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Facebook to restore news in Australia after last-minute deal with government

138 points by wp381640 6y ago

xcavier 6y ago
So, in essence, our (Australia’s) government blinked
- baash05 6y ago
  Yep. Because people pay to have things on FB. That's good enough for small companies, good enough for big.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  How so? Facebook is negotiating deals with media companies. The Australian government got what it wanted.
  - mfDjB 6y ago
    The Australian government did a last-minute deal in which it pushed through changes to its laws that are amenable to Facebook. I wouldn't say it was a win for them.
    - clouddrover 6y ago
      To quote the article the changes are: - "The amendments require the Treasurer to take into account whether the digital platforms have already struck commercial agreements with news publishers before passing further regulation to make the code formally apply to them" - "In the event the Treasurer decides to enforce the code, the tech giants must be given one month’s notice" - "Another change will add a two-month mediation period into the code to give the parties more time to broker agreements before they are forced to enter a binding final-offer arbitration process. This comes on top of the existing three-month negotiation period." These changes don't seem like a loss to me.
      - postingawayonhn 6y ago
        For Facebook it's not as good as the status quo but is nowhere near a bad as what the government/News Corp/Nine were proposing.
        anomaly_ 6y ago
        Have you looked at the amendments? They are incredibly minor and don't change the basic operation of the law (i.e. to compel negotiations between Google/Facebook and news publishers). This is 100% face saving for Facebook. I would guess the original calculation re the black out was to gauge impact on other jurisdictions and when they saw/heard resolve tightening in Canada (who has a long history of imposing these sort of 'taxes' on middlemen)/UK/France/etc they blinked.
      - mfDjB 6y ago
        All of these amendments favour Facebook. It also buys them time. I guess we will have to wait and see after the 2 month mediation period is up who has the upper hand. I guess the answer to who won, Facebook or the Australian government depends on what you consider a win here. I personally would consider Facebooks strike and the forcing of the Australian governments hand to pass legislation that didn't want to pass a win for Facebook.
- KDJohnBrown 6y ago
  Money changed hands. A few lawyers, lobbyists and politicians will be able to afford nicer cars/condos/coke mirrors next year. That’s all.
baash05 6y ago
Aus bent the knee.
undecisive 6y ago
FB: We provide you reach and you get advertising revenue because of it. Why would we pay you for something you benefit from? AU: Because. FB: We'll just stop giving you reach... AU: Like to see you try FB: ... AU: Yeah, maybe that doesn't work for us after all. I wonder what would have happened if this had been in the US. I'm guessing that Australia's news content is a nice-to-have, and not (yet) part of their core revenue. Some consumers probably enjoyed having fewer news items appear in their feed. It hurt Facebook a little, but it hurt news providers more.
- hestefisk 6y ago
  Revenue from news sources is a very small part of FBs revenue base. At least according to the episode of Pivot podcast where Prof Scott Galloway covered that question.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Some consumers probably enjoyed having fewer news items appear in their feed. Compare the comment from the other thread on the same topic, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234376 > the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I was quite surprised Google backed down, they might be kicking themselves now.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Someone on the other thread pointed out that search engine users are often specifically seeking news in a way that Facebook users aren't. That makes this an area where competition between search engines matters, even if what link targets want doesn't matter at all. It's entirely possible that Google's internal position was "this is a tax on search engines, and the higher the taxes on search engines are, the better for us".
aemreunal 6y ago
This makes me so angry, not just because of Australia's clear attack on open web and a completely inverted value flow illusion, but also because it made me agree with Facebook on an issue (when they initially showed opposition and called Australia's bluff). Though they also went back on that, which is just disappointing to me. Australia needs to step out of their illusion and stop shoveling snow up an avalanche. The only way to benefit from the age of internet is to embrace its realities. I'm also curious why this didn't work when Germany tried to do it but it works when Australia does...
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  > Australia needs to step out of their illusion and stop shoveling snow up an avalanche. The only way to benefit from the age of internet is to embrace its realities. Unfortunately you're 'shovelling snow up an avalanche' (what a polite way of putting it) if you expect that Australian governments will change any time soon. Both major Australian parties are far too captured by corporate interests to do anything so radical. The current Liberal[1] government trashed our attempt at doing a nation-wide FTTH rollout and cancelled our attempt at a carbon-tax/emissions-trading scheme. Labour are uninterested in going down that path again because they lost last time, in significant part to the attacks from Murdoch and Packer owned news organisations. Embracing the internet, clean energy or other things risks upsetting major empires, which those empire-owners are decidedly against. [1] For the non-Australians: The Australian Liberal Party is a center-right/conservative party. Think sort-of like the US Republicans prior to the Tea Party/Trump. The Australian Labour Party is more center-left/progressive party.
  - aemreunal 6y ago
    > Both major Australian parties are far too captured by corporate interests [...] Someone said "as if Rupert Murdoch himself wrote this law", which I think is quite apt.
    - intricatedetail 6y ago
      What is worrying is that the bodies that are supposed to protect citizens from such corrupt relationships do nothing.
Epskampie 6y ago
Reading the article, it seems like facebook is actually the one who has capitulated: > Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation. So they will still pay, only be able to back out if they cant reach a deal. Off course this gives them EXTREME leverage over smaller outlets: “accept our deal or we’ll legally ban you on facebook...”
- imperfectcats 6y ago
  It was never about pay, it was about all the other conditions. I am sure there is a model that provides some revenue that works for all concerned, but when you demand algorithm updates for a few, it is just plain silly. This is modern political reporting - a binary focus on one single element that ignores the multitude of other things tacked on.
