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Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

370 points by justinv 6y ago

riquito 6y ago
"Digital Platforms must provide moderation tools to news media companies to enable the removal or filtering of user comments;" This was another big one. User links a news article, the newspaper would get to moderate comments on Facebook, in the user's page
css 6y ago
Text of the relevant Australian law: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbillsdgs%2F7808228%22 https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- teraflop 6y ago
  That's a summary of the bill, along with some commentary on the arguments that were heard about. This seems to be the actual text: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r6652_first-reps/toc_pdf/20177b01.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...
clouddrover 6y ago
In contrast, Google has been making deals with Australian media companies: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-commercial-terms-for-news-content-20210217-p5736c.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-...
- quink 6y ago
  Mostly because afaik the law prohibits Google as it is from delisting news content specifically like Facebook is doing now, so it was either efforts like this to last-ditch prevent the legislation from passing or face a complete shutdown in Australia.
  - g_p 6y ago
    I wonder if this is the start of a course-correction that recognises search/basic discovery of information is probably "infrastructure", and that (perhaps) large social media platforms are becoming "public places". The way this is being brought about (the linking part) seems flawed, but perhaps if this goes ahead, it will be an interesting way to see how a future world might look where some of the damnage done by the "internet" (well, its business models) in recent years is forcibly reversed?
- ipsum2 6y ago
  So disappointed that Google is caving into a government-enforced shake down.
  - lysp 6y ago
    Pretty sure Google was doing this regardless.
gambiting 6y ago
I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I think I'm going to side with FB on this. The Australian government is once again showing absolute disregard when it comes to understanding technology, and its signature heavy handed approach to regulation.
- quink 6y ago
  One recent quote from the former prime minister when Australia was planning to introduce backdoors to end-to-end encryption: > "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"
  - cowpig 6y ago
    Oh my god this is a real thing... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-end-end-encryption-ban-says-laws-mathematics-dont-apply-down https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-en...
    - quink 6y ago
      > Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise. - Donald Horne, 1964
      - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
        I think this describes other commonwealth countries, like here in Canada, as well. Likely an outcrop of former-colonial mentality. The history of leadership here when we still had a mother country was one of governorship and colonial administration. The towns and streets are named after them. Frankly the attitude towards politics has persisted. It has its positives (stability and a relative lack of dysfunction) and its problems. In Ontario as well we have this kind of problem with state-capture by industries all over. Regulations and land zoning are in many ways geared for the already-haves rather than a level playing field. An example being the wine industry regulation here.
Cyclone_ 6y ago
Will be interesting to see the social impact on this. I kind of wish sometimes there was a plug-in that could just block news postings on facebook, since I don't go to facebook to see what friends are saying about the news
- creaghpatr 6y ago
  There used to be, you could hide all from certain sources when you looked at the options on a given post but they sunset that feature. The sources I hid then still don't show up in my feed, though.
- james_s_tayler 6y ago
  Just sign up for Facebook through Australia.
March_f6 6y ago
The gall of FB mentioning the importance of news in a democratic society. They have arguably done irreversible net bad for democracies. Let em bow out.
- mythz 6y ago
  Did you RTFA? They're having to put content moderation guards in-place: - To stop Australian publishers from sharing any content on FB - Prevent International or Australian news from being viewed or shared by Australians Failing to see how this benefits Australians or Australian news publishers.
  - March_f6 6y ago
    It benefits them by reducing their exposure to online echo chambers reinforced by fake or extremely biased news that are endemic to Facebook. It benefits them by forcing them to get their news directly from the source rather than wrapped in a context Facebook decides upon. It sounds as though you presuppose FB is or should be the only source of news. And yes I did read it. And I thought critically about it :)
    - mythz 6y ago
      I'd say it's wishful thinking that you believe a majority of the population is going to visit all their news sources directly rather than simply ignore they exist. News publishers were voluntarily posting on FB themselves to generate traffic to their own sites, it's some warped tough love view to think removing their ability to share content is somehow for their own benefit. > It sounds as though you presuppose FB is or should be the only source of news. Never stated anything remotely close to infer this false assumption, ironic that in the same breath you're lambasting FB for spreading misinformation.
      - March_f6 6y ago
        People won't stop consuming news and they will go where they need to to get it. With FB out of the running I think that means they will likely end up on some mixed diet like a forum (like HN) and getting it from various sources (local,national,etc.) Essentially, I'm less worried about people being uninformed than I am about them being misinformed and I'm afraid that FB has shown to enable misinformation at unprecedented scale thus far. If we can't agree that FB has uniquely played a large role in that then our discussion is rather moot I'm afraid. Also, that's why I said it "sounds like". I was inferring while being fully aware of your ability to clarify.
cmroanirgo 6y ago
I use FB as an easy way to garner news from several locations at once. Of course FB uses that to litter my 'news feed' with junk (eg suggestions of all kinds). So I'm two minds about this being a problem for me (an Aussie). However, when I read this sob story by FB : > publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue. ...I know that's not the truth. A lot of the news I read is the same as the free-to-air news that I get across all tv channels (sbs, abc*), so this notion that they'll be losing money anyway is a bit of a misnomer. *abc is the same as the US's pbs
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I'm confused how you know that's not the truth. Why are the publishers posting on Facebook if not because they expect it'll get them more readers?
  - dannyr 6y ago
    In some countries, Facebook has a monopoly in online distribution that publishers have no other choice aside from Facebook to get readers.
    - anonAndOn 6y ago
      Is that because they're legally forbidden from setting up their own website or is it because they're unwilling to spend money on some decent developers and build a homepage worth checking everyday?
- pantsforbirds 6y ago
  Except its obvious that posting news articles drives readership towards the links. You get very detailed statistics from Facebook on clickthrough rates and its not hard to see who clicks through that already has an account for your site (and is likely already a regular reader). Some simple business analysis would show that having a strong presence on Facebook drives value to the company. Look at a company like the American Right Wing outlet DailyWire. They have a massive presence on Facebook and they do a good job of getting people to comment and share articles and it has caused the valuation of the company to explode. (see Now This for a left wing example).
endisneigh 6y ago
Could someone summarize both positions? It seems pretty reasonable to me - my understanding is that Australia wants Google and Facebook to pay lump sums to have their content on their platforms (as opposed to per-click). Google and Facebook can basically say yes or no. How is this different than, say, The New York Times saying the same thing about their content?
- scribu 6y ago
  I think this article on simple linking vs. previewing sums up the issue: https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-bargaining-code-could-break-the-internet-hes-right-but-theres-a-fix-153630 https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-ba...
  - anticristi 6y ago
    Awesome summary. It seems to me that this is a bit of a failure of the fair use doctrine. Making one preview of an image or article does not impact the author's monetisation ability. Making a business out of systematically producing previews (and adding your own ads around them) should no longer quality as fair use. We have a joke: A: How much is a drop of gas? B: A drop of gas? Well, zero! A: One million drops of gas, please.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Fair use (or i guess fair dealing in australia) isn't totally about not negatively impacting other people's businesses. It helps your fair use argument if you don't impact, but there are plenty of clear cases where its fair use despite negative business impact. For example writing a scathing negative review of something that has quotes for context.
      - anticristi 6y ago
        You are right. By "business impact" I was rather thinking that the aggregator simply diverts ad revenue, without adding any value. If I made a business which summaries other books without sharing revenue, I would likely get busted.
dannyr 6y ago
Does it take effect today?
- empressplay 6y ago
  Apparently it's in the process of being implemented today yes
rafaelturk 6y ago
I'm going to side with FB on this. This law is so bizarre.
- kgog 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you find bizarre about it?
  - ta89489544 6y ago
    I found it bizarre that the Treasurer gets to (arbitrarily?) pick which platforms this applies to and that only 2 platforms, Facebook and Google, were chosen. Maybe I'm just missing the information, but why isn't there just a definition of a platform this should apply to? I'm pretty far removed from this issues, but it smells like some large news organization decided they wanted to get some free money from Facebook and Google so they lobbied for this law.
    - kgog 6y ago
      To me it sounds like they went after the symptoms and not the root cause. Which doesn't sound too bad to me.
  - abiogenesis 6y ago
    The law is not bizarre in essence (there are details that are bizarre though): You are free to ask money for your content. On the other hand, Facebook is free to not buy your it.
    - brokenmachine 6y ago
      No, with this law Facebook is not free to not buy the content. They are specifically forbidden from excluding those media companies from results, and lets not forget the cherry on top of the shit sandwich which is being forced to share their algorithm with the media companies, and even having to give advance notice of changes to their algorithm, something which is probably not even possible. On top of all this, the definition of "core news" in the bill is ridiculously broad. It's completely untenable, and IMO Facebook would surely (and predictably) have to leave the Australian market under those conditions.
linuxftw 6y ago
Personally, I think it might actually make facebook enjoyable again in Australia. I don't want to go to facebook to see people sharing news. I 0% want to see anything news related on social media. TBD what qualifies as 'news,' though.
marshmallow_12 6y ago
i don't understand. FB claims that this law will hurt australian news outlets more than FB... Why not just let these companies protest themselves?? We saw something similar in facebooks campaign against apples new privacy law. There, too, they pretended to be representing the "small business". I find it pathetic that they are using this same tactic of casting themselves as the protector of smaller, weaker, companies again. It's like a toddler covering his eyes with his hands and hoping that no one can see him.
- DevKoala 6y ago
  FB is always going on justice crusades for those “unheard” voices; their exec team, board members, lobbyists, etc.
DevKoala 6y ago
Interesting experiment. I wonder if this will decrease or increase the amount of misinformation Australian people consume.
bwb 6y ago
I would love to see FB ban any news from their platform, especially politics. Globally.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  This will just ensure that all news is transmitted via memes, screenshots, and unsourced copy-pasted quotes. It won't be an improvement.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    ... or worse - government approved news only.
    - bwb 6y ago
      You aren't stopping conversations. And, FB already has to do that in countries with laws that control those aspects of the free press.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      Would there be any difference at this point?
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      The licensing of journalists is coming.
  - bwb 6y ago
    Why wouldn't people just visit news sites like normal? You go to cnn.com or nytimes.com or your local newspaper. Thats it, just don't allow it at FB. People post so many fake stories from fakes sites, or outrage stories with headlines for clicks, stop incentivizing that behaviour. Just ban all politics/news and let people talk about other stuff.
    - bpodgursky 6y ago
      Because people want to use social media, and they're going to keep doing it. And people talk about news. They're still going to talk about it with friends and family. Except, instead of at least linking to an article, now they'll have to share it via selected bits and pieces that FB can't censor (or via pure interpretation).
the-dude 6y ago
FTA: Intro: > to restrict the availability of news Outro: > I hope in the future, we can include news for people in Australia once again
