5 ms·

The laws might be bizarre or poorly thought-out but the concern isn't. A news landscape controlled by American tech companies doesn't sound like a rosy future.

by Bakary 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago
In the case of Australia, FB and Twitter are actually injecting a lot of competition and diversity of thought into the market, since their news ecosystem is incredibly oligopolistic.
- Bakary 6y ago
  That's a good point but FAANGs are oligopolistic on a global scale. It's come to the point where anything that could possibly weaken them or get the ball rolling towards their fragmentation sounds like a good idea, even if it's half-baked and negative in its own local context.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    To be clear, I’d like to see some of the FAANG companies broken up. But worrying about their global oligopoly when the alternative in this situation is News Corp, another global oligopoly, seems misguided to me.
    - Bakary 6y ago
      You gotta start somewhere. It's far from an ideal situation, but simply the prospect of it creating a spark elsewhere is worth taking.
syberspace 6y ago
Nothing is stopping them from building their own aggregation sites and disallowing Google/Facebook to index their sites. They are literally giving their content to Google and then demand they get paid. (Technically Google is taking the content via indexing, but I'm sure they can figure out a way to stop that)
- pca006132 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard
  - syberspace 6y ago
    I am aware. Why do these news corporations not just write an appropriate robots.txt so Google can't take their content? Is it maybe because they want their cake AND eat it too?
    - Bakary 6y ago
      On one hand, it's true that they are making odd demands and are linked to Murdoch. On the other, it's disturbing that you pretty much have to play ball with Google and Facebook to survive as a media institution. Yeah, they could create their own competing service I suppose but in practice that sounds more like a non-sequitur than a workable suggestion.
stephen_g 6y ago
In Australia, 70% of our commercial media is owned by a foreign multinational (News Corp) and most of the rest is one other company (Nine/Fairfax). Luckily we have two fairly good public broadcasters (ABC and SBS), but the Murdoch media hate them and the conservative party in power are white-anting them away (budget freezes and things all the time which after inflation effectively mean cuts every year), and the quality has dropped considerably over the last few years with editorial interference (technically they’re independent, but reporters there who break big stories of Government corruption, or showing big problems in Government policy just happen to be hounded out, even though the stories were true).

The laws might be bizarre or poorly thought-out but the concern isn't. A news landscape controlled by American tech companies doesn't sound like a rosy future.

by Bakary 6y ago

The laws might be bizarre or poorly thought-out but the concern isn't. A news landscape controlled by American tech companies doesn't sound like a rosy future.

ashtonkem 6y ago

In the case of Australia, FB and Twitter are actually injecting a lot of competition and diversity of thought into the market, since their news ecosystem is incredibly oligopolistic.

Bakary 6y ago
That's a good point but FAANGs are oligopolistic on a global scale. It's come to the point where anything that could possibly weaken them or get the ball rolling towards their fragmentation sounds like a good idea, even if it's half-baked and negative in its own local context.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  To be clear, I’d like to see some of the FAANG companies broken up. But worrying about their global oligopoly when the alternative in this situation is News Corp, another global oligopoly, seems misguided to me.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    You gotta start somewhere. It's far from an ideal situation, but simply the prospect of it creating a spark elsewhere is worth taking.

syberspace 6y ago

Nothing is stopping them from building their own aggregation sites and disallowing Google/Facebook to index their sites. They are literally giving their content to Google and then demand they get paid. (Technically Google is taking the content via indexing, but I'm sure they can figure out a way to stop that)

pca006132 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard
- syberspace 6y ago
  I am aware. Why do these news corporations not just write an appropriate robots.txt so Google can't take their content? Is it maybe because they want their cake AND eat it too?
  - Bakary 6y ago
    On one hand, it's true that they are making odd demands and are linked to Murdoch. On the other, it's disturbing that you pretty much have to play ball with Google and Facebook to survive as a media institution. Yeah, they could create their own competing service I suppose but in practice that sounds more like a non-sequitur than a workable suggestion.

stephen_g 6y ago

In Australia, 70% of our commercial media is owned by a foreign multinational (News Corp) and most of the rest is one other company (Nine/Fairfax). Luckily we have two fairly good public broadcasters (ABC and SBS), but the Murdoch media hate them and the conservative party in power are white-anting them away (budget freezes and things all the time which after inflation effectively mean cuts every year), and the quality has dropped considerably over the last few years with editorial interference (technically they’re independent, but reporters there who break big stories of Government corruption, or showing big problems in Government policy just happen to be hounded out, even though the stories were true).