- simonh 6y ago
  The previous situation was that news outlets could post their own links on facebook, that facebook would have no say in it, and facebook would have to pay for the links. So news organisations could link spam facebook to extract revenue and FB would just have to sit there and take it. This way both sides need to come to an agreement, you know, the way it works in every other free market ever.
- rstuart4133 6y ago
  The article was written by an organisation who petitioned the pollies to risk their political capital to the organisation some favours. Before this, the act specifically banned a digital platform (ie Google/Facebook) from changing a newspapers ranking based on whether the newspaper forced them to pay, or how much they paid. The act says the arbitrator is forced to accept one of the bargains offered (and no other amount), be it from Facebook or the newspaper, but the considerations in the act heavily biased it towards using the newspaper's offer. So the newspaper was free to drive a pretty hard bargain. Here is what an Associate professor in regulation and governance, UNSW said changed [0]: > the non-discrimination provisions (crafted as an anti-avoidance mechanism) will not be triggered in respect to remuneration amounts or commercial outcomes that arise in the course of usual business practice So, now Facebook can tie the rankings (think: how many newsfeeds will a newspaper link will appear on) to how much the newspaper forced them to pay during bargaining. Still think it was a capitulation? [0] https://theconversation.com/this-weeks-changes-are-a-win-for-facebook-google-and-the-government-but-what-was-lost-along-the-way-155865 https://theconversation.com/this-weeks-changes-are-a-win-for...
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
"Content is king." Google nor Facebook produce any. It's one thing for consumers to not want to pay for content. We are used to having news for "free". But it's another thing for middlemen to expect to get news for free that they can use to turn a massive profit, undercutting the source's own business. Bravo to Australia for standing up to the middlemen. It worked.
- aeternum 6y ago
  Perhaps we should wait until the deal is negotiated before claiming it worked. My guess is it was likely the Australian news agencies unhappy that their traffic dropped who then pressured the government to reconsider the law and restart talks with FB.
- johnnyYen 6y ago
  I think you are mis-understanding what the news organisations source of business is. It's NOT the consumers of news, and never was. It's the advertising companies who place ads on the news organisations properties - and now the news organisations customers (i.e. the ad companies) have found it more beneficial to advertise with Google and FB.
  - AlstZam 6y ago
    > It's NOT the consumers of news, and never was. You're right for the vast majority of news organization on internet but we can't say that it's "never was" (or "is" for the matter). I have at least 3 examples [0] in mind of news organizations for which advertising is not part of their business model (or a very insignificant part compared to "consumers of news" part). And I'm sure we can find similar example all around the globe. Of course such organization generally relies on subscription and/or donation. And of course for this to works "consumers of news" need to pay for it. [0] Sorry all French : Le Canard enchainé (paper) ; Le Monde Diplo (paper and web) ; Mediapart (web)
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  This was not government standing up for anybody. This is a shakedown, pure and simple. If the government wanted to insure that Australians had a healthy independent news ecosystem, they would have legislated against filtering news for your bubble. They would have passed laws insuring balance and impartiality in the news itself. Update: There is nothing in legislation that says the money paid by these companies needs to be paid to journalists or to produce news. This money will go directly into executive bonuses and the news organizations will still go out of business.
wastholm 6y ago
I have never understood why people insist on getting news from Facebook. To me that seems a bit like heading to the nearest bus stop in search of medical advice. While I don't have a Facebook account myself, I do recognize that apparently their service has some value to a lot of people. But using it for news -- in the traditional sense, i.e., reports on large-scale developments in the real world -- has to me always seemed ill-advised.
- thejohnconway 6y ago
  In my experience, they don’t insist on it. People post links to news sites like any other content, then the algorithm does its thing. You get news in your timeline from the people you follow — just like Twitter, or many other social media sites.
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  > To me that seems a bit like heading to the nearest bus stop in search of medical advice. I think you've got it backwards. I would say that they are not heading to Facebook to get news, they're there to see pictures from their friends/celebs they follow/etc. That it's also a convenient way to get news articles is just a bonus.
  - wastholm 6y ago
    Same end result though. If I randomly get medical advice by people at my local bus stop and I therefore [mostly] stop trying to get it from other sources, the randos at the bus stop will have become my [main] source of medical advice.
    - paranoidrobot 6y ago
      > I therefore [mostly] stop trying to get it from other sources That makes the assumption that these people were looking for news sources anyway. Sure, there's going to be some people that fall into that camp. I can't provide evidence either way, but I would be entirely unsurprised if there were a large percentage of people who don't look for news with any regularity at all. They wern't interested in hitting up a news site. And to be clear, when I say news, I don't mean the latest celebrity gossip mag, or some specialist/niche publication on their particular interests that might have some news content.
wombatmobile 6y ago
That's not a deal. It's a can kicked down a road.
newbie578 6y ago
Would love to know which side caved?
- clouddrover 6y ago
  Facebook. The changes are minor.
Number157 6y ago
Please get rid of news from Facebook. It's toxic.
- vermilingua 6y ago
  s/news from/
steve_taylor 6y ago
The amendments pave the way for Google and Facebook to avoid the code altogether if they can satisfy the government they have struck enough deals outside it. I doubt this means they’re allowed to strike a deal with every news outlet except Murdoch’s.
- ehnto 6y ago
  I hope they try. At this point I just want FB, Google, Murdoch and AuGov to collide in an abysmal trainwreck of policy and petulance. None of this has the citizens of Australia in mind at all, so I hope all the companies involved fuck themselves over by accident.
iliketosleep 6y ago