minikites 6y ago
Facebook won't take any action when its product is used to facilitate genocide, but they absolutely will take drastic action when you threaten to regulate them or threaten their profits in any way: https://twitter.com/max_fisher/status/1362116659977281538 https://twitter.com/max_fisher/status/1362116659977281538
mzs 6y ago
News Corp & Google made a deal: https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/google-news-corp-distribution-partnership https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/google-news-corp-dist...
sharkjacobs 6y ago
It would solve a lot of the problems I have with Facebook if they applied this policy internationally.
- sroussey 6y ago
  Yes! No more news links on my FB feed would be great!!
Sephr 6y ago
Honestly wish Google did this as well instead of bowing down to unjust laws.
- smolder 6y ago
  Who is deciding what laws are just? Hopefully not Google or Facebook, as they are amoral profit-motivated behemoths who will annex your home and life if they're allowed.
  - pb7 6y ago
    Most people would agree that paying for the obligation to drive traffic to someone else's business without a choice in the matter is unjust.
    - oska 6y ago
      That's an unfair summary of the situation. They push ads against 3rd party content shown on their site.
      - pb7 6y ago
        No, it's not. There is no "3rd party content", it's just links, the basis for the internet. Anyone can stop their site from being indexed with one line of code if they're not happy with the value proposition. Google offered to stop indexing all Australian news sites altogether but that was deemed illegal because this is nothing but a forcible cash grab by a dying media monopoly that has the Australian government by the balls.
        oska 6y ago
        This article [1] (which I found because someone else linked to it in this thread), explains the situation well. Google & FB do not just link. > Part of the issue here is Google and Facebook don’t just collect a list of interesting links to news content. Rather the way they find, sort, curate and present news content adds value for their users. > They don’t just link to news content, they reframe it. It is often in that reframing that advertisements appear, and this is where these platforms make money. > For example, this link will take you to the original 1989 proposal for the World Wide Web. Right now, anyone can create such a link to any other page or object on the web, without having to pay anyone else. > But what Facebook and Google do in curating news content is fundamentally different. They create compelling previews, usually by offering the headline of a news article, sometimes the first few lines, and often the first image extracted. [1] https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-bargaining-code-could-break-the-internet-hes-right-but-theres-a-fix-153630 https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-ba...
worik 6y ago
Can anybody explain to me what the problem is with Facebook et el driving traffic to news sites? Most of the times I visit newspapers websites I was sent there from social media.
- vinger 6y ago
  A group of people want to control what websites your friends are sharing.
- pochamago 6y ago
  The cynical streak in me would suggest that now is a popular time to criticize major tech organs for their relationship to news, and the Australian government is hoping to use that to funnel money from US companies to Australian ones.
  - t0mas88 6y ago
    You could argue that taxes were designed before the "you are the product" age. If Apple sells a phone in Australia to a local customer, they pay Australian sales tax and possibly import dues to get the phone into the country. When Facebook sells data from an Australian user to a random advertiser, all tax is due in Ireland/Netherlands or some other tax haven and Australia makes nothing. So while this approach with news media is a strange one, I think there is an argument to be made for taxing things differently. Make Facebook/Google pay a fair tax in all countries they're active in. Then each country can decide how they want to use that, if a democratically elected government in Australia wants to subsidize news using taxes they should be able to do so.
    - pochamago 6y ago
      While you're right that there's a reasonable argument, I can't say it's one I agree with. I already strongly dislike the change in US tax law that now requires all e-commerce companies to adjust their sales tax based on the location of the consumer. It added a bunch of new bureaucratic overhead for us on top of negating one of the competitive fringe benefits of having a business in a small state instead of California. And it mostly just seems arbitrary to me which way that tax swings, rather than intrinsically fair.
gkmcd 6y ago
A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech companies to provide selected news organisations with advance notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I believe it is the actually the most important part of the legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an enormous advantage over other companies not included and protect them from new competitors, basically entrenching the current media landscape for the foreseeable future. Given the current Australian government's cosy relationship with a particular media company that currently dominates the media landscape here, I don't think it is coincidence.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving only news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information. Google and Facebook's algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should demand that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on, that lives are built and destroyed by.
  - Jonanin 6y ago
    These algorithms are not human readable code. They are massively complex interconnected systems of many black box ML models. I don't understand what clarity people think releasing the "algorithms" will bring. In fact, describing ranking as a single algorithm is pretty misleading.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      I also believe any algorithm that isn't human-readable should be banned. If it can't be understood, nobody can validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm. The fact that technology companies have been grossly negligent and irresponsible isn't a reason to not regulate them: It's proof regulation needs to be much, much stronger.
eznzt 6y ago
Why does it say "recognizes" but then "penalise" in the same paragraph?
tw04 6y ago
Oh no, not that, anything but that. In all seriousness I hope this drives the less informed in Australia to seek out actual news sources and break out of the echo chamber that is Facebook. And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it. You can't have a robust democracy without a robust fourth estate.
- darth_avocado 6y ago
  I can guarantee that the exact opposite of that is gonna happen. There's a reason why we are in the current state of misinformation. Quality journalism stays behind paywalls, while misinformation is free. In the age of constant information, anything that has more barriers to access, keeps losing its position in the ecosystem.
- creddit 6y ago
  > And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it. Not unreasonable arguments could be made that it's journalism that leeches off of FB. FB drives huge traffic and provides a massive platform.
- tomComb 6y ago
  If FB thought that would happen they wouldn't have done. And have you seen the types of 'information' people share on Facebook when they are not sharing links to news? I think users will stay in Facebook but share lower quality stuff.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  Are these less informed people numerous enough to cause a problem to others, perhaps by voting badly? How would you know? Are you one of them? How would you know? If you are, then aren't any opinions you share on the internet just making things worse? I ask these questions because I keep seeing the news exaggerating some bogeyman and people believing that it's more significant than it really is. For example, you expressed concern for democracy in your post here, which seems like a pretty big danger! Is that really at risk for Australia or are you misinformed about the significance of this particular bogeyman? I also see people complaining about misinformation while never identifying themselves as victims of it. Why aren't the victims complaining? Because part of being a victim of misinformation includes not knowing that you are. So maybe it's yourself, in which case, better to address that problem before trying to "correct" others. Also, this idea of there being a huge underclass of misinformed people damaging democracy is divisive. It classifies people into good (always ourselves) and bad (always someone else), giving moral justification to the self-declared "good" people to correct the "bad" people.
llacb47 6y ago
Well this will go great.
indymike 6y ago
News adds little value to Facebook. I wonder how much of Facebook's engagement is actually from news versus user-generated content.
- pb7 6y ago
  The post says news makes up 4% of the feed content.[0] [0] https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-viewing-news-on-facebook-in-australia/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-vie...
  - indymike 6y ago
    What I'm looking for is what percentage of engagement is attributed to that 4% of the feed content.
    - MarkMc 6y ago
      Without that 4% Facebook runs the risk that users migrate to another social media platform, which could have a huge impact. Milk might only account for 4% of a supermarket's sales, but a supermarket that doesn't sell milk is at a huge disadvantage to one that does.
    - stirlo 6y ago
      From looking at my feed now I'd suggest its far more than 4%. All of the manufactured outrage and angry posting on news stories has disappeared leaving my feed with a few group posts and a bunch of ads.
mcintyre1994 6y ago
Does this law hit Reddit as well? I’m kind of curious what they’d do if they couldn’t link to news in some parts of the world. Especially because a lot of the time the comments will include full article text if there’s a paywall.
llacb47 6y ago
New error message being displayed on facebook: https://i.imgur.com/sxHaAUg.png https://i.imgur.com/sxHaAUg.png
- bardan 6y ago
  Am I missing a detail or does it seem retributive for Facebook to block Australian news sources globally? Isn't the issue with the Australian market alone?
  - nl 6y ago
    The legislation is about the source of the news, not the traffic source. They'd have to pay if it was shared outside Australia.
angry_octet 6y ago
This unfortunately does nothing to stop disinformation actors with armies of bots and sockpuppet accounts. So the information content on fb has plunged even lower. If might be a good thing overall though, because it might become clear that anything you see on fb isn't professionally developed news, whereas previously Breitbart/SkyNews/Pete fucking Evans got greater access to eyeballs than serious media like SMH/Guardian/ABC.
srcreigh 6y ago
I haven't read the bill, but this looks like a huge win. FB has abused our brain chemistry with addictive content. Their platform makes discussions more impulsive, passionate and careless not unlike any other addictive substance. People crave "the goods" ie browsing their bite sized feeds, and neglect the responsibility of actually learning about the news. Not unlike how if you're addicted to sugar/unhealthy foods you don't want your veggies. This affects not only customers but news organizations. News orgs are forced to twist the truth to make their content more addictive in order to survive. FB's double think comes out in this article. They attribute people's interest in the news to their platform. When in reality they almost certainly would have reached the news independently, and FB is an addictive and unnecessary additive to people's life. I draw two conclusions from this: 1. FB is scared. The Australian government has found a weak point that causes FB to take a major hit to the breadth of their platform. 2. FB can no longer weaponize headlines. People will still discuss news in their own words or using fake sources, instead of impulse sharing actual news headlines. Headline quality will improve, meanwhile FB will remain a challenging place to discuss. People will now have the time to recognize headline quality and may even read the news without having the impulsive and addictive sharing option. This is a hit to FB's reality bending brand. FB offers addictive and impulsive options for communicating, but they want us to think FB is an essential part of communicating. By not being allowed to share on FB, the addictive option is removed, and we can better experience the reality of how great the healthier options are. Maybe we can live without sugar/FB. Maybe life will be better that way.
- dingaling 6y ago
  You should consider rewriting that post with FB substituted by 'social media'.
- docdeek 6y ago
  Facebook's statement says that news is only 4% of what is shared on their platform. I'm not sure 4% is a major hit to their platform. On the other hand, they delivered 5.1 billion views to Australian media sites last year. That would seem to me to be a big hit to media sites.
  - 6y ago
dang 6y ago
