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

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