After reading the article, it appears that this deal favors large media companies who are able to negotiate a decent deal for themselves with Facebook. It seems like that the government will also use it as an excuse to cut finding to state-funded news sources. I cannot see how the deal favors the general public at all.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  Why would you expect a deal to favour the general public or state funded news organisations?
  - iliketosleep 6y ago
    Because the media code set by the government should, in an overall sense, benefit the people of the nation. Clearly it's not the case, and the government deserves to be called out for it.
    - wombatmobile 6y ago
      I get how you would like things to work. You do know who conceived of this legislation in the first place though, don’t you?
      - iliketosleep 6y ago
        All I can find is that it was tabled by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission at the request of the federal government. But if I was to take a wild guess, I'd say that Murdoch was somehow behind it.
- rektide 6y ago
  Cory Doctorow had (as usual) a good write up on these happenings. He spends a good while talking about how lopsided this law is. For a start: > But of course, this isn't a negotiation between workers and employers: it's a bargain between a cartel of news organizations and a search duopoly. That's not ideal! For starters, it means that the government gets to decide who is a "news organization." > That's ripe for abuse. News organizations are expected to report on the government and the government gets to decide whether they are entitled to participate in collective bargaining with Googbook, which could mean the difference between financial viability and bankruptcy. https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/21/paltrow-industrial-complex/#facecrook https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/21/paltrow-industrial-comple... He does say that there is some public accountability & reporting that big companies like Facebook & Google will face, which should be helpful generally. But yeah, this looks like a very silly effort, alas: > It's not wrong to say that the only reason this regulation got off the drawing-board is that [Rupert] Murdoch viewed it as a way to shift a few balance-points from Big Tech's side of the ledger to Big Media's side.
RVuRnvbM2e 6y ago
Facebook blinked. The amendments are nothing concrete, but it gives Facebook something to spin in a press release, allowing them to save face.
- fwn 6y ago
  As far as I understand it the Australian government is about to allow Facebook to effectively choose winners and losers in the Australian press ecosystem, which would be a monumental win for Facebook. Is that the case? I'd love to know how such a regulation is great for anyone but Facebook.
h0nd 6y ago
What is news? Does facebook publish news? I am on facebook for 13 years and I can not remember seeing any news on facebook. Ok, there are people sharing links to news articles (and facebook makes a preview containing title, image, and maybe parts of the lead). There might be people copy-pasting the text of a whole article into facebook, but that is definitely not the default situation. Overall, in order to receive news, I am forced to leave facebook (also applies to google) I just dont get it. In my opinion the news creators should be grateful to facebook (or google etc.), bringing them interested visitors, potential customers. Shouldn't facebook rather be paid for that instead of convicted? The same applies to google, a search engine. Why would a news creator NOT desire to be found in the internet in order to attract visitors? The news creators I know, they are that keen on gaining attraction: they even give the full content of pay-walled articles to google (and therefore to everybody) in order to be found. If they dont want to be found and listed, there are ways to do so.
- simonh 6y ago
  I think you've got a much better grip on it than the news publishers. Just to back that up with evidence as to who gets value from news links on FB. When FB blocked news links, the traffic to AU news sites dropped by from 7% to 9% (according to some estimates), directly affecting their ad businesses. The impact on FB was some bad PR.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    I wouldn't call it bad PR to anyone who doesn't have vapor for brains. For examples of said vapor brains see Australian PMs.
- saargrin 6y ago
  because most people dont consume news, they consume headlines and if you only read the headline, whoever created the content does not get the ad revenue , customer engagement or any other benefit for having created the content
  - h0nd 6y ago
santialbo 6y ago
What surprises me the most is how Murdoch made the media look like the good guys here, when this was just bluff from someone who still lives in 1999.
KDJohnBrown 6y ago
Will all web content creators eventually get to charge social media companies for sharing links? Is this the end game?
- simonh 6y ago
  I don't see why not. Having Amazon on Google is clearly an advantage to Google because people go there to find stuff, so maybe Amazon should charge google for being listed on Google. Then Google can charge Amazon for listing them more prominently. That makes Amazon even more popular and therefore valuable to Google to list, so Amazon can charge them even more, so then....
PoignardAzur 6y ago
So Facebook decided to pay the Danegeld? I'm extremely disappointed, but I guess it was predictable.
peter_retief 6y ago
Am I the only person who is a bit disappointed that Facebook get to carry on as usual?
calsy 6y ago
Charging for links had to be the single most destructive piece of tech legislation ever conceived in a 'free' democratic country. Links that connect the web as we know it would be monetised, destroying the free flow of information. Australian media companies (who are themselves part of a larger group of global media organisations) know that paid links are completely incompatible to the free internet. Thats why they lobbied the government to break the internet on their behalf. Enter the dystopian 'media bargaining code' that, 1) Force companies to display selected media links and then charge them for it. In short, Extortion. 2) Paid links = lower search ranking. To circumvent the foundations of net search, this new law would force Google (and others in the future) to alter their algorithms to preference media organisations and charge the search engine in the process. An aggressive takeover of a companies service through government legislation. The media, like everyone else, can create their own websites and charge as much as they please for their content. They are not happy with this level playing field and require laws to take control of another companies services. It is an attack on the free internet itself for no other reason than some entitled companies thinking they deserve money because they were beaten at their own game.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  Except FB and Google aren't simply sharing links. They're skimming headlines, photos, and content and re-posting it outside the publisher's site and control. Most consumers are happy to read the headline, see the main photo, and possibly read a few lines of text - they don't click through the full news article. The legislation is wrongheaded - link sharing isn't the problem. But, the problem still exists.