Facebook-specific threads on this from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337269 - "An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia", 2020-09-01, 158 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24347676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24347676 - "Facebook to block news on Australian sites after new law, riling lawmakers", 2020-09-01, 78 comments The big threads about this issue include: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111783 - "Australia to introduce Google, Facebook legislation to parliament next week", 2021-02-12, 269 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26030135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26030135 - "Google News Showcase Launches in Australia", 2021-02-04, 54 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25999799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25999799 - "Australia’s PM suggests Bing adequate if Google blocks searches", 2021-02-02, 175 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25987671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25987671 - "Communications Minister touts the opportunities of a Google-less Australia", 2021-02-01, 49 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903511 - "Australia’s Proposed “Fox News Tax”", 2021-01-25, 29 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25873001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25873001 - "Could Google Really Leave Australia?", 2021-01-22, 51 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870571 - "The spat between Google and Australia, as reported on HN", 2021-01-22, 95 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867547 - "Google Threatens to Remove Search in Australia as Spat Escalates", 2021-01-22, 33 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867264 - "Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia", 2021-01-22, 135 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866493 - "Google threatens to disable search in Australia if media code becomes law", 2021-01-22, 18 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25789773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25789773 - "Google looks at pulling all or part of its search engine from Australia", 2021-01-15, 71 comments Others?
panda21 6y ago
If FB and Google are the only two on the naughty list, does this give opportunity for smaller startups to take advantage, or have they made it clear that startups can easily be added to the list as well?
- ekimekim 6y ago
  The law is being made under the auspices of anti-monopoly legislation, so adding a company to the list requires they hold a monopolistic position.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    No, according to the law it's an arbitrary decision by the Treasurer. No mention of monopoly.
golemiprague 6y ago
Australia is a backward nanny state and this is just another manifestation of this fact. The rules and regulations in this country are just over the top. They advertise themselves as "laid back" but there is nothing laid back about how this country runs. Still waiting for NSW to allow electric scooters. I do admit though, with all the progressivism going around being conservative in some aspects can be very beneficial. For example closing the country to flights from China and in general when corona started was a pretty good idea unlike in the US where everybody called Trump racist for trying to do just that.
hg35h4 6y ago
Traditional media companies vs big tech oligarchs. Not sure which I dislike more. Liars and thieves the lot of them. Can they both lose for our sakes?
nojs 6y ago
Good on Facebook for actually calling the Government’s bluff, with a straightforward explanation of the economics, instead of pretending to and posting strange and confusing things like Google. I tend to believe them that the impact will be minimal, but will be huge to publishers (which is why the law was so ridiculous in the first place).
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Nobody disputes the economics. That’s why a law was needed. You’re confusing might with right.
  - nojs 6y ago
    If linking to Australian news content is not in the financial interests of the company, why would they continue to do it? It shouldn’t be surprising that they choose not to.
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
      Yes, it’s in their immediate interest in the same way as working for $5/day is preferable to not working.
      - logicchains 6y ago
        And so the law just pushes the service out of existence, like a high minimum wage just leaves the people who couldn't generate more than $5/day jobless (otherwise Africa could just set the minimum wage to $20/hour and eliminate proverty. The world doesn't work that way.).
- SilverRed 6y ago
  Googles marketing team is so hopeless we can't even work out what they are doing about this issue.
djoldman 6y ago
The messaging on this tech vs news publishers in Australia is pretty intense. Any site that doesn't want google to index a page can add: <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/> to the page and it will not be listed when someone searches Google (as far as I know), thereby preventing all the alleged stealing/siphoning/etc of revenue/profits from news sites. Am I wrong here? If the above is true, what's really going on here is that content producers got together and said, "if you don't pay all of us, we'll stop you from linking to all of us," and it was worth it to Google to pay. Clearly it wasn't worth it to Facebook.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Any single site doesn’t have the power to change Facebook. Your suggestion is equivalent to “no child is forced to work in the mines. If they don’t need the money, they can choose to go to school instead”
  - djoldman 6y ago
    It seems to me that Facebook putting an anchor link to a website on a facebook page is materially different from child labor. Should sites be allowed to link to other sites? Also, every website has the power to change Google: just put the noindex tag on your pages and you'll effectively prevent links from Google to your website. For facebook, it's trickier. One thing that might work is sharing something from your website on Facebook and then reporting it as against community standards. It seems like there are a zillion pages of people trying to get their sites UNblocked from Facebook- the cause of which frequently seems to be people flagging content.
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
      These links and snippets are mutually beneficial. The argument is if the “natural” allocation of benefits is fair and the best possible for society.
      - djoldman 6y ago
AniseAbyss 6y ago
In my country media has learned a lesson: poor people are not your audience. You can make low quality simple crap, put a bunch of ads on it and give it to the the masses. The soap operas and quiz shows of journalism. And you can make longread investigative journalism and put it behind a paywall. Undoing the damage the internet has done takes time but it can be down.
vicary 6y ago
Aussie. Aussie. Aussie.
zmmmmm 6y ago
This is a fairly important stand Facebook is taking - I'm glad they are doing it. The precedent set here is uncomfortably close to creating a liability simply for linking to content - something that would quite literally destroy the very fabric of the internet if it was applied generally. In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are. If internet services have to assume liability for not just actual content people post but content within things they link to it will create a situation that is simply untenable. The fact that this law is applied only to two cherry picked companies selected at the pleasure of a government minister does not change the nature of the precedent created, and creates an enormous risk that this will now be lobbied to apply to numerous other industries and circumstances. I would fully expect that to follow in short order if Facebook folded on this - and it probably will happen anyway.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  > In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are. It is much worse than that. The publishers themselves often share the links on Facebook themselves.
  - zmmmmm 6y ago
    Yes, it is particularly egregious that someone can go to Facebook, create a link to their own content, and then claim monetary compensation for use of their content from Facebook.
    - BLKNSLVR 6y ago
      No, no, you have to cross a certain revenue / profit threshold before you can claim money. We can't have any Tom, Dick, or Harry eating into News Corps profits. The original legislation proposal didn't even include the SBS and the ABC news services. They got added in to make it look less like News Corp wrote the legislation (which they pretty much did).
    - oska 6y ago
      I actually don't see a problem with this in the context of an ad-pushing platform. Facebook gets all its engagement from 1) users' feeds and 2) imported 3rd party content. Why should they receive all the profits from pushing ads against content others have created? I think it's a grossly unfair "business model" and am happy to see it challenged.
dekhn 6y ago
Begun, the social media government wars have.
naebother 6y ago
This also blocks substacks and blogs btw. Hopefully, this just leads to more sources getting classified as "news media" and eventually stops any meaningful linking and thereby making Facebook useless in Australia at least. One can dream, but they'll probably capitulate before then.
asdf333 6y ago
is restricting news on social media a bad thing? i think it’s a good thing.
pitay 6y ago
How is this for an idea - companies that provide links to a website that also can generate a preview, charge the linked site for the privilege of having a preview of the content shown. This shows that such things are valuable for the recipient. If Google had done that, then this proposed law wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Perhaps they should do this for other news sites now, that way it protects them from future laws like this being proposed in other countries. Being linked like this is clearly worth it to the publishers, as the law they support prohibits the delisting of the sites that the law applies to. Second, how about having a way to add meta-information to web pages/articles saying what is okay to use as preview and what is not. This looks to me like the long term solution to all sites and services on the current web. As long as there is a single, non-specialized way for browsers to ignore attributes/tags/other info they do not use then it does not add complexity to browsers.
pedalpete 6y ago
I live in Australia, so have a dog in this fight. I'm kinda excited to see how this pans out. I don't use FB for news, that's not what a "social network" is for. It's for keeping in touch with friends, sharing photos, etc etc. Because I don't interact with news on FB, I already see very little of it, but I'm hoping this change makes FB the place for sharing our lives again, as opposed to just sharing links to media that I can find through other sources. I somewhat wonder if FB is looking at this as a test subject of what happens if they were to block links to external content? What if FB only shared stuff from FB. Would that be so bad?
- jbob2000 6y ago
  Facebook would finally be valuable again if all of the content farm news garbage was kicked off. Unfortunately, the people who like that stuff also buy stuff from online ads. It’s the same reason why TLC and The History Channel now only show reality TV; because people who watch those shows buy the things they see advertised.
- steve_taylor 6y ago
  Facebook claims that news makes up only 4% of its content, which would seem to be in line with your statement that you hardly see any news. I see a lot more news – something like 50% of my feed. If removing news reduces Facebook’s revenue by 4%, it would be reasonable to wonder why they didn’t remove news globally years ago, given all the time, money and effort they invest in it and all the drama and existential threats that come with it. The reality is that news is a massive driver of engagement on Facebook. Their 4% stat is grossly misleading. I’m 100% against this proposed law, but it’s hard to maintain this position in the face of lies and gross misrepresentations by Facebook and Google.
- NamTaf 6y ago
  I am also Aussie and agree with this. FB has worked hard to make itself the walled garden of “internet”. It tries to encourage people to use the FB search box to find news agencies, brands, etc. rather than the URL box. The monopoly positions of tech giants and their efforts to build walled gardens is the real problem. The fact that they’re where everyone consumes news media is a byproduct of that. We’ve seen the harmful damage it does to democracy and to society in general. This legislation is stupid, and attempts to place stupid demands on the tech giants such as sharing algorithms. It’s a blatant attempt to kowtow to Uncle Rupert, with some funds also regrettably going to those dirty socialists at the government-owned news media organisations on the side to make it a little less obviously on the nose. However, I think FB was more stupid to not just follow the Google approach and negotiate it down to a dilute bother, in effect paying a chump change tax to retain that monopoly position. Aussies are notoriously apathetic about any issue which doesn’t directly affect them. FB has made a tactical misstep here by making the issue affect everyone. I hope this is a step towards smashing that walled garden. I hope it just ends up teaching Aussies to go to the actual websites of organisations whose content they want to view. I hope FB withers back down to being the place you check a few times a day max to see what your friends are doing and to see some memes, rather than where people endlessly doomscroll and never leave. The Aussie government does not have the clout to challenge these monopolies directly, but but this legislation starts that process then they will have Steven Bradburyed [1] their way to a fantastic outcome. The reduction of these all-encompassing walled gardens will be to the betterment of society as a whole. Now we have to start dismantling the NewsCorp behemoth as well. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury
jjcm 6y ago
I live in Australia and while I'm excited to see less Facebook use, I see a lot of comments saying things like, "good, Facebook monetized an addiction model and this curbs that". While true, the proposed law that has pushed them to do this is incredibly dangerous. The law doesn't just apply to Facebook, it applies to whoever the Treasurer of Australia[0] says it applies to - it isn't metrics/rules based: https://i.imgur.com/7RSqXDJ.png https://i.imgur.com/7RSqXDJ.png This means you as a business owner may wake up one day to find that you are now classified as a designated digital platform corporation and are on the hook to now negotiate contracts with every registered news business corporation, AND provide each of them with the secret sauce behind your ranking algos. The only thing that needs to be done to do this is for the Treasurer to file a decision in the Federal Register of Legislation[1]. It's a shocking amount of overreach, lack of visibility to the process, and a single point of failure in the system. Overall I'm very curious to see how this plays out. Facebook took the nuclear option here, and I highly suspect that news corporations will feel quite a sting from the loss of traffic / platform. I truly feel like Facebook "winning" here and having the law dropped is the lesser of two evils. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasurer_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasurer_of_Australia [1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Browse/Results/ByRegDate/LegislativeInstruments/Asmade/201/0/0/Principal https://www.legislation.gov.au/Browse/Results/ByRegDate/Legi...
