6 ms·

I'm not sure how much I agree with the law about charging for news links, but then I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline, photos an

by Nursie 6y ago

I'm not sure how much I agree with the law about charging for news links, but then I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline, photos and often a few lines of a story, and FB does get a lot of benefit out of them. However I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law, and I have friends in Australia who have said how much better the facebook experience is now. It's actually gone back to being a feed of posts by people they know about things that are going on in their lives. That was the whole value proposition of the platform, for me, and the endless link-sharing has made it incredibly unappealing. I can read news and follow link aggregators elsewhere. I hope Australia get to keep their new facebook, especially as I'm moving there soon!

bilekas 6y ago
> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself They are not standing up for themselves, they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law, its a common tactic they look for. Any media newsgroup that's not in their pocket already they fear. They have an incredible track record on this and with journalists. The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
- mrslave 6y ago
  Implying the opposition has a raft of policies that differ in any significant way and will improve things.
  - bilekas 6y ago
    No no, I'm not implying that at all, I'm just sick of the impression people get that good old ozzy politicians doing the brave thing against facebook. When in reality its completely out of context. But again, Murdock's narrative.
- Nursie 6y ago
  > they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law Erm ... do laws not apply on the internet? That's a very sweeping criticism and not one I'm on board with. > The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money. I'll have to take your word for that. From here it looks like a positive development, or at least an interesting one, a nation state entering open conflict with a tech giant. (Not that I'm going to be able to vote for some time, but last time I lived in Aus was under the Gillard government, and I did not form favourable opinions about the liberal-national coalition. I'm not arguing with you from a position of support for them)
  - hyperionplays 6y ago
    They are heavily bank rolled and supported by Murdoch controlled media, tech giants allow smaller non-Murdoch controlled media to get more reach within Australia. This legislation was pushed for, drafted by and endorsed heavily by Murdoch controlled entities. A large number of the staffers for this governments politicians are all ex-Murdoch staff. This current government has a long history of only doing things their donors ask for and not siding with the best interests of the public.
  - L_226 6y ago
    Australian here. Laws absolutely apply on the internet - if you can enforce them. FB here decided that Australia __could__ enforce this law, and chose to comply with it by not hosting links that the law would require them to pay for. If the LNP was actually serious about "controlling" foreign multinationals or "protecting" local businesses, they would simply enforce the tax obligations for these companies correctly. Note that Newscorp avoids tax in Australia [0], yet somehow they are owed money by FB for the privilege of having their content distributed on FB's graph? [0] - https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/12/11/news-corp-tax-dodging/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/12/11/news-corp-tax-dodging/
pjc50 6y ago
> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law The first and second half of that sentence really need to be separated; "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying. But it's an interesting point; a big part of the "Facebook is a danger to democracy" stuff is about the sharing of misinformation on there, and zapping all the news on there has removed some of the most toxic and dangerous content. Especially all the News Corp stuff - from the organisation driving this law in the first place. However, it's not so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as launching both baby and bath into the sun.
- Nursie 6y ago
  > "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying. I'll concede that sentence is a little too wide. If they were standing up for themselves on some newly introduced corporal punishment laws, for instance, I'd be a lot less keen. Perhaps I should rephrase - "I'm not sure how much I agree with this law, it seems to have some merit though may not come from the best of places, but I applaud the Australian government for standing up to facebook nonetheless." I don't buy "you should pay to link" but news articles are a large part of what makes up a facebook feed these days, usually in the form of a large-ish picture, a full headline and the lead-in sentence. I can definitely see the argument that they are using it as content.
  - elyobo 6y ago
    They can choose to block that, even specifically for Facebook and Google while leaving others alone, just by messing with their robots settings. If you post a link to content that is being excluded using robots.txt you'll get a link and no full headline, no lead in sentence, no picture - those are the things that the news orgs have gone out of their way to provide to Facebook.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      I guess it's a commercial reality they all have to do it or none of them can - they can't afford to block FB as so many people get their news that way, so either they get paid by FB or the whole platform goes news-free, and either of those new situations works better for them. I guess it's a race to the bottom. AN individual org is faced with the choice to give their content to fb for nothing or lose readership.
viraptor 6y ago
> I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline As far as the proposed law is concerned, it seems we're talking about any kind of linking. https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code/draft-legislation https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... > "a proposal is developed to recognise original covered news content when ranking and displaying news content on the digital platform service;" It's very vague.
elyobo 6y ago
News orgs could already block that content if they wanted using robots.txt, but have chosen not to - indeed, they go out of their way to sprinkle Facebook's opengraph and other metadata to make their content more searchable and present better when shared. The law is bad. I'm all in favour of our government actually taxing FB, Google, and others that manage to offshore all their profits to lower tax jurisdictions, but a pseudo-tax based (partly) around links is unacceptable. I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.
- viraptor 6y ago
  > I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to. Why? Many comments I read are trying to make this a google -vs- Oz issue where you can only take one side. I'm taking a side where I want to see Google regulated and charged as an internet ad&search monopoly, Newscorp regulated and charged as news provider monopoly, and Oz to just put more taxes on huge companies and stop playing with Murdoch. FB can get penalties for lack of moderation while we're at it. They're all bad, we don't have to take any evil person/org's side.
  - elyobo 6y ago
    I'm taking Facebook's side on this particular issue only (and I don't even like that, because they're - as you note - bad). I agree with all of the things you want, but this isn't a tax on Google or Facebook (and we need more taxes on Google, Facebook, and their ilk that offshore profits to low tax locations), it's an attempt to tax links. This is a good read and worth your time - https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/2/17/paying-for-news https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/2/17/paying-for....
    - viraptor 6y ago
      I was supporting general tax, not the google-news deal. We're in agreement :)
      - Guthur 6y ago

by Nursie 6y ago

bilekas 6y ago

> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself They are not standing up for themselves, they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law, its a common tactic they look for. Any media newsgroup that's not in their pocket already they fear. They have an incredible track record on this and with journalists. The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.