  - lclc98 6y ago
    News are providing that information for scraping though, viewing source of any of those sites and look into the "og" or "twitter" meta tags, they are designed to be used that way.
  - splaytreemap 6y ago
    They could very easily opt out of getting scraped by Google. They choose not to though because it is beneficial to them to have Google help people find their content. Also note, Australia has specifically said removing article snippets from search results is not enough for Google to avoid payment. This legislation is not about protecting websites from content theft. It's solely about the Australian government forcing Google and Facebook to pay the propagandists that helped them get elected.
intricatedetail 6y ago
This tells me that Australian government is extremely corrupt and they erode the quality of law so their mates can make some money. This is immoral and stupid. What would they do if people stopped sharing Australian news? What can we do about this brazen attack on open web?
nashashmi 6y ago
So now Facebook and google have near monopoly dominance in the Australian internet. Because they can negotiate with government while startups cannot. We should get used to the idea of aristocracy and worker misery making a comeback in the 21st century.
sly010 6y ago
Lots of interesting thoughts here. I wonder if news is not that different from education: Privileged people always had access to it, sometimes on a 1-1 basis (informants/tutors). Then came technology [writing|printing], but real scale still required capital to pay for platform [campuses|printer] and content [educators|journalists]. But inevitably the profitability of businesses decline over time until all the profits are gone. Due to competition they start giving away content for free and start selling eyeballs, quality declines and the incumbents need ways to make money other than their primary revenue source. In both cases the most successful of the businesses can use their size to their advantage: Academia partners with industry to fund "scientific research". It also "helps prepare students for the job market". Newspapers decide to double down on advertisement. Basically both sell their soul, only a little at first, but things only get worse over time. The internet accelerates all this. Stupid fights like the above breaks out about who should get what share of the pie. But at the end of the day the core value still comes from the individuals (journalists/educators) who rightfully feel that they have been reduced to mere numbers and they could provide more value to less people and make more money going independent. So a lot of them do. We now have platforms for independent education (self published books, online courses, patreon, etc) but we don't really have them for (verifiable) journalism yet. I don't even know how that would look like. The best I could find was comedy and news-commentary podcasts where the reporters can really be themselves. edit: typo + minor edit
stevespang 6y ago
As usual, Zuckerberg acted like an asshole and cut off emergency services in Australia . . .
adolph 6y ago
The code, which is backed by Labor and will become law, sets out a framework for forcing Google and Facebook to broker commercial deals with media companies for the value they obtain from having news content on their platforms. Facebook and Google have both fiercely resisted the code, describing it as “unworkable” and threatening to curtail their services in Australia if it passed unamended. I don't see the big deal about this. FB and G have done well in monetizing their work and good fortune in centralizing people's attention and some part of the value is derived from FB and G's linking association with content providers like newspapers and such. Those companies are seeking to capture some of that value through a law. The law conceptually seems to favor private negotiations with a tax or tariff-like backstop. This wouldn't be an issue if FB and G hadn't done so well in centralization or if they had been craftier in disguising it. As it stands, Australia seems to be saying "nice business model, shame if something happened to it." One might not wish governments to behave like gangsters but seems pretty standard for tariffs. Getting too far ahead paints a target on your back.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  If the Australian government called this a tariff or a tax, they would be in violation of various reciprocal free trade agreements.
  - adolph 6y ago
    Thats interesting. I wonder if the US would pursue that if FB/G were more favorably viewed by the government.
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      Probably, it's very unfortunate for Facebook and Google that "big tech" has become a political boogyman of both the left and the right.
gumby 6y ago
Fresh from this success I expect Toyota to demand a law requiring restaurants and shops to pay Toyota for bringing people to their establishments.
- graeme 6y ago
  No no, you’ve got it backwards. Per the logic of the law, the restaurants should demand to be paid by Toyota for Toyota bringing them customers. People only drive cars to get to places they value. So why should Toyota capture all this value and not pay the restaurant industry? (I am being sarcastic but this is really the news industry’s argument)
franczesko 6y ago
Big tech got big on premise, that the information on the Internet is for free. How come the platforms want to use other people's intellectual property and not pay for it, in the same way, we all have to pay for theirs?
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Actually big tech got big on the premise that advertising is valuable. The real question is how come news sites want other people's platforms to pay them for the privilege of having links to their sites.
  - franczesko 6y ago
    I don't think it's a good example. To show analogical one - why would artists want money for their work, e.g. songs, from radio stations playing them?
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      I don't think your analogy is as good as you are imagining. Payola[0] was definitely a thing, so there have definitely been artists (or rather, rights holders) who would pay to have radio stations play their songs (the reverse of being paid by the radio stations). Of course, not every rights holder did that with every song, but your analogy also fails to account for the fact that platforms aren't hosting the entirety of each article, they are providing links. That's more like an artist sending a clip from their new song to a radio station and letting them play it for free, so that people go out and buy the full recording. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