- catmanjan 6y ago
  While that is probably technically true, in reality the Australian government is unlikely to make Australian businesses comply, giving them a competitive advantage - I think this is a protectionist policy, but the right won't admit to that because it goes against their "free market" ideals.
  - echevil 6y ago
    Does Australia have businesses in similar model like Facebook? Or are you talking about completely different models?
    - catmanjan 6y ago
angry_octet 6y ago
Wow they've blocked the Bureau of Meteorology page, no more weather warnings on fb. All of ABC too (our BBC equivalent), though they were not required to pay for ABC content, so it seems pretty bitchy.
- denismi 6y ago
  The legislation was subsequently amended to include ABC: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/abc-sbs-included-in-news-media-code-as-tech-giants-win-some-concessions-20201207-p56l7h.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/abc-sbs-included-in-... (Hopefully YC doesn't have to pay for this link one day)
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    Good good. I'm all for making fb a barren content free wasteland. It was a mistake for public sector to build engagement on a platform where they were tenants without rights. They could have put the rights in with legislation first, but were always at mercy of the algorithm and having to pay for placement.
- bryan_w 6y ago
  Also I believe that to stay within the bounds of the law they have to prevent _any_ news site from being linked and block all Australia news sites from being shown internationally
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    It seems such a broad interpretation that they block satire of events too (Betoota, Chaser), but strangely not dis/mis information crackpots like Friendly J##dies, even though he claims to be independent media. I would check if you can 'like us on Facebook' but I can't find any buttons! What happened, they used to be everywhere?
- coffenjam 6y ago
  They're banning emergency services as well ("by mistake"). They probably just want to increase the backlash. The emergency services Facebook pages will obviously be back within hours. I live in Australia but I don't have a Facebook account and I don't read the fake news media, so I actually don't have a horse in this race. I hope they both mutually destruct each other.
shruubi 6y ago
I'm glad that Facebook is standing its ground compared to Google, who ended up capitulating to Murdoch's sock-puppet government. For those who are outside Australia, it bears mentioning that Murdoch-owned media in Australia by far and away dominates the media landscape, and has a blatant bias towards the current sitting government (the conservative liberal party), and the liberals have for decades now returned the favour by consistently legislating in favour of News Corp. The only way that the government will back down is when they are confronted with a much bigger fish than News Corp, in which case, chances are better than none that the government will go scurrying back into their little holes.
andrewinardeer 6y ago
The Bureau of Meteorology, a government department that provides forecasts has just tweeted that their Facebook page has been impacted by this change which is odd as this is not a media company and provides arguably vitally important information to mariners and other transport modes. It looks like the blast radius from this decision is impacting organizations that is out of scope of this legislation. https://twitter.com/BOM_au/status/1362175695389155330 https://twitter.com/BOM_au/status/1362175695389155330
- adamjb 6y ago
  The BOM provides vitally important information in disasters too. This will kill people.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    I'm Australian. If I want to read important disaster information from the BOM, I will go to the BOM site, not Facebook.
- plasma 6y ago
  Honestly, I feel good about this (I'm Australian too). It's causing pain to the government now, to put pressure on re-evaluating their ridiculous proposal. Besides the obvious drawbacks of the proposal, there would also be side-effects that won't be seen until later, and I'm glad the side-effects are being shown right now to try and stop this whole mess.
- zmmmmm 6y ago
  I guess if you take Facebook's point of view: erring on one side of this is a violation of the law, erring on the other is just a piece of content missing. Which should they choose?
- catmanjan 6y ago
  The primary way for the government to communicate with the public should never have been allowed to be a foreign, private third party
- 6y ago
tus89 6y ago
Good guy Facebook for the first time in perhaps...forever?
stirlo 6y ago
As an Australian this morning my Facebook feed is a bit of a wasteland. None of my friends were really sharing anything so the only content in my feed is now ads and posts from groups I'm members of. All of the "news" has been removed, with them the manufactured outrage, toxic comments and political rants. It actually feels far closer to the Facebook of 2008 that I actually enjoyed rather than the "engagement" machine of 2020. Obviously the publishers will be hurt by this, particularly smaller ones without organic traffic. But it also feels like a lot of the "engagement" Facebook had been pursuing has been removed too. I wonder how this will affect usage as currently there's little in my feed that would encourage me to open the app every day.
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throwaheyy 6y ago
Facebook just blocked a bunch of government information pages (specifically health and fire departments), saying they are “news”. Stinks of retaliation. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/facebook-ban-hits-health-pages-days-before-covid-19-vaccine-rollout-20210218-p573nc.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/facebook-ban-hits-he...
anothernewdude 6y ago
I can only assume propaganda and fake news don't count. Any one have thoughts about that?
abiogenesis 6y ago
> Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue. This is technically not correct. Publishers can opt out from Google Search if they want to, so one may also argue that they willingly choose to be on Google as well.
- enneff 6y ago
  It’s just straight up incorrect. They’re throwing google under the bus to distance themselves.
- el_dev_hell 6y ago
  Not to defend Facebook, but a failure to opt-out is not really the same as volunteering. I find the argument made by Facebook to be sound. They're making a comparison between Google crawling the web and indexing content vs. a news site intentionally posting their content to Facebook. The difference between getting your webpage crawled and explicitly posting on a public forum is significant. I read their comment as "users explicitly post contend on Facebook vs. passively having their content scraped by Google".
  - abiogenesis 6y ago
    True, but you have to opt-out from Facebook too if an end user shares the link. Their argument only works if the news outlet shares the link.
DaniloDias 6y ago
Why would anyone want to use a filtered platform? Are there people who really want to restrict themselves from being exposed to ideas they would be challenged by? Or is this purely about restricting access to unauthorized ideas?
tomaszs 6y ago
A bold statement from a company that essentially seemed to gain from news and websites, until it seemed to reach a conclusion a user that reads trustworthy news outside Facebook, is a user that spends less time on Facebook. The very approach that seemed to conclude in lowering trustworthy news pages reach on the platform, and seem to boosted fake news. Now the company tells it will not pay trustworthy publishers for the content. As far as it seems absurd, it just shows that any news in Australia on Facebook can be considered a fake news as default. The clarity is a benefit.
triggercut 6y ago
bit.ly links (and I'm going to assume other shorteners) seem to work, just so long as you remove the preview before you post it. Is that a bug, or a feature?
King-Aaron 6y ago
It's not just news they blocked today. The DFES (Department of Fire and Emergency Services) page is down - i.e. no bushfire or flood alerts showing up. Their entire page is gutted. There's some government run domestic violence and community service pages that are wiped. Though hilariously, the local LNP candidate's page is gone, which in the midst of a state election campaign is probably pretty hard for them. I get that facebook have a bone to pick with the government, but does a) blocking crucial emergency service pages have a benefit, and b) does wiping a campaign page have some worrying connotations?
- catmanjan 6y ago
  To be honest, good. I don't want the government to use Facebook as the primary/only mechanism to communicate with the public...
- nitemice 6y ago
  They've blocked any page that provides news, as defined by the code: core news content means content that reports, investigates or explains: a) issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or b) current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level DFES, BOM & other government services would fall under definition b. Candidate page would fall under definition a.
thisrod 6y ago
I think both sides are in the wrong here. One of them is Mark Zuckerberg and the other is the Morrison government, for a start. But not only because of that. The Murdoch family's claim ... I mean, Australia's ... is ridiculous. Facebook are totally within their rights to stop using Australian content and not pay for it. If the law is so sloppily worded that it arguably defines the Health Department website as news, well, it wasn't Facebook who drafted it. On the other hand, this does stuff around a lot of innocent bystanders, and Facebook could easily have given a month's notice that they were going to do it. Which is, ironically, one of the things that the law would require them to do. What ever else Facebook might have demonstrated by their irresponsible reaction, they have shown that this law isn't all wrong, rather some parts of it are urgently necessary.
tedk-42 6y ago
Sigh - another HN post/thread bashing the government and claiming they're basically puppets for Murdoch media. The whole 'good on facebook for standing up to the government' is quite a funny stance, given how most people view facebook as a not-so-good entity on the web. Fake news is a worse problem than Murdoch media and its sensationalist journalism.
- King-Aaron 6y ago
  > claiming they're basically puppets for Murdoch media Well, this is actually the case.
riffic 6y ago
news media need to see more than ever how important it will be for them to publish directly to the ActivityPub ecosystem, and to cut out the gatekeepers in the way.
shanecp 6y ago
FB took the right decision. I wish Google and others will do the same. Like many others have said, I don't like some things that Google and Facebook does, but for this, I believe FB took the right decision. The bill is so vague, and it can be interpreted to say anything that the Government wants it to say. This isn't to protect journalism, it's a backdoor to funnel money to Newscorp.
gitowiec 6y ago
That is good. And Facebook just shoot it's leg. No news sharing on FB will make people go out from this closed garden to look for news. And this is good, because a lot of people treat FB like the whole internet (they just don't understand what is a blog, home page, vortal)
forgingahead 6y ago
This is hilarious, because the impression to regular folks will simply be that "Facebook has implemented a news blackout on Australians, which is authoritarian and dangerous." That is certainly a true sentiment, but in general as many other commenters have noted, it's better not to have "news" articles being force-fed to social media users via blackbox algorithms, emotional trigger-sharing, and over-enthusiastic ad buyers. This is a great first-step to help break the spell that accidental over-consumption of news media has on people's mental health. Enjoy Australia, the rest of the world envies the peace and quiet in your news feed!
nojvek 6y ago
Normally I am against Facebook, but they are in the right here. This is totally Murdoch monopoly playing his political puppets to get this through. I don’t know whether Australia will reverse this, but I really hope other countries don’t jump on the bandwagon. The reason why the Internet is the internet is because of free information sharing. Having laws that target specific companies for extortion is just dumb.
grumple 6y ago
If you get your news from Facebook, you aren’t getting good news. This is a win for the world - less manufactured outrage getting pumped into the brains of the people. Maybe news publishers in Australia can go back to quality journalism and selling subscriptions.
jaimex2 6y ago
There's a lot of misinformation from the tech giants floating around. ACCC has addressed some of them here: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/response-to-google-open-letter https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/response-to-google-ope...
nojvek 6y ago
The real deal is what happens if Google blocks traffic to all Australian news site. That would be huge. It’s pretty scary that a few people in parliament can sign a law that only serves a few rich and powerful people at the expense of its citizens. What is the future of governance? Because 2021, it feels still like a drunken king doing what “feels good”
cyberpsybin 6y ago
This is... acceptable.
ropable 6y ago
I feel like this has the potential to damage the NewsCorp media here in Australia far more than it might damage FB. It would be fascinating to see what happens to their web traffic before & after this change.

