google and Facebook but all multinationals (resource companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Woodside etc. leave Google in the dust in that respect). With the assumption - at the moment, these publishers the ability to not be indexed using robots.txt, sitemap.xml etc.. If Google and Facebook were making huge profits directly from Australian news content, they could pretty easily organise to all boycott them. If the assumption behind this law was true, then that would be extremely effective because of the money apparently at stake. Or if the news sources just felt they were being unfairly used, they could just cut them off on principal. But they haven't done either. Why not? Secondly, Facebook couldn't credibly come out with a threat like this. Why would they cut off what News Corp and Nine tell us is apparently a huge revenue stream? But as we know, they're not really making huge profits directly from news, and not even much indirectly, so Facebook can threaten this.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    The only thing Facebook risks by banning all news for Australian users is engagement - that is, if the site doesn't instantly become better without the largely grim narratives put out by News Corp and most all modern news stations.

catmanjan 6y ago

Were it not for the parens, your first paragraph could have been talking about any of the players Why is it a false assumption? The users are the product, and the user want news

stephen_g 6y ago
Tax evasion is a separate matter - I agree we do need to work on that, not just for Google and Facebook but all multinationals (resource companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Woodside etc. leave Google in the dust in that respect). With the assumption - at the moment, these publishers the ability to not be indexed using robots.txt, sitemap.xml etc.. If Google and Facebook were making huge profits directly from Australian news content, they could pretty easily organise to all boycott them. If the assumption behind this law was true, then that would be extremely effective because of the money apparently at stake. Or if the news sources just felt they were being unfairly used, they could just cut them off on principal. But they haven't done either. Why not? Secondly, Facebook couldn't credibly come out with a threat like this. Why would they cut off what News Corp and Nine tell us is apparently a huge revenue stream? But as we know, they're not really making huge profits directly from news, and not even much indirectly, so Facebook can threaten this.
- judge2020 6y ago
  The only thing Facebook risks by banning all news for Australian users is engagement - that is, if the site doesn't instantly become better without the largely grim narratives put out by News Corp and most all modern news stations.