138 points by wp381640 6y ago

xcavier 6y ago

So, in essence, our (Australia’s) government blinked

baash05 6y ago
Yep. Because people pay to have things on FB. That's good enough for small companies, good enough for big.
clouddrover 6y ago
How so? Facebook is negotiating deals with media companies. The Australian government got what it wanted.
- mfDjB 6y ago
  The Australian government did a last-minute deal in which it pushed through changes to its laws that are amenable to Facebook. I wouldn't say it was a win for them.
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    To quote the article the changes are: - "The amendments require the Treasurer to take into account whether the digital platforms have already struck commercial agreements with news publishers before passing further regulation to make the code formally apply to them" - "In the event the Treasurer decides to enforce the code, the tech giants must be given one month’s notice" - "Another change will add a two-month mediation period into the code to give the parties more time to broker agreements before they are forced to enter a binding final-offer arbitration process. This comes on top of the existing three-month negotiation period." These changes don't seem like a loss to me.
    - postingawayonhn 6y ago
      For Facebook it's not as good as the status quo but is nowhere near a bad as what the government/News Corp/Nine were proposing.
      - anomaly_ 6y ago
        Have you looked at the amendments? They are incredibly minor and don't change the basic operation of the law (i.e. to compel negotiations between Google/Facebook and news publishers). This is 100% face saving for Facebook. I would guess the original calculation re the black out was to gauge impact on other jurisdictions and when they saw/heard resolve tightening in Canada (who has a long history of imposing these sort of 'taxes' on middlemen)/UK/France/etc they blinked.
    - mfDjB 6y ago
      All of these amendments favour Facebook. It also buys them time. I guess we will have to wait and see after the 2 month mediation period is up who has the upper hand. I guess the answer to who won, Facebook or the Australian government depends on what you consider a win here. I personally would consider Facebooks strike and the forcing of the Australian governments hand to pass legislation that didn't want to pass a win for Facebook.
KDJohnBrown 6y ago
Money changed hands. A few lawyers, lobbyists and politicians will be able to afford nicer cars/condos/coke mirrors next year. That’s all.

baash05 6y ago

Aus bent the knee.

undecisive 6y ago

FB: We provide you reach and you get advertising revenue because of it. Why would we pay you for something you benefit from? AU: Because. FB: We'll just stop giving you reach... AU: Like to see you try FB: ... AU: Yeah, maybe that doesn't work for us after all. I wonder what would have happened if this had been in the US. I'm guessing that Australia's news content is a nice-to-have, and not (yet) part of their core revenue. Some consumers probably enjoyed having fewer news items appear in their feed. It hurt Facebook a little, but it hurt news providers more.

hestefisk 6y ago
Revenue from news sources is a very small part of FBs revenue base. At least according to the episode of Pivot podcast where Prof Scott Galloway covered that question.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Some consumers probably enjoyed having fewer news items appear in their feed. Compare the comment from the other thread on the same topic, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234376 > the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I was quite surprised Google backed down, they might be kicking themselves now.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  Someone on the other thread pointed out that search engine users are often specifically seeking news in a way that Facebook users aren't. That makes this an area where competition between search engines matters, even if what link targets want doesn't matter at all. It's entirely possible that Google's internal position was "this is a tax on search engines, and the higher the taxes on search engines are, the better for us".

aemreunal 6y ago

This makes me so angry, not just because of Australia's clear attack on open web and a completely inverted value flow illusion, but also because it made me agree with Facebook on an issue (when they initially showed opposition and called Australia's bluff). Though they also went back on that, which is just disappointing to me. Australia needs to step out of their illusion and stop shoveling snow up an avalanche. The only way to benefit from the age of internet is to embrace its realities. I'm also curious why this didn't work when Germany tried to do it but it works when Australia does...

paranoidrobot 6y ago
> Australia needs to step out of their illusion and stop shoveling snow up an avalanche. The only way to benefit from the age of internet is to embrace its realities. Unfortunately you're 'shovelling snow up an avalanche' (what a polite way of putting it) if you expect that Australian governments will change any time soon. Both major Australian parties are far too captured by corporate interests to do anything so radical. The current Liberal[1] government trashed our attempt at doing a nation-wide FTTH rollout and cancelled our attempt at a carbon-tax/emissions-trading scheme. Labour are uninterested in going down that path again because they lost last time, in significant part to the attacks from Murdoch and Packer owned news organisations. Embracing the internet, clean energy or other things risks upsetting major empires, which those empire-owners are decidedly against. [1] For the non-Australians: The Australian Liberal Party is a center-right/conservative party. Think sort-of like the US Republicans prior to the Tea Party/Trump. The Australian Labour Party is more center-left/progressive party.
- aemreunal 6y ago
  > Both major Australian parties are far too captured by corporate interests [...] Someone said "as if Rupert Murdoch himself wrote this law", which I think is quite apt.
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    What is worrying is that the bodies that are supposed to protect citizens from such corrupt relationships do nothing.