mrslave 6y ago
Implying the opposition has a raft of policies that differ in any significant way and will improve things.
- bilekas 6y ago
  No no, I'm not implying that at all, I'm just sick of the impression people get that good old ozzy politicians doing the brave thing against facebook. When in reality its completely out of context. But again, Murdock's narrative.
Nursie 6y ago
> they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law Erm ... do laws not apply on the internet? That's a very sweeping criticism and not one I'm on board with. > The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money. I'll have to take your word for that. From here it looks like a positive development, or at least an interesting one, a nation state entering open conflict with a tech giant. (Not that I'm going to be able to vote for some time, but last time I lived in Aus was under the Gillard government, and I did not form favourable opinions about the liberal-national coalition. I'm not arguing with you from a position of support for them)
- hyperionplays 6y ago
  They are heavily bank rolled and supported by Murdoch controlled media, tech giants allow smaller non-Murdoch controlled media to get more reach within Australia. This legislation was pushed for, drafted by and endorsed heavily by Murdoch controlled entities. A large number of the staffers for this governments politicians are all ex-Murdoch staff. This current government has a long history of only doing things their donors ask for and not siding with the best interests of the public.
- L_226 6y ago
  Australian here. Laws absolutely apply on the internet - if you can enforce them. FB here decided that Australia __could__ enforce this law, and chose to comply with it by not hosting links that the law would require them to pay for. If the LNP was actually serious about "controlling" foreign multinationals or "protecting" local businesses, they would simply enforce the tax obligations for these companies correctly. Note that Newscorp avoids tax in Australia [0], yet somehow they are owed money by FB for the privilege of having their content distributed on FB's graph? [0] - https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/12/11/news-corp-tax-dodging/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/12/11/news-corp-tax-dodging/

pjc50 6y ago

> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law The first and second half of that sentence really need to be separated; "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying. But it's an interesting point; a big part of the "Facebook is a danger to democracy" stuff is about the sharing of misinformation on there, and zapping all the news on there has removed some of the most toxic and dangerous content. Especially all the News Corp stuff - from the organisation driving this law in the first place. However, it's not so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as launching both baby and bath into the sun.

Nursie 6y ago
> "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying. I'll concede that sentence is a little too wide. If they were standing up for themselves on some newly introduced corporal punishment laws, for instance, I'd be a lot less keen. Perhaps I should rephrase - "I'm not sure how much I agree with this law, it seems to have some merit though may not come from the best of places, but I applaud the Australian government for standing up to facebook nonetheless." I don't buy "you should pay to link" but news articles are a large part of what makes up a facebook feed these days, usually in the form of a large-ish picture, a full headline and the lead-in sentence. I can definitely see the argument that they are using it as content.
- elyobo 6y ago
  They can choose to block that, even specifically for Facebook and Google while leaving others alone, just by messing with their robots settings. If you post a link to content that is being excluded using robots.txt you'll get a link and no full headline, no lead in sentence, no picture - those are the things that the news orgs have gone out of their way to provide to Facebook.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    I guess it's a commercial reality they all have to do it or none of them can - they can't afford to block FB as so many people get their news that way, so either they get paid by FB or the whole platform goes news-free, and either of those new situations works better for them. I guess it's a race to the bottom. AN individual org is faced with the choice to give their content to fb for nothing or lose readership.

viraptor 6y ago

> I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline As far as the proposed law is concerned, it seems we're talking about any kind of linking. https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code/draft-legislation https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... > "a proposal is developed to recognise original covered news content when ranking and displaying news content on the digital platform service;" It's very vague.

elyobo 6y ago

News orgs could already block that content if they wanted using robots.txt, but have chosen not to - indeed, they go out of their way to sprinkle Facebook's opengraph and other metadata to make their content more searchable and present better when shared. The law is bad. I'm all in favour of our government actually taxing FB, Google, and others that manage to offshore all their profits to lower tax jurisdictions, but a pseudo-tax based (partly) around links is unacceptable. I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.

viraptor 6y ago
> I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to. Why? Many comments I read are trying to make this a google -vs- Oz issue where you can only take one side. I'm taking a side where I want to see Google regulated and charged as an internet ad&search monopoly, Newscorp regulated and charged as news provider monopoly, and Oz to just put more taxes on huge companies and stop playing with Murdoch. FB can get penalties for lack of moderation while we're at it. They're all bad, we don't have to take any evil person/org's side.
- elyobo 6y ago
  I'm taking Facebook's side on this particular issue only (and I don't even like that, because they're - as you note - bad). I agree with all of the things you want, but this isn't a tax on Google or Facebook (and we need more taxes on Google, Facebook, and their ilk that offshore profits to low tax locations), it's an attempt to tax links. This is a good read and worth your time - https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/2/17/paying-for-news https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/2/17/paying-for....
  - viraptor 6y ago
    I was supporting general tax, not the google-news deal. We're in agreement :)
    - Guthur 6y ago