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Facebook has banned specific Australian sites by domain name, so they know in advance the kind of content that is normally published on all the platforms they'v
by tomhoward 6y ago
Facebook has banned specific Australian sites by domain name, so they know in advance the kind of content that is normally published on all the platforms they've banned.
As one of biggest/"smartest" technology companies in the world, they could easily have implemented this response in a way that didn't make them look such bullies.
The laws are very clearly formulated for the benefit of the major media publishers, particularly News Corp and Nine Fairfax, and it would have been trivial for Facebook to limit their ban to those platforms, and perhaps a handful of other large ones that lobbied for the law.
To be clear, I'm not normally in the faction of people hating on Facebook, and generally regard the loudest attacks on them as overblown scapegoating. But, regardless of how technically right they might be, from a PR point of view it's a losing move.
- elevatortrim 6y agoWhat happens when one of the domains they did not ban publishes some news content than demands payment from Facebook when they do not have a process in place for that? How do they take the risk?
- joeblau 6y agoThey did accidentally block their own page already[1]. [1] - https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-accidentally-blocks-own-page-during-australian-news-takedown/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-accidentally-blocks-own-p...
- clouddrover 6y agoIt has been interesting to see how incompetently Facebook wields its own platform. Having to back-pedal after banning government Covid updates and managing to ban themselves makes them look like they have no idea what they're doing. All Facebook has managed to achieve is to give the Australian government a good reason to dig in, to increase support for the new media code within Australia, and to gain the Australian government the support of various other governments internationally.
- simonh 6y agoThe fact is government Covid updates quite clearly are covered by the law as content that is chargeable if they chose to do so. It's hardly reasonable to accuse facebook of not knowing what they are doing when blocking content, when the Australian government clearly has no idea what it's doing defining the scope of the law.
- clouddrover 6y ago> The fact is government Covid updates quite clearly are covered by the law They aren't. > It's hardly reasonable to accuse facebook of not knowing what they are doing No, it's reasonable. This has backfired badly for Facebook. They've weakened their bargaining position.
- simonh 6y agoNo the laws are not formulated that way, they are formulated to be ridiculously broad. If any site of any kind publishing newsworthy content chooses to sue facebook for payment, there's nothing the Australian government can do to stop them. Also there is no way for facebook to know how he Australian government will actually choose to interpret and apply the law as regulators. They could even change the way they regulate it retroactively, that's the problem with at-will enforcement of vaguely worded laws.
- tomhoward 6y agoI'm not defending the new laws - I agree they're stupid. But all the public discussion about the laws in Australia, where I live, has focused on the giant publishers - News Corp and Nine Fairfax in particular. They were the primary lobbyists for the laws, and were the ones who would attain almost all the revenues from them. My point is that Facebook's reaction is a tactical error in the PR battle. They've effectively conceded this themselves, having back-pedalled on at least some of the sites banned initially. They could have responded in a way that won them support from the Australian populace, but instead they've made themselves seem worse than the AU government, which is quite a feat.