Epskampie 6y ago

Reading the article, it seems like facebook is actually the one who has capitulated: > Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation. So they will still pay, only be able to back out if they cant reach a deal. Off course this gives them EXTREME leverage over smaller outlets: “accept our deal or we’ll legally ban you on facebook...”

imperfectcats 6y ago
It was never about pay, it was about all the other conditions. I am sure there is a model that provides some revenue that works for all concerned, but when you demand algorithm updates for a few, it is just plain silly. This is modern political reporting - a binary focus on one single element that ignores the multitude of other things tacked on.
simonh 6y ago
The previous situation was that news outlets could post their own links on facebook, that facebook would have no say in it, and facebook would have to pay for the links. So news organisations could link spam facebook to extract revenue and FB would just have to sit there and take it. This way both sides need to come to an agreement, you know, the way it works in every other free market ever.
rstuart4133 6y ago
The article was written by an organisation who petitioned the pollies to risk their political capital to the organisation some favours. Before this, the act specifically banned a digital platform (ie Google/Facebook) from changing a newspapers ranking based on whether the newspaper forced them to pay, or how much they paid. The act says the arbitrator is forced to accept one of the bargains offered (and no other amount), be it from Facebook or the newspaper, but the considerations in the act heavily biased it towards using the newspaper's offer. So the newspaper was free to drive a pretty hard bargain. Here is what an Associate professor in regulation and governance, UNSW said changed [0]: > the non-discrimination provisions (crafted as an anti-avoidance mechanism) will not be triggered in respect to remuneration amounts or commercial outcomes that arise in the course of usual business practice So, now Facebook can tie the rankings (think: how many newsfeeds will a newspaper link will appear on) to how much the newspaper forced them to pay during bargaining. Still think it was a capitulation? [0] https://theconversation.com/this-weeks-changes-are-a-win-for-facebook-google-and-the-government-but-what-was-lost-along-the-way-155865 https://theconversation.com/this-weeks-changes-are-a-win-for...

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

"Content is king." Google nor Facebook produce any. It's one thing for consumers to not want to pay for content. We are used to having news for "free". But it's another thing for middlemen to expect to get news for free that they can use to turn a massive profit, undercutting the source's own business. Bravo to Australia for standing up to the middlemen. It worked.

aeternum 6y ago
Perhaps we should wait until the deal is negotiated before claiming it worked. My guess is it was likely the Australian news agencies unhappy that their traffic dropped who then pressured the government to reconsider the law and restart talks with FB.
johnnyYen 6y ago
I think you are mis-understanding what the news organisations source of business is. It's NOT the consumers of news, and never was. It's the advertising companies who place ads on the news organisations properties - and now the news organisations customers (i.e. the ad companies) have found it more beneficial to advertise with Google and FB.
- AlstZam 6y ago
  > It's NOT the consumers of news, and never was. You're right for the vast majority of news organization on internet but we can't say that it's "never was" (or "is" for the matter). I have at least 3 examples [0] in mind of news organizations for which advertising is not part of their business model (or a very insignificant part compared to "consumers of news" part). And I'm sure we can find similar example all around the globe. Of course such organization generally relies on subscription and/or donation. And of course for this to works "consumers of news" need to pay for it. [0] Sorry all French : Le Canard enchainé (paper) ; Le Monde Diplo (paper and web) ; Mediapart (web)
jay_kyburz 6y ago
This was not government standing up for anybody. This is a shakedown, pure and simple. If the government wanted to insure that Australians had a healthy independent news ecosystem, they would have legislated against filtering news for your bubble. They would have passed laws insuring balance and impartiality in the news itself. Update: There is nothing in legislation that says the money paid by these companies needs to be paid to journalists or to produce news. This money will go directly into executive bonuses and the news organizations will still go out of business.

wastholm 6y ago

I have never understood why people insist on getting news from Facebook. To me that seems a bit like heading to the nearest bus stop in search of medical advice. While I don't have a Facebook account myself, I do recognize that apparently their service has some value to a lot of people. But using it for news -- in the traditional sense, i.e., reports on large-scale developments in the real world -- has to me always seemed ill-advised.

thejohnconway 6y ago
In my experience, they don’t insist on it. People post links to news sites like any other content, then the algorithm does its thing. You get news in your timeline from the people you follow — just like Twitter, or many other social media sites.
paranoidrobot 6y ago
> To me that seems a bit like heading to the nearest bus stop in search of medical advice. I think you've got it backwards. I would say that they are not heading to Facebook to get news, they're there to see pictures from their friends/celebs they follow/etc. That it's also a convenient way to get news articles is just a bonus.
- wastholm 6y ago
  Same end result though. If I randomly get medical advice by people at my local bus stop and I therefore [mostly] stop trying to get it from other sources, the randos at the bus stop will have become my [main] source of medical advice.
  - paranoidrobot 6y ago
    > I therefore [mostly] stop trying to get it from other sources That makes the assumption that these people were looking for news sources anyway. Sure, there's going to be some people that fall into that camp. I can't provide evidence either way, but I would be entirely unsurprised if there were a large percentage of people who don't look for news with any regularity at all. They wern't interested in hitting up a news site. And to be clear, when I say news, I don't mean the latest celebrity gossip mag, or some specialist/niche publication on their particular interests that might have some news content.

wombatmobile 6y ago

That's not a deal. It's a can kicked down a road.

newbie578 6y ago

Would love to know which side caved?

clouddrover 6y ago
Facebook. The changes are minor.

