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I am no fan of this right wing government, which is letting Fake News Corp write it’s media policy, but Facebook does not have an inherent right to other people

I am no fan of this right wing government, which is letting Fake News Corp write it’s media policy, but Facebook does not have an inherent right to other people’s content. Rather than redistributing ad dollars away from big tech, this is likely to force people consuming news to go directly to the source. Either that or it will further dumb down our discourse (though Fake News Corp is doing a pretty good job of that anyway). Time will tell.

Polylactic_acid 6y ago
Facebook is not taking anyones content. News companies willingly submit their content to facebook and now demand that facebook should pay for the stuff they submitted. So facebook is taking the logical step by stopping them from submitting the content. I can't walk up to someone and hand them the keys to my car and then demand that they now owe me the value of the car.
- tempestn 6y ago
  They're not even submitting their content; they're submitting links to their content. Readers still need to go to the publishers' pages to read the articles.
  - chrismsimpson 6y ago
    This isn't even true when you consider news articles that are cached by Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      The publisher controls whether AMP is used. If they don't want to use it they can stop publishing it.
- chrismsimpson 6y ago
  This is exactly what Facebook are doing (as evidenced by Facebook stating they'll block this feature for Australian users if the proposed law goes ahead). A third party generates the content then Facebook's user base shares it within their network. Any advertising revenue generated in the meantime is pocketed solely by Facebook. My point still stands. The state of online advertising as of 2020 is such that there are essentially two vast monopolies (Facebook and Google) and you can't advertise anything online without going through one of their systems. In addition, they generate essentially no valuable content themselves (I emphasis content here, I'm not suggesting they provide no value whatsoever). For a bit of context here, the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) is arguably Australia's most respected media organisation but as it's publicly funded it generates no advertising revenue itself directly and takes no donations. It also has been hit hard by austerity from this same right wing government in recent years. To suggest we do nothing and continue to let any revenue generated be vacuumed up by the big tech giants is unacceptable.
  - stephen_g 6y ago
    The point is though that Google and Facebook don't put ads on news content. The user still has to go to the news site to actually read the news article, and the news site can put their ads on that or have a paywall. Google and Facebook only have ads on pages that might also link to news sources. (This bill is specifically about Google search results and Facebook's news feed - not Google/Facebook's ad sales businesses). So it's not, for example, like Spotify where the music is played from Spotify's servers and the user stays in the Spotify app/site. Note also that this bill specifically exempts ABC and SBS, as well as most independent news sources from being able to get any benefit.

Polylactic_acid 6y ago

Facebook is not taking anyones content. News companies willingly submit their content to facebook and now demand that facebook should pay for the stuff they submitted. So facebook is taking the logical step by stopping them from submitting the content. I can't walk up to someone and hand them the keys to my car and then demand that they now owe me the value of the car.

tempestn 6y ago
They're not even submitting their content; they're submitting links to their content. Readers still need to go to the publishers' pages to read the articles.
- chrismsimpson 6y ago
  This isn't even true when you consider news articles that are cached by Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    The publisher controls whether AMP is used. If they don't want to use it they can stop publishing it.
chrismsimpson 6y ago
This is exactly what Facebook are doing (as evidenced by Facebook stating they'll block this feature for Australian users if the proposed law goes ahead). A third party generates the content then Facebook's user base shares it within their network. Any advertising revenue generated in the meantime is pocketed solely by Facebook. My point still stands. The state of online advertising as of 2020 is such that there are essentially two vast monopolies (Facebook and Google) and you can't advertise anything online without going through one of their systems. In addition, they generate essentially no valuable content themselves (I emphasis content here, I'm not suggesting they provide no value whatsoever). For a bit of context here, the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) is arguably Australia's most respected media organisation but as it's publicly funded it generates no advertising revenue itself directly and takes no donations. It also has been hit hard by austerity from this same right wing government in recent years. To suggest we do nothing and continue to let any revenue generated be vacuumed up by the big tech giants is unacceptable.
- stephen_g 6y ago
  The point is though that Google and Facebook don't put ads on news content. The user still has to go to the news site to actually read the news article, and the news site can put their ads on that or have a paywall. Google and Facebook only have ads on pages that might also link to news sources. (This bill is specifically about Google search results and Facebook's news feed - not Google/Facebook's ad sales businesses). So it's not, for example, like Spotify where the music is played from Spotify's servers and the user stays in the Spotify app/site. Note also that this bill specifically exempts ABC and SBS, as well as most independent news sources from being able to get any benefit.