370 points by justinv 6y ago

"Digital Platforms must provide moderation tools to news media companies to enable the removal or filtering of user comments;" This was another big one. User links a news article, the newspaper would get to moderate comments on Facebook, in the user's page

css 6y ago

Text of the relevant Australian law: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbillsdgs%2F7808228%22 https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

deleted 6y ago
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teraflop 6y ago
That's a summary of the bill, along with some commentary on the arguments that were heard about. This seems to be the actual text: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r6652_first-reps/toc_pdf/20177b01.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...

clouddrover 6y ago

In contrast, Google has been making deals with Australian media companies: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-commercial-terms-for-news-content-20210217-p5736c.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-...

quink 6y ago
Mostly because afaik the law prohibits Google as it is from delisting news content specifically like Facebook is doing now, so it was either efforts like this to last-ditch prevent the legislation from passing or face a complete shutdown in Australia.
- g_p 6y ago
  I wonder if this is the start of a course-correction that recognises search/basic discovery of information is probably "infrastructure", and that (perhaps) large social media platforms are becoming "public places". The way this is being brought about (the linking part) seems flawed, but perhaps if this goes ahead, it will be an interesting way to see how a future world might look where some of the damnage done by the "internet" (well, its business models) in recent years is forcibly reversed?
ipsum2 6y ago
So disappointed that Google is caving into a government-enforced shake down.
- lysp 6y ago
  Pretty sure Google was doing this regardless.

gambiting 6y ago

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I think I'm going to side with FB on this. The Australian government is once again showing absolute disregard when it comes to understanding technology, and its signature heavy handed approach to regulation.

quink 6y ago
One recent quote from the former prime minister when Australia was planning to introduce backdoors to end-to-end encryption: > "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"
- cowpig 6y ago
  Oh my god this is a real thing... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-end-end-encryption-ban-says-laws-mathematics-dont-apply-down https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-en...
  - quink 6y ago
    > Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise. - Donald Horne, 1964
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      I think this describes other commonwealth countries, like here in Canada, as well. Likely an outcrop of former-colonial mentality. The history of leadership here when we still had a mother country was one of governorship and colonial administration. The towns and streets are named after them. Frankly the attitude towards politics has persisted. It has its positives (stability and a relative lack of dysfunction) and its problems. In Ontario as well we have this kind of problem with state-capture by industries all over. Regulations and land zoning are in many ways geared for the already-haves rather than a level playing field. An example being the wine industry regulation here.

Cyclone_ 6y ago

Will be interesting to see the social impact on this. I kind of wish sometimes there was a plug-in that could just block news postings on facebook, since I don't go to facebook to see what friends are saying about the news

creaghpatr 6y ago
There used to be, you could hide all from certain sources when you looked at the options on a given post but they sunset that feature. The sources I hid then still don't show up in my feed, though.
james_s_tayler 6y ago
Just sign up for Facebook through Australia.

March_f6 6y ago

The gall of FB mentioning the importance of news in a democratic society. They have arguably done irreversible net bad for democracies. Let em bow out.

mythz 6y ago
Did you RTFA? They're having to put content moderation guards in-place: - To stop Australian publishers from sharing any content on FB - Prevent International or Australian news from being viewed or shared by Australians Failing to see how this benefits Australians or Australian news publishers.
- March_f6 6y ago
  It benefits them by reducing their exposure to online echo chambers reinforced by fake or extremely biased news that are endemic to Facebook. It benefits them by forcing them to get their news directly from the source rather than wrapped in a context Facebook decides upon. It sounds as though you presuppose FB is or should be the only source of news. And yes I did read it. And I thought critically about it :)
  - mythz 6y ago
    I'd say it's wishful thinking that you believe a majority of the population is going to visit all their news sources directly rather than simply ignore they exist. News publishers were voluntarily posting on FB themselves to generate traffic to their own sites, it's some warped tough love view to think removing their ability to share content is somehow for their own benefit. > It sounds as though you presuppose FB is or should be the only source of news. Never stated anything remotely close to infer this false assumption, ironic that in the same breath you're lambasting FB for spreading misinformation.
    - March_f6 6y ago
      People won't stop consuming news and they will go where they need to to get it. With FB out of the running I think that means they will likely end up on some mixed diet like a forum (like HN) and getting it from various sources (local,national,etc.) Essentially, I'm less worried about people being uninformed than I am about them being misinformed and I'm afraid that FB has shown to enable misinformation at unprecedented scale thus far. If we can't agree that FB has uniquely played a large role in that then our discussion is rather moot I'm afraid. Also, that's why I said it "sounds like". I was inferring while being fully aware of your ability to clarify.

cmroanirgo 6y ago

I use FB as an easy way to garner news from several locations at once. Of course FB uses that to litter my 'news feed' with junk (eg suggestions of all kinds). So I'm two minds about this being a problem for me (an Aussie). However, when I read this sob story by FB : > publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue. ...I know that's not the truth. A lot of the news I read is the same as the free-to-air news that I get across all tv channels (sbs, abc*), so this notion that they'll be losing money anyway is a bit of a misnomer. *abc is the same as the US's pbs

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I'm confused how you know that's not the truth. Why are the publishers posting on Facebook if not because they expect it'll get them more readers?
- dannyr 6y ago
  In some countries, Facebook has a monopoly in online distribution that publishers have no other choice aside from Facebook to get readers.
  - anonAndOn 6y ago
    Is that because they're legally forbidden from setting up their own website or is it because they're unwilling to spend money on some decent developers and build a homepage worth checking everyday?
pantsforbirds 6y ago
Except its obvious that posting news articles drives readership towards the links. You get very detailed statistics from Facebook on clickthrough rates and its not hard to see who clicks through that already has an account for your site (and is likely already a regular reader). Some simple business analysis would show that having a strong presence on Facebook drives value to the company. Look at a company like the American Right Wing outlet DailyWire. They have a massive presence on Facebook and they do a good job of getting people to comment and share articles and it has caused the valuation of the company to explode. (see Now This for a left wing example).

endisneigh 6y ago

Could someone summarize both positions? It seems pretty reasonable to me - my understanding is that Australia wants Google and Facebook to pay lump sums to have their content on their platforms (as opposed to per-click). Google and Facebook can basically say yes or no. How is this different than, say, The New York Times saying the same thing about their content?

scribu 6y ago
I think this article on simple linking vs. previewing sums up the issue: https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-bargaining-code-could-break-the-internet-hes-right-but-theres-a-fix-153630 https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-ba...
- anticristi 6y ago
  Awesome summary. It seems to me that this is a bit of a failure of the fair use doctrine. Making one preview of an image or article does not impact the author's monetisation ability. Making a business out of systematically producing previews (and adding your own ads around them) should no longer quality as fair use. We have a joke: A: How much is a drop of gas? B: A drop of gas? Well, zero! A: One million drops of gas, please.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Fair use (or i guess fair dealing in australia) isn't totally about not negatively impacting other people's businesses. It helps your fair use argument if you don't impact, but there are plenty of clear cases where its fair use despite negative business impact. For example writing a scathing negative review of something that has quotes for context.
    - anticristi 6y ago
      You are right. By "business impact" I was rather thinking that the aggregator simply diverts ad revenue, without adding any value. If I made a business which summaries other books without sharing revenue, I would likely get busted.

dannyr 6y ago

Does it take effect today?

empressplay 6y ago
Apparently it's in the process of being implemented today yes

rafaelturk 6y ago

I'm going to side with FB on this. This law is so bizarre.

kgog 6y ago
Can you elaborate on what you find bizarre about it?
- ta89489544 6y ago
  I found it bizarre that the Treasurer gets to (arbitrarily?) pick which platforms this applies to and that only 2 platforms, Facebook and Google, were chosen. Maybe I'm just missing the information, but why isn't there just a definition of a platform this should apply to? I'm pretty far removed from this issues, but it smells like some large news organization decided they wanted to get some free money from Facebook and Google so they lobbied for this law.
  - kgog 6y ago
    To me it sounds like they went after the symptoms and not the root cause. Which doesn't sound too bad to me.
- abiogenesis 6y ago
  The law is not bizarre in essence (there are details that are bizarre though): You are free to ask money for your content. On the other hand, Facebook is free to not buy your it.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    No, with this law Facebook is not free to not buy the content. They are specifically forbidden from excluding those media companies from results, and lets not forget the cherry on top of the shit sandwich which is being forced to share their algorithm with the media companies, and even having to give advance notice of changes to their algorithm, something which is probably not even possible. On top of all this, the definition of "core news" in the bill is ridiculously broad. It's completely untenable, and IMO Facebook would surely (and predictably) have to leave the Australian market under those conditions.

linuxftw 6y ago

Personally, I think it might actually make facebook enjoyable again in Australia. I don't want to go to facebook to see people sharing news. I 0% want to see anything news related on social media. TBD what qualifies as 'news,' though.

marshmallow_12 6y ago

i don't understand. FB claims that this law will hurt australian news outlets more than FB... Why not just let these companies protest themselves?? We saw something similar in facebooks campaign against apples new privacy law. There, too, they pretended to be representing the "small business". I find it pathetic that they are using this same tactic of casting themselves as the protector of smaller, weaker, companies again. It's like a toddler covering his eyes with his hands and hoping that no one can see him.

DevKoala 6y ago
FB is always going on justice crusades for those “unheard” voices; their exec team, board members, lobbyists, etc.

DevKoala 6y ago

Interesting experiment. I wonder if this will decrease or increase the amount of misinformation Australian people consume.

bwb 6y ago

I would love to see FB ban any news from their platform, especially politics. Globally.

bpodgursky 6y ago
This will just ensure that all news is transmitted via memes, screenshots, and unsourced copy-pasted quotes. It won't be an improvement.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  ... or worse - government approved news only.
  - bwb 6y ago
    You aren't stopping conversations. And, FB already has to do that in countries with laws that control those aspects of the free press.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    Would there be any difference at this point?
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    The licensing of journalists is coming.
- bwb 6y ago
  Why wouldn't people just visit news sites like normal? You go to cnn.com or nytimes.com or your local newspaper. Thats it, just don't allow it at FB. People post so many fake stories from fakes sites, or outrage stories with headlines for clicks, stop incentivizing that behaviour. Just ban all politics/news and let people talk about other stuff.
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    Because people want to use social media, and they're going to keep doing it. And people talk about news. They're still going to talk about it with friends and family. Except, instead of at least linking to an article, now they'll have to share it via selected bits and pieces that FB can't censor (or via pure interpretation).

the-dude 6y ago

FTA: Intro: > to restrict the availability of news Outro: > I hope in the future, we can include news for people in Australia once again

minikites 6y ago

Facebook won't take any action when its product is used to facilitate genocide, but they absolutely will take drastic action when you threaten to regulate them or threaten their profits in any way: https://twitter.com/max_fisher/status/1362116659977281538 https://twitter.com/max_fisher/status/1362116659977281538

mzs 6y ago

News Corp & Google made a deal: https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/google-news-corp-distribution-partnership https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/google-news-corp-dist...

sharkjacobs 6y ago

It would solve a lot of the problems I have with Facebook if they applied this policy internationally.

sroussey 6y ago
Yes! No more news links on my FB feed would be great!!