Number157 6y ago

Please get rid of news from Facebook. It's toxic.

vermilingua 6y ago
s/news from/

steve_taylor 6y ago

The amendments pave the way for Google and Facebook to avoid the code altogether if they can satisfy the government they have struck enough deals outside it. I doubt this means they’re allowed to strike a deal with every news outlet except Murdoch’s.

ehnto 6y ago
I hope they try. At this point I just want FB, Google, Murdoch and AuGov to collide in an abysmal trainwreck of policy and petulance. None of this has the citizens of Australia in mind at all, so I hope all the companies involved fuck themselves over by accident.

iliketosleep 6y ago

After reading the article, it appears that this deal favors large media companies who are able to negotiate a decent deal for themselves with Facebook. It seems like that the government will also use it as an excuse to cut finding to state-funded news sources. I cannot see how the deal favors the general public at all.

wombatmobile 6y ago
Why would you expect a deal to favour the general public or state funded news organisations?
- iliketosleep 6y ago
  Because the media code set by the government should, in an overall sense, benefit the people of the nation. Clearly it's not the case, and the government deserves to be called out for it.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    I get how you would like things to work. You do know who conceived of this legislation in the first place though, don’t you?
    - iliketosleep 6y ago
      All I can find is that it was tabled by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission at the request of the federal government. But if I was to take a wild guess, I'd say that Murdoch was somehow behind it.
rektide 6y ago
Cory Doctorow had (as usual) a good write up on these happenings. He spends a good while talking about how lopsided this law is. For a start: > But of course, this isn't a negotiation between workers and employers: it's a bargain between a cartel of news organizations and a search duopoly. That's not ideal! For starters, it means that the government gets to decide who is a "news organization." > That's ripe for abuse. News organizations are expected to report on the government and the government gets to decide whether they are entitled to participate in collective bargaining with Googbook, which could mean the difference between financial viability and bankruptcy. https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/21/paltrow-industrial-complex/#facecrook https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/21/paltrow-industrial-comple... He does say that there is some public accountability & reporting that big companies like Facebook & Google will face, which should be helpful generally. But yeah, this looks like a very silly effort, alas: > It's not wrong to say that the only reason this regulation got off the drawing-board is that [Rupert] Murdoch viewed it as a way to shift a few balance-points from Big Tech's side of the ledger to Big Media's side.

RVuRnvbM2e 6y ago

Facebook blinked. The amendments are nothing concrete, but it gives Facebook something to spin in a press release, allowing them to save face.

fwn 6y ago
As far as I understand it the Australian government is about to allow Facebook to effectively choose winners and losers in the Australian press ecosystem, which would be a monumental win for Facebook. Is that the case? I'd love to know how such a regulation is great for anyone but Facebook.

h0nd 6y ago

What is news? Does facebook publish news? I am on facebook for 13 years and I can not remember seeing any news on facebook. Ok, there are people sharing links to news articles (and facebook makes a preview containing title, image, and maybe parts of the lead). There might be people copy-pasting the text of a whole article into facebook, but that is definitely not the default situation. Overall, in order to receive news, I am forced to leave facebook (also applies to google) I just dont get it. In my opinion the news creators should be grateful to facebook (or google etc.), bringing them interested visitors, potential customers. Shouldn't facebook rather be paid for that instead of convicted? The same applies to google, a search engine. Why would a news creator NOT desire to be found in the internet in order to attract visitors? The news creators I know, they are that keen on gaining attraction: they even give the full content of pay-walled articles to google (and therefore to everybody) in order to be found. If they dont want to be found and listed, there are ways to do so.

simonh 6y ago
I think you've got a much better grip on it than the news publishers. Just to back that up with evidence as to who gets value from news links on FB. When FB blocked news links, the traffic to AU news sites dropped by from 7% to 9% (according to some estimates), directly affecting their ad businesses. The impact on FB was some bad PR.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  I wouldn't call it bad PR to anyone who doesn't have vapor for brains. For examples of said vapor brains see Australian PMs.
saargrin 6y ago
because most people dont consume news, they consume headlines and if you only read the headline, whoever created the content does not get the ad revenue , customer engagement or any other benefit for having created the content
- h0nd 6y ago

santialbo 6y ago

What surprises me the most is how Murdoch made the media look like the good guys here, when this was just bluff from someone who still lives in 1999.

KDJohnBrown 6y ago

Will all web content creators eventually get to charge social media companies for sharing links? Is this the end game?

simonh 6y ago
I don't see why not. Having Amazon on Google is clearly an advantage to Google because people go there to find stuff, so maybe Amazon should charge google for being listed on Google. Then Google can charge Amazon for listing them more prominently. That makes Amazon even more popular and therefore valuable to Google to list, so Amazon can charge them even more, so then....

PoignardAzur 6y ago

So Facebook decided to pay the Danegeld? I'm extremely disappointed, but I guess it was predictable.

peter_retief 6y ago

Am I the only person who is a bit disappointed that Facebook get to carry on as usual?

calsy 6y ago

Charging for links had to be the single most destructive piece of tech legislation ever conceived in a 'free' democratic country. Links that connect the web as we know it would be monetised, destroying the free flow of information. Australian media companies (who are themselves part of a larger group of global media organisations) know that paid links are completely incompatible to the free internet. Thats why they lobbied the government to break the internet on their behalf. Enter the dystopian 'media bargaining code' that, 1) Force companies to display selected media links and then charge them for it. In short, Extortion. 2) Paid links = lower search ranking. To circumvent the foundations of net search, this new law would force Google (and others in the future) to alter their algorithms to preference media organisations and charge the search engine in the process. An aggressive takeover of a companies service through government legislation. The media, like everyone else, can create their own websites and charge as much as they please for their content. They are not happy with this level playing field and require laws to take control of another companies services. It is an attack on the free internet itself for no other reason than some entitled companies thinking they deserve money because they were beaten at their own game.

