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As somebody who dislikes both the established old media firms of Murdoch & Co, but despises the parasitic Tech surveillance capitalism even more, I welcome this
by DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
As somebody who dislikes both the established old media firms of Murdoch & Co, but despises the parasitic Tech surveillance capitalism even more, I welcome this (regressive) attitude. Europeans are fighting for similar reasons which is loss of control of their own media and a takeover by US propaganda and norms by companies who have failed to pay their taxes again and again.
imo it doesn't matter that many of these local outlets are backward, racist and populist rags (never criticizing the Australian concentration camps, or failure of capturing the idiocy of the AAbill, or whatever justifies being outraged about etc), the big guys (FB/Google) are expert in doing the same thing but at scale and with better PR (+ they can do so without paying their taxes).
As long as it hurts BigTech it's the right move no matter what "appears" right or wrong. These firms and their management are parasites and they need to be treated as such until they a) pay their taxes and b) respect local laws.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detention_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detenti...
- zhd 6y agoRe: takeover by US firms, note that while Murdoch was born Australian he gave up Australian in favor of US citizenship... precisely because it would have been illegal to own such a stake in US media firms as a non- or dual-citizen. We would also like the Murdoch media and/or tech giants to pay tax in Australia, yes, but neither do at the moment.
- 908B64B197 6y agoWhy does Australia allows such a large percentage of it's medias to be owned by a foreigner?
- zzedd 6y agobecause 'the foreigner' controls the media. it's a race condition.
- throwaways885 6y ago'Australian concentration camps'?
- meditative 6y agoI assume they're referring to offshore detention.
- Clewza313 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Centre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Cent...
- 908B64B197 6y ago> Europeans are fighting for similar reasons [...] by companies who have failed to pay their taxes again and again. I get that it's trendy right now for elected non-technical bureaucrats to whine against tech giants. But if they are really avoiding taxes why not simply... charge them for that? Hint: They can't because all the taxation schemes used by these companies are legal. EU bureaucrats could simply write a tax code that makes them illegal but they won't! All the whining also distracts peoples from asking themselves why European policies failed to grow a healthy growing tech ecosystem like in the US.
- robin21 6y agoThe fact they threaten to pull out because they are going to make a small decrease in profits speaks volumes of their bullying tactics. It’s clearly a case of: we don’t want to set a precedent in other countries.