Sephr 6y ago

Honestly wish Google did this as well instead of bowing down to unjust laws.

smolder 6y ago
Who is deciding what laws are just? Hopefully not Google or Facebook, as they are amoral profit-motivated behemoths who will annex your home and life if they're allowed.
- pb7 6y ago
  Most people would agree that paying for the obligation to drive traffic to someone else's business without a choice in the matter is unjust.
  - oska 6y ago
    That's an unfair summary of the situation. They push ads against 3rd party content shown on their site.
    - pb7 6y ago
      No, it's not. There is no "3rd party content", it's just links, the basis for the internet. Anyone can stop their site from being indexed with one line of code if they're not happy with the value proposition. Google offered to stop indexing all Australian news sites altogether but that was deemed illegal because this is nothing but a forcible cash grab by a dying media monopoly that has the Australian government by the balls.
      - oska 6y ago
        This article [1] (which I found because someone else linked to it in this thread), explains the situation well. Google & FB do not just link. > Part of the issue here is Google and Facebook don’t just collect a list of interesting links to news content. Rather the way they find, sort, curate and present news content adds value for their users. > They don’t just link to news content, they reframe it. It is often in that reframing that advertisements appear, and this is where these platforms make money. > For example, this link will take you to the original 1989 proposal for the World Wide Web. Right now, anyone can create such a link to any other page or object on the web, without having to pay anyone else. > But what Facebook and Google do in curating news content is fundamentally different. They create compelling previews, usually by offering the headline of a news article, sometimes the first few lines, and often the first image extracted. [1] https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-bargaining-code-could-break-the-internet-hes-right-but-theres-a-fix-153630 https://theconversation.com/webs-inventor-says-news-media-ba...

worik 6y ago

Can anybody explain to me what the problem is with Facebook et el driving traffic to news sites? Most of the times I visit newspapers websites I was sent there from social media.

vinger 6y ago
A group of people want to control what websites your friends are sharing.
pochamago 6y ago
The cynical streak in me would suggest that now is a popular time to criticize major tech organs for their relationship to news, and the Australian government is hoping to use that to funnel money from US companies to Australian ones.
- t0mas88 6y ago
  You could argue that taxes were designed before the "you are the product" age. If Apple sells a phone in Australia to a local customer, they pay Australian sales tax and possibly import dues to get the phone into the country. When Facebook sells data from an Australian user to a random advertiser, all tax is due in Ireland/Netherlands or some other tax haven and Australia makes nothing. So while this approach with news media is a strange one, I think there is an argument to be made for taxing things differently. Make Facebook/Google pay a fair tax in all countries they're active in. Then each country can decide how they want to use that, if a democratically elected government in Australia wants to subsidize news using taxes they should be able to do so.
  - pochamago 6y ago
    While you're right that there's a reasonable argument, I can't say it's one I agree with. I already strongly dislike the change in US tax law that now requires all e-commerce companies to adjust their sales tax based on the location of the consumer. It added a bunch of new bureaucratic overhead for us on top of negating one of the competitive fringe benefits of having a business in a small state instead of California. And it mostly just seems arbitrary to me which way that tax swings, rather than intrinsically fair.

gkmcd 6y ago

A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech companies to provide selected news organisations with advance notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I believe it is the actually the most important part of the legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an enormous advantage over other companies not included and protect them from new competitors, basically entrenching the current media landscape for the foreseeable future. Given the current Australian government's cosy relationship with a particular media company that currently dominates the media landscape here, I don't think it is coincidence.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving only news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information. Google and Facebook's algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should demand that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on, that lives are built and destroyed by.
- Jonanin 6y ago
  These algorithms are not human readable code. They are massively complex interconnected systems of many black box ML models. I don't understand what clarity people think releasing the "algorithms" will bring. In fact, describing ranking as a single algorithm is pretty misleading.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I also believe any algorithm that isn't human-readable should be banned. If it can't be understood, nobody can validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm. The fact that technology companies have been grossly negligent and irresponsible isn't a reason to not regulate them: It's proof regulation needs to be much, much stronger.

eznzt 6y ago

Why does it say "recognizes" but then "penalise" in the same paragraph?

tw04 6y ago

Oh no, not that, anything but that. In all seriousness I hope this drives the less informed in Australia to seek out actual news sources and break out of the echo chamber that is Facebook. And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it. You can't have a robust democracy without a robust fourth estate.

darth_avocado 6y ago
I can guarantee that the exact opposite of that is gonna happen. There's a reason why we are in the current state of misinformation. Quality journalism stays behind paywalls, while misinformation is free. In the age of constant information, anything that has more barriers to access, keeps losing its position in the ecosystem.
creddit 6y ago
> And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it. Not unreasonable arguments could be made that it's journalism that leeches off of FB. FB drives huge traffic and provides a massive platform.
tomComb 6y ago
If FB thought that would happen they wouldn't have done. And have you seen the types of 'information' people share on Facebook when they are not sharing links to news? I think users will stay in Facebook but share lower quality stuff.
exporectomy 6y ago
Are these less informed people numerous enough to cause a problem to others, perhaps by voting badly? How would you know? Are you one of them? How would you know? If you are, then aren't any opinions you share on the internet just making things worse? I ask these questions because I keep seeing the news exaggerating some bogeyman and people believing that it's more significant than it really is. For example, you expressed concern for democracy in your post here, which seems like a pretty big danger! Is that really at risk for Australia or are you misinformed about the significance of this particular bogeyman? I also see people complaining about misinformation while never identifying themselves as victims of it. Why aren't the victims complaining? Because part of being a victim of misinformation includes not knowing that you are. So maybe it's yourself, in which case, better to address that problem before trying to "correct" others. Also, this idea of there being a huge underclass of misinformed people damaging democracy is divisive. It classifies people into good (always ourselves) and bad (always someone else), giving moral justification to the self-declared "good" people to correct the "bad" people.

llacb47 6y ago

Well this will go great.

indymike 6y ago

News adds little value to Facebook. I wonder how much of Facebook's engagement is actually from news versus user-generated content.

pb7 6y ago
The post says news makes up 4% of the feed content.[0] [0] https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-viewing-news-on-facebook-in-australia/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-vie...
- indymike 6y ago
  What I'm looking for is what percentage of engagement is attributed to that 4% of the feed content.
  - MarkMc 6y ago
    Without that 4% Facebook runs the risk that users migrate to another social media platform, which could have a huge impact. Milk might only account for 4% of a supermarket's sales, but a supermarket that doesn't sell milk is at a huge disadvantage to one that does.
  - stirlo 6y ago
    From looking at my feed now I'd suggest its far more than 4%. All of the manufactured outrage and angry posting on news stories has disappeared leaving my feed with a few group posts and a bunch of ads.

mcintyre1994 6y ago

Does this law hit Reddit as well? I’m kind of curious what they’d do if they couldn’t link to news in some parts of the world. Especially because a lot of the time the comments will include full article text if there’s a paywall.

llacb47 6y ago

New error message being displayed on facebook: https://i.imgur.com/sxHaAUg.png https://i.imgur.com/sxHaAUg.png

bardan 6y ago
Am I missing a detail or does it seem retributive for Facebook to block Australian news sources globally? Isn't the issue with the Australian market alone?
- nl 6y ago
  The legislation is about the source of the news, not the traffic source. They'd have to pay if it was shared outside Australia.

angry_octet 6y ago

This unfortunately does nothing to stop disinformation actors with armies of bots and sockpuppet accounts. So the information content on fb has plunged even lower. If might be a good thing overall though, because it might become clear that anything you see on fb isn't professionally developed news, whereas previously Breitbart/SkyNews/Pete fucking Evans got greater access to eyeballs than serious media like SMH/Guardian/ABC.

srcreigh 6y ago

I haven't read the bill, but this looks like a huge win. FB has abused our brain chemistry with addictive content. Their platform makes discussions more impulsive, passionate and careless not unlike any other addictive substance. People crave "the goods" ie browsing their bite sized feeds, and neglect the responsibility of actually learning about the news. Not unlike how if you're addicted to sugar/unhealthy foods you don't want your veggies. This affects not only customers but news organizations. News orgs are forced to twist the truth to make their content more addictive in order to survive. FB's double think comes out in this article. They attribute people's interest in the news to their platform. When in reality they almost certainly would have reached the news independently, and FB is an addictive and unnecessary additive to people's life. I draw two conclusions from this: 1. FB is scared. The Australian government has found a weak point that causes FB to take a major hit to the breadth of their platform. 2. FB can no longer weaponize headlines. People will still discuss news in their own words or using fake sources, instead of impulse sharing actual news headlines. Headline quality will improve, meanwhile FB will remain a challenging place to discuss. People will now have the time to recognize headline quality and may even read the news without having the impulsive and addictive sharing option. This is a hit to FB's reality bending brand. FB offers addictive and impulsive options for communicating, but they want us to think FB is an essential part of communicating. By not being allowed to share on FB, the addictive option is removed, and we can better experience the reality of how great the healthier options are. Maybe we can live without sugar/FB. Maybe life will be better that way.

dingaling 6y ago
You should consider rewriting that post with FB substituted by 'social media'.
docdeek 6y ago
Facebook's statement says that news is only 4% of what is shared on their platform. I'm not sure 4% is a major hit to their platform. On the other hand, they delivered 5.1 billion views to Australian media sites last year. That would seem to me to be a big hit to media sites.
- 6y ago

dang 6y ago

Facebook-specific threads on this from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337269 - "An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia", 2020-09-01, 158 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24347676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24347676 - "Facebook to block news on Australian sites after new law, riling lawmakers", 2020-09-01, 78 comments The big threads about this issue include: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111783 - "Australia to introduce Google, Facebook legislation to parliament next week", 2021-02-12, 269 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26030135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26030135 - "Google News Showcase Launches in Australia", 2021-02-04, 54 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25999799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25999799 - "Australia’s PM suggests Bing adequate if Google blocks searches", 2021-02-02, 175 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25987671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25987671 - "Communications Minister touts the opportunities of a Google-less Australia", 2021-02-01, 49 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903511 - "Australia’s Proposed “Fox News Tax”", 2021-01-25, 29 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25873001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25873001 - "Could Google Really Leave Australia?", 2021-01-22, 51 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870571 - "The spat between Google and Australia, as reported on HN", 2021-01-22, 95 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867547 - "Google Threatens to Remove Search in Australia as Spat Escalates", 2021-01-22, 33 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867264 - "Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia", 2021-01-22, 135 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866493 - "Google threatens to disable search in Australia if media code becomes law", 2021-01-22, 18 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25789773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25789773 - "Google looks at pulling all or part of its search engine from Australia", 2021-01-15, 71 comments Others?