alistairSH 6y ago
Except FB and Google aren't simply sharing links. They're skimming headlines, photos, and content and re-posting it outside the publisher's site and control. Most consumers are happy to read the headline, see the main photo, and possibly read a few lines of text - they don't click through the full news article. The legislation is wrongheaded - link sharing isn't the problem. But, the problem still exists.
- lclc98 6y ago
  News are providing that information for scraping though, viewing source of any of those sites and look into the "og" or "twitter" meta tags, they are designed to be used that way.
- splaytreemap 6y ago
  They could very easily opt out of getting scraped by Google. They choose not to though because it is beneficial to them to have Google help people find their content. Also note, Australia has specifically said removing article snippets from search results is not enough for Google to avoid payment. This legislation is not about protecting websites from content theft. It's solely about the Australian government forcing Google and Facebook to pay the propagandists that helped them get elected.

intricatedetail 6y ago

This tells me that Australian government is extremely corrupt and they erode the quality of law so their mates can make some money. This is immoral and stupid. What would they do if people stopped sharing Australian news? What can we do about this brazen attack on open web?

nashashmi 6y ago

So now Facebook and google have near monopoly dominance in the Australian internet. Because they can negotiate with government while startups cannot. We should get used to the idea of aristocracy and worker misery making a comeback in the 21st century.

sly010 6y ago

Lots of interesting thoughts here. I wonder if news is not that different from education: Privileged people always had access to it, sometimes on a 1-1 basis (informants/tutors). Then came technology [writing|printing], but real scale still required capital to pay for platform [campuses|printer] and content [educators|journalists]. But inevitably the profitability of businesses decline over time until all the profits are gone. Due to competition they start giving away content for free and start selling eyeballs, quality declines and the incumbents need ways to make money other than their primary revenue source. In both cases the most successful of the businesses can use their size to their advantage: Academia partners with industry to fund "scientific research". It also "helps prepare students for the job market". Newspapers decide to double down on advertisement. Basically both sell their soul, only a little at first, but things only get worse over time. The internet accelerates all this. Stupid fights like the above breaks out about who should get what share of the pie. But at the end of the day the core value still comes from the individuals (journalists/educators) who rightfully feel that they have been reduced to mere numbers and they could provide more value to less people and make more money going independent. So a lot of them do. We now have platforms for independent education (self published books, online courses, patreon, etc) but we don't really have them for (verifiable) journalism yet. I don't even know how that would look like. The best I could find was comedy and news-commentary podcasts where the reporters can really be themselves. edit: typo + minor edit

stevespang 6y ago

As usual, Zuckerberg acted like an asshole and cut off emergency services in Australia . . .

adolph 6y ago

The code, which is backed by Labor and will become law, sets out a framework for forcing Google and Facebook to broker commercial deals with media companies for the value they obtain from having news content on their platforms. Facebook and Google have both fiercely resisted the code, describing it as “unworkable” and threatening to curtail their services in Australia if it passed unamended. I don't see the big deal about this. FB and G have done well in monetizing their work and good fortune in centralizing people's attention and some part of the value is derived from FB and G's linking association with content providers like newspapers and such. Those companies are seeking to capture some of that value through a law. The law conceptually seems to favor private negotiations with a tax or tariff-like backstop. This wouldn't be an issue if FB and G hadn't done so well in centralization or if they had been craftier in disguising it. As it stands, Australia seems to be saying "nice business model, shame if something happened to it." One might not wish governments to behave like gangsters but seems pretty standard for tariffs. Getting too far ahead paints a target on your back.

dodobirdlord 6y ago
If the Australian government called this a tariff or a tax, they would be in violation of various reciprocal free trade agreements.
- adolph 6y ago
  Thats interesting. I wonder if the US would pursue that if FB/G were more favorably viewed by the government.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    Probably, it's very unfortunate for Facebook and Google that "big tech" has become a political boogyman of both the left and the right.

gumby 6y ago

Fresh from this success I expect Toyota to demand a law requiring restaurants and shops to pay Toyota for bringing people to their establishments.

graeme 6y ago
No no, you’ve got it backwards. Per the logic of the law, the restaurants should demand to be paid by Toyota for Toyota bringing them customers. People only drive cars to get to places they value. So why should Toyota capture all this value and not pay the restaurant industry? (I am being sarcastic but this is really the news industry’s argument)

franczesko 6y ago

Big tech got big on premise, that the information on the Internet is for free. How come the platforms want to use other people's intellectual property and not pay for it, in the same way, we all have to pay for theirs?

dane-pgp 6y ago
Actually big tech got big on the premise that advertising is valuable. The real question is how come news sites want other people's platforms to pay them for the privilege of having links to their sites.
- franczesko 6y ago
  I don't think it's a good example. To show analogical one - why would artists want money for their work, e.g. songs, from radio stations playing them?
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    I don't think your analogy is as good as you are imagining. Payola[0] was definitely a thing, so there have definitely been artists (or rather, rights holders) who would pay to have radio stations play their songs (the reverse of being paid by the radio stations). Of course, not every rights holder did that with every song, but your analogy also fails to account for the fact that platforms aren't hosting the entirety of each article, they are providing links. That's more like an artist sending a clip from their new song to a radio station and letting them play it for free, so that people go out and buy the full recording. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola