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Once the people at these news orgs ask their analytics team to show them how much of their traffic comes from Facebook, I'm sure they'll scrap the push for this

Once the people at these news orgs ask their analytics team to show them how much of their traffic comes from Facebook, I'm sure they'll scrap the push for this law real fast. If not, their traffic (and therefore revenue) will drop immensely. Very few people go directly to news sites now. Liking a news page and then seeing what pops up in the feed is how most people consume their news (which I hate, because it fuels the headline click bait, but it's just a fact).

prawn 6y ago
A couple of years ago, I was talking to an experienced journalist at one of Australia's capital city papers and they said that they are extremely reliant on Facebook for traffic.
jedberg 6y ago
The problem here is that the news orgs know that most of their traffic comes from FB and Google. They don't like this law either. This law is being pushed just by News Corp, who knows they can survive without FB and Google. This is exactly the outcome they were hoping for. The way the law is written, they don't have to pay the news orgs until those orgs request it. Perhaps one option is for FB and Google to keep linking to any news site that doesn't ask for money, and when one asks, just drop them.
- comex 6y ago
  > The way the law is written, they don't have to pay the news orgs until those orgs request it. Perhaps one option is for FB and Google to keep linking to any news site that doesn't ask for money, and when one asks, just drop them. They thought of that. The law explicitly says that FB etc. shall not "discriminate between registered news businesses and news businesses that are not registered news businesses".
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Yeah, but that is very nebulous. What defines a news organization? I suspect the lawyers could figure out a pretty easy workaround.
    - brokenmachine 6y ago
      It's defined in the law and up to the whim of the treasurer. This is a really, really misguided law (and that's being generous).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

prawn 6y ago

A couple of years ago, I was talking to an experienced journalist at one of Australia's capital city papers and they said that they are extremely reliant on Facebook for traffic.

jedberg 6y ago

The problem here is that the news orgs know that most of their traffic comes from FB and Google. They don't like this law either. This law is being pushed just by News Corp, who knows they can survive without FB and Google. This is exactly the outcome they were hoping for. The way the law is written, they don't have to pay the news orgs until those orgs request it. Perhaps one option is for FB and Google to keep linking to any news site that doesn't ask for money, and when one asks, just drop them.

comex 6y ago
> The way the law is written, they don't have to pay the news orgs until those orgs request it. Perhaps one option is for FB and Google to keep linking to any news site that doesn't ask for money, and when one asks, just drop them. They thought of that. The law explicitly says that FB etc. shall not "discriminate between registered news businesses and news businesses that are not registered news businesses".
- jedberg 6y ago
  Yeah, but that is very nebulous. What defines a news organization? I suspect the lawyers could figure out a pretty easy workaround.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    It's defined in the law and up to the whim of the treasurer. This is a really, really misguided law (and that's being generous).
deleted 6y ago
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