panda21 6y ago

If FB and Google are the only two on the naughty list, does this give opportunity for smaller startups to take advantage, or have they made it clear that startups can easily be added to the list as well?

ekimekim 6y ago
The law is being made under the auspices of anti-monopoly legislation, so adding a company to the list requires they hold a monopolistic position.
- brokenmachine 6y ago
  No, according to the law it's an arbitrary decision by the Treasurer. No mention of monopoly.

golemiprague 6y ago

Australia is a backward nanny state and this is just another manifestation of this fact. The rules and regulations in this country are just over the top. They advertise themselves as "laid back" but there is nothing laid back about how this country runs. Still waiting for NSW to allow electric scooters. I do admit though, with all the progressivism going around being conservative in some aspects can be very beneficial. For example closing the country to flights from China and in general when corona started was a pretty good idea unlike in the US where everybody called Trump racist for trying to do just that.

hg35h4 6y ago

Traditional media companies vs big tech oligarchs. Not sure which I dislike more. Liars and thieves the lot of them. Can they both lose for our sakes?

nojs 6y ago

Good on Facebook for actually calling the Government’s bluff, with a straightforward explanation of the economics, instead of pretending to and posting strange and confusing things like Google. I tend to believe them that the impact will be minimal, but will be huge to publishers (which is why the law was so ridiculous in the first place).

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Nobody disputes the economics. That’s why a law was needed. You’re confusing might with right.
- nojs 6y ago
  If linking to Australian news content is not in the financial interests of the company, why would they continue to do it? It shouldn’t be surprising that they choose not to.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    Yes, it’s in their immediate interest in the same way as working for $5/day is preferable to not working.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      And so the law just pushes the service out of existence, like a high minimum wage just leaves the people who couldn't generate more than $5/day jobless (otherwise Africa could just set the minimum wage to $20/hour and eliminate proverty. The world doesn't work that way.).
SilverRed 6y ago
Googles marketing team is so hopeless we can't even work out what they are doing about this issue.

djoldman 6y ago

The messaging on this tech vs news publishers in Australia is pretty intense. Any site that doesn't want google to index a page can add: <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/> to the page and it will not be listed when someone searches Google (as far as I know), thereby preventing all the alleged stealing/siphoning/etc of revenue/profits from news sites. Am I wrong here? If the above is true, what's really going on here is that content producers got together and said, "if you don't pay all of us, we'll stop you from linking to all of us," and it was worth it to Google to pay. Clearly it wasn't worth it to Facebook.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Any single site doesn’t have the power to change Facebook. Your suggestion is equivalent to “no child is forced to work in the mines. If they don’t need the money, they can choose to go to school instead”
- djoldman 6y ago
  It seems to me that Facebook putting an anchor link to a website on a facebook page is materially different from child labor. Should sites be allowed to link to other sites? Also, every website has the power to change Google: just put the noindex tag on your pages and you'll effectively prevent links from Google to your website. For facebook, it's trickier. One thing that might work is sharing something from your website on Facebook and then reporting it as against community standards. It seems like there are a zillion pages of people trying to get their sites UNblocked from Facebook- the cause of which frequently seems to be people flagging content.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    These links and snippets are mutually beneficial. The argument is if the “natural” allocation of benefits is fair and the best possible for society.
    - djoldman 6y ago

AniseAbyss 6y ago

In my country media has learned a lesson: poor people are not your audience. You can make low quality simple crap, put a bunch of ads on it and give it to the the masses. The soap operas and quiz shows of journalism. And you can make longread investigative journalism and put it behind a paywall. Undoing the damage the internet has done takes time but it can be down.

vicary 6y ago

Aussie. Aussie. Aussie.

zmmmmm 6y ago

This is a fairly important stand Facebook is taking - I'm glad they are doing it. The precedent set here is uncomfortably close to creating a liability simply for linking to content - something that would quite literally destroy the very fabric of the internet if it was applied generally. In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are. If internet services have to assume liability for not just actual content people post but content within things they link to it will create a situation that is simply untenable. The fact that this law is applied only to two cherry picked companies selected at the pleasure of a government minister does not change the nature of the precedent created, and creates an enormous risk that this will now be lobbied to apply to numerous other industries and circumstances. I would fully expect that to follow in short order if Facebook folded on this - and it probably will happen anyway.

teruakohatu 6y ago
> In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are. It is much worse than that. The publishers themselves often share the links on Facebook themselves.
- zmmmmm 6y ago
  Yes, it is particularly egregious that someone can go to Facebook, create a link to their own content, and then claim monetary compensation for use of their content from Facebook.
  - BLKNSLVR 6y ago
    No, no, you have to cross a certain revenue / profit threshold before you can claim money. We can't have any Tom, Dick, or Harry eating into News Corps profits. The original legislation proposal didn't even include the SBS and the ABC news services. They got added in to make it look less like News Corp wrote the legislation (which they pretty much did).
  - oska 6y ago
    I actually don't see a problem with this in the context of an ad-pushing platform. Facebook gets all its engagement from 1) users' feeds and 2) imported 3rd party content. Why should they receive all the profits from pushing ads against content others have created? I think it's a grossly unfair "business model" and am happy to see it challenged.

dekhn 6y ago

Begun, the social media government wars have.

naebother 6y ago

This also blocks substacks and blogs btw. Hopefully, this just leads to more sources getting classified as "news media" and eventually stops any meaningful linking and thereby making Facebook useless in Australia at least. One can dream, but they'll probably capitulate before then.

asdf333 6y ago

is restricting news on social media a bad thing? i think it’s a good thing.

pitay 6y ago

How is this for an idea - companies that provide links to a website that also can generate a preview, charge the linked site for the privilege of having a preview of the content shown. This shows that such things are valuable for the recipient. If Google had done that, then this proposed law wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Perhaps they should do this for other news sites now, that way it protects them from future laws like this being proposed in other countries. Being linked like this is clearly worth it to the publishers, as the law they support prohibits the delisting of the sites that the law applies to. Second, how about having a way to add meta-information to web pages/articles saying what is okay to use as preview and what is not. This looks to me like the long term solution to all sites and services on the current web. As long as there is a single, non-specialized way for browsers to ignore attributes/tags/other info they do not use then it does not add complexity to browsers.

pedalpete 6y ago

I live in Australia, so have a dog in this fight. I'm kinda excited to see how this pans out. I don't use FB for news, that's not what a "social network" is for. It's for keeping in touch with friends, sharing photos, etc etc. Because I don't interact with news on FB, I already see very little of it, but I'm hoping this change makes FB the place for sharing our lives again, as opposed to just sharing links to media that I can find through other sources. I somewhat wonder if FB is looking at this as a test subject of what happens if they were to block links to external content? What if FB only shared stuff from FB. Would that be so bad?

jbob2000 6y ago
Facebook would finally be valuable again if all of the content farm news garbage was kicked off. Unfortunately, the people who like that stuff also buy stuff from online ads. It’s the same reason why TLC and The History Channel now only show reality TV; because people who watch those shows buy the things they see advertised.
steve_taylor 6y ago
Facebook claims that news makes up only 4% of its content, which would seem to be in line with your statement that you hardly see any news. I see a lot more news – something like 50% of my feed. If removing news reduces Facebook’s revenue by 4%, it would be reasonable to wonder why they didn’t remove news globally years ago, given all the time, money and effort they invest in it and all the drama and existential threats that come with it. The reality is that news is a massive driver of engagement on Facebook. Their 4% stat is grossly misleading. I’m 100% against this proposed law, but it’s hard to maintain this position in the face of lies and gross misrepresentations by Facebook and Google.
NamTaf 6y ago
I am also Aussie and agree with this. FB has worked hard to make itself the walled garden of “internet”. It tries to encourage people to use the FB search box to find news agencies, brands, etc. rather than the URL box. The monopoly positions of tech giants and their efforts to build walled gardens is the real problem. The fact that they’re where everyone consumes news media is a byproduct of that. We’ve seen the harmful damage it does to democracy and to society in general. This legislation is stupid, and attempts to place stupid demands on the tech giants such as sharing algorithms. It’s a blatant attempt to kowtow to Uncle Rupert, with some funds also regrettably going to those dirty socialists at the government-owned news media organisations on the side to make it a little less obviously on the nose. However, I think FB was more stupid to not just follow the Google approach and negotiate it down to a dilute bother, in effect paying a chump change tax to retain that monopoly position. Aussies are notoriously apathetic about any issue which doesn’t directly affect them. FB has made a tactical misstep here by making the issue affect everyone. I hope this is a step towards smashing that walled garden. I hope it just ends up teaching Aussies to go to the actual websites of organisations whose content they want to view. I hope FB withers back down to being the place you check a few times a day max to see what your friends are doing and to see some memes, rather than where people endlessly doomscroll and never leave. The Aussie government does not have the clout to challenge these monopolies directly, but but this legislation starts that process then they will have Steven Bradburyed [1] their way to a fantastic outcome. The reduction of these all-encompassing walled gardens will be to the betterment of society as a whole. Now we have to start dismantling the NewsCorp behemoth as well. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury

jjcm 6y ago

I live in Australia and while I'm excited to see less Facebook use, I see a lot of comments saying things like, "good, Facebook monetized an addiction model and this curbs that". While true, the proposed law that has pushed them to do this is incredibly dangerous. The law doesn't just apply to Facebook, it applies to whoever the Treasurer of Australia[0] says it applies to - it isn't metrics/rules based: https://i.imgur.com/7RSqXDJ.png https://i.imgur.com/7RSqXDJ.png This means you as a business owner may wake up one day to find that you are now classified as a designated digital platform corporation and are on the hook to now negotiate contracts with every registered news business corporation, AND provide each of them with the secret sauce behind your ranking algos. The only thing that needs to be done to do this is for the Treasurer to file a decision in the Federal Register of Legislation[1]. It's a shocking amount of overreach, lack of visibility to the process, and a single point of failure in the system. Overall I'm very curious to see how this plays out. Facebook took the nuclear option here, and I highly suspect that news corporations will feel quite a sting from the loss of traffic / platform. I truly feel like Facebook "winning" here and having the law dropped is the lesser of two evils. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasurer_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasurer_of_Australia [1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Browse/Results/ByRegDate/LegislativeInstruments/Asmade/201/0/0/Principal https://www.legislation.gov.au/Browse/Results/ByRegDate/Legi...

catmanjan 6y ago
While that is probably technically true, in reality the Australian government is unlikely to make Australian businesses comply, giving them a competitive advantage - I think this is a protectionist policy, but the right won't admit to that because it goes against their "free market" ideals.
- echevil 6y ago
  Does Australia have businesses in similar model like Facebook? Or are you talking about completely different models?
  - catmanjan 6y ago

angry_octet 6y ago

Wow they've blocked the Bureau of Meteorology page, no more weather warnings on fb. All of ABC too (our BBC equivalent), though they were not required to pay for ABC content, so it seems pretty bitchy.

denismi 6y ago
The legislation was subsequently amended to include ABC: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/abc-sbs-included-in-news-media-code-as-tech-giants-win-some-concessions-20201207-p56l7h.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/abc-sbs-included-in-... (Hopefully YC doesn't have to pay for this link one day)
- angry_octet 6y ago
  Good good. I'm all for making fb a barren content free wasteland. It was a mistake for public sector to build engagement on a platform where they were tenants without rights. They could have put the rights in with legislation first, but were always at mercy of the algorithm and having to pay for placement.
bryan_w 6y ago
Also I believe that to stay within the bounds of the law they have to prevent _any_ news site from being linked and block all Australia news sites from being shown internationally
- angry_octet 6y ago
  It seems such a broad interpretation that they block satire of events too (Betoota, Chaser), but strangely not dis/mis information crackpots like Friendly J##dies, even though he claims to be independent media. I would check if you can 'like us on Facebook' but I can't find any buttons! What happened, they used to be everywhere?
coffenjam 6y ago
They're banning emergency services as well ("by mistake"). They probably just want to increase the backlash. The emergency services Facebook pages will obviously be back within hours. I live in Australia but I don't have a Facebook account and I don't read the fake news media, so I actually don't have a horse in this race. I hope they both mutually destruct each other.

shruubi 6y ago

I'm glad that Facebook is standing its ground compared to Google, who ended up capitulating to Murdoch's sock-puppet government. For those who are outside Australia, it bears mentioning that Murdoch-owned media in Australia by far and away dominates the media landscape, and has a blatant bias towards the current sitting government (the conservative liberal party), and the liberals have for decades now returned the favour by consistently legislating in favour of News Corp. The only way that the government will back down is when they are confronted with a much bigger fish than News Corp, in which case, chances are better than none that the government will go scurrying back into their little holes.

andrewinardeer 6y ago

The Bureau of Meteorology, a government department that provides forecasts has just tweeted that their Facebook page has been impacted by this change which is odd as this is not a media company and provides arguably vitally important information to mariners and other transport modes. It looks like the blast radius from this decision is impacting organizations that is out of scope of this legislation. https://twitter.com/BOM_au/status/1362175695389155330 https://twitter.com/BOM_au/status/1362175695389155330

adamjb 6y ago
The BOM provides vitally important information in disasters too. This will kill people.
- brokenmachine 6y ago
  I'm Australian. If I want to read important disaster information from the BOM, I will go to the BOM site, not Facebook.
plasma 6y ago
Honestly, I feel good about this (I'm Australian too). It's causing pain to the government now, to put pressure on re-evaluating their ridiculous proposal. Besides the obvious drawbacks of the proposal, there would also be side-effects that won't be seen until later, and I'm glad the side-effects are being shown right now to try and stop this whole mess.
zmmmmm 6y ago
I guess if you take Facebook's point of view: erring on one side of this is a violation of the law, erring on the other is just a piece of content missing. Which should they choose?
catmanjan 6y ago
The primary way for the government to communicate with the public should never have been allowed to be a foreign, private third party
6y ago

tus89 6y ago

Good guy Facebook for the first time in perhaps...forever?

stirlo 6y ago

As an Australian this morning my Facebook feed is a bit of a wasteland. None of my friends were really sharing anything so the only content in my feed is now ads and posts from groups I'm members of. All of the "news" has been removed, with them the manufactured outrage, toxic comments and political rants. It actually feels far closer to the Facebook of 2008 that I actually enjoyed rather than the "engagement" machine of 2020. Obviously the publishers will be hurt by this, particularly smaller ones without organic traffic. But it also feels like a lot of the "engagement" Facebook had been pursuing has been removed too. I wonder how this will affect usage as currently there's little in my feed that would encourage me to open the app every day.

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throwaheyy 6y ago

Facebook just blocked a bunch of government information pages (specifically health and fire departments), saying they are “news”. Stinks of retaliation. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/facebook-ban-hits-health-pages-days-before-covid-19-vaccine-rollout-20210218-p573nc.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/facebook-ban-hits-he...

anothernewdude 6y ago

I can only assume propaganda and fake news don't count. Any one have thoughts about that?

abiogenesis 6y ago

> Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue. This is technically not correct. Publishers can opt out from Google Search if they want to, so one may also argue that they willingly choose to be on Google as well.

enneff 6y ago
It’s just straight up incorrect. They’re throwing google under the bus to distance themselves.
el_dev_hell 6y ago
Not to defend Facebook, but a failure to opt-out is not really the same as volunteering. I find the argument made by Facebook to be sound. They're making a comparison between Google crawling the web and indexing content vs. a news site intentionally posting their content to Facebook. The difference between getting your webpage crawled and explicitly posting on a public forum is significant. I read their comment as "users explicitly post contend on Facebook vs. passively having their content scraped by Google".
- abiogenesis 6y ago
  True, but you have to opt-out from Facebook too if an end user shares the link. Their argument only works if the news outlet shares the link.

DaniloDias 6y ago

Why would anyone want to use a filtered platform? Are there people who really want to restrict themselves from being exposed to ideas they would be challenged by? Or is this purely about restricting access to unauthorized ideas?

tomaszs 6y ago

A bold statement from a company that essentially seemed to gain from news and websites, until it seemed to reach a conclusion a user that reads trustworthy news outside Facebook, is a user that spends less time on Facebook. The very approach that seemed to conclude in lowering trustworthy news pages reach on the platform, and seem to boosted fake news. Now the company tells it will not pay trustworthy publishers for the content. As far as it seems absurd, it just shows that any news in Australia on Facebook can be considered a fake news as default. The clarity is a benefit.

triggercut 6y ago

bit.ly links (and I'm going to assume other shorteners) seem to work, just so long as you remove the preview before you post it. Is that a bug, or a feature?

King-Aaron 6y ago

It's not just news they blocked today. The DFES (Department of Fire and Emergency Services) page is down - i.e. no bushfire or flood alerts showing up. Their entire page is gutted. There's some government run domestic violence and community service pages that are wiped. Though hilariously, the local LNP candidate's page is gone, which in the midst of a state election campaign is probably pretty hard for them. I get that facebook have a bone to pick with the government, but does a) blocking crucial emergency service pages have a benefit, and b) does wiping a campaign page have some worrying connotations?

catmanjan 6y ago
To be honest, good. I don't want the government to use Facebook as the primary/only mechanism to communicate with the public...
nitemice 6y ago
They've blocked any page that provides news, as defined by the code: core news content means content that reports, investigates or explains: a) issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or b) current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level DFES, BOM & other government services would fall under definition b. Candidate page would fall under definition a.

thisrod 6y ago

I think both sides are in the wrong here. One of them is Mark Zuckerberg and the other is the Morrison government, for a start. But not only because of that. The Murdoch family's claim ... I mean, Australia's ... is ridiculous. Facebook are totally within their rights to stop using Australian content and not pay for it. If the law is so sloppily worded that it arguably defines the Health Department website as news, well, it wasn't Facebook who drafted it. On the other hand, this does stuff around a lot of innocent bystanders, and Facebook could easily have given a month's notice that they were going to do it. Which is, ironically, one of the things that the law would require them to do. What ever else Facebook might have demonstrated by their irresponsible reaction, they have shown that this law isn't all wrong, rather some parts of it are urgently necessary.

tedk-42 6y ago

Sigh - another HN post/thread bashing the government and claiming they're basically puppets for Murdoch media. The whole 'good on facebook for standing up to the government' is quite a funny stance, given how most people view facebook as a not-so-good entity on the web. Fake news is a worse problem than Murdoch media and its sensationalist journalism.

King-Aaron 6y ago
> claiming they're basically puppets for Murdoch media Well, this is actually the case.

riffic 6y ago

news media need to see more than ever how important it will be for them to publish directly to the ActivityPub ecosystem, and to cut out the gatekeepers in the way.

shanecp 6y ago

FB took the right decision. I wish Google and others will do the same. Like many others have said, I don't like some things that Google and Facebook does, but for this, I believe FB took the right decision. The bill is so vague, and it can be interpreted to say anything that the Government wants it to say. This isn't to protect journalism, it's a backdoor to funnel money to Newscorp.

gitowiec 6y ago

That is good. And Facebook just shoot it's leg. No news sharing on FB will make people go out from this closed garden to look for news. And this is good, because a lot of people treat FB like the whole internet (they just don't understand what is a blog, home page, vortal)

forgingahead 6y ago

This is hilarious, because the impression to regular folks will simply be that "Facebook has implemented a news blackout on Australians, which is authoritarian and dangerous." That is certainly a true sentiment, but in general as many other commenters have noted, it's better not to have "news" articles being force-fed to social media users via blackbox algorithms, emotional trigger-sharing, and over-enthusiastic ad buyers. This is a great first-step to help break the spell that accidental over-consumption of news media has on people's mental health. Enjoy Australia, the rest of the world envies the peace and quiet in your news feed!

nojvek 6y ago

Normally I am against Facebook, but they are in the right here. This is totally Murdoch monopoly playing his political puppets to get this through. I don’t know whether Australia will reverse this, but I really hope other countries don’t jump on the bandwagon. The reason why the Internet is the internet is because of free information sharing. Having laws that target specific companies for extortion is just dumb.

grumple 6y ago

If you get your news from Facebook, you aren’t getting good news. This is a win for the world - less manufactured outrage getting pumped into the brains of the people. Maybe news publishers in Australia can go back to quality journalism and selling subscriptions.

jaimex2 6y ago

There's a lot of misinformation from the tech giants floating around. ACCC has addressed some of them here: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/response-to-google-open-letter https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/response-to-google-ope...

nojvek 6y ago

The real deal is what happens if Google blocks traffic to all Australian news site. That would be huge. It’s pretty scary that a few people in parliament can sign a law that only serves a few rich and powerful people at the expense of its citizens. What is the future of governance? Because 2021, it feels still like a drunken king doing what “feels good”

cyberpsybin 6y ago

This is... acceptable.

ropable 6y ago

I feel like this has the potential to damage the NewsCorp media here in Australia far more than it might damage FB. It would be fascinating to see what happens to their web traffic before & after this change.