14 ms·

Facebook to restore news pages in Australia

49 points by frob 6y ago

TheSmiddy 6y ago
"The tech giant drew a wide backlash from Australian users." This is patently false, the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook. On this particular issue Facebook is clearly in the right, it is straight up insane to expect them to pay for links to news that users choose to share.
- King-Aaron 6y ago
  Not quite. You look at any of the posts by politicians and you'd see vast numbers of people lapping up the anti-facebook rhetoric. The sad part is that it's not entirely unjustified. It's just in this instance Facebook was objectively not being the bad guy, yet there's enough mistrust in the population that it's easy to be told that they (facebook) were in the wrong.
  - steve_taylor 6y ago
    You look at any of the posts by politicians and you'd see vast numbers of people lapping up the anti-facebook rhetoric. There was already a lot of anti-facebook rhetoric here in Australia as a result of perceived left-wing bias and censorship on Facebook’s part during and after the US election. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed it’s basically the same type of people in both cases – uneducated right-wing anti-vax flat-earthers.
- loktarogar 6y ago
  > This is patently false, the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook. I only use facebook for extended family and friends of the family and noted a lot of people pissed off about not being able to share links.
  - anothernewdude 6y ago
    Well that's on Murdoch and his shitty empire
- Reventlov 6y ago
  [[ citation needed ]] It works in both ways. Anectdotal evidence is not quite evidence.
- ImaCake 6y ago
  I personally found it really annoying. Facebook is a good means of delivering useful links to people who otherwise not see them. During this stupid fight my ability to connect friends and family with useful resources was ruined. I think this is a bad vs bad fight, but I think facebook deserves more of my ire for this one.
- efwfwef 6y ago
  The only thing that annoys me is that some of the articles in Facebook news are behind a paywall
crowf 6y ago
to clarify for all who only read the headline "Going forward, the government has clarified [Facebook] will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that [Facebook] won't automatically be subject to forced negotiation," so it looks like Facebook won in the game of chicken between them and the Australian government.
- jonny383 6y ago
  Despite the Australian Government's big scary words about not backing down last week. What an embarrassment.
  - throwaway69123 6y ago
    Old media saw their traffic stats crater, I think.
    - King-Aaron 6y ago
      I would be interested to know what the net loss in click/ad revenue was over this period
      - stubish 6y ago
        I don't know about revenue, but Chartbeat said a drop in total traffic of 13% https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-facebook-traffic-idUSKBN2AJ028 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-facebook-...
    - aneemzic 6y ago
      I think more importantly, the government realized how badly Facebook could hurt their influence in the Asia Pacific region. Without Australian news on Facebook, people in nearby developing countries would be getting their international news from from other countries (china).
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
langfo 6y ago
What I don't understand, please correct me if I'm wrong but don't the journalists, news agencies etc upload their own news content or links to news stories to the Facebook platform? Should they then get paid for that? Anyway, I'm into about day 6 of my feeble attempt to delete my Facebook account.
- pfundstein 6y ago
  I didn't delete my FB account. Instead I restricted the permissions to make my profile barely visible and prevent people posting on my wall and then simply stopped using it.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  You are understanding correct. The Australian government wanted Facebook to let news companies post their news on Facebook and Facebook to pay them for doing so. Facebook then decided that they would rather not have the companies posting on fb. This caused a massive loss of profits for the news companies so it looks like the government has backed down.
rblatz 6y ago
So the news sites all knew exactly how much of their traffic came from Facebook, and they should have known that people’s habits change slowly. What did they expect? They started this game of chicken and didn’t even have the will to wait over a week for user habits to change?
zz_throwaway_zz 6y ago
The news reporting on the news, this ought to be reliable.
probably_wrong 6y ago
The article is light on details. Do we have an idea of what the text of the amended law will say? I imagine Australians could end up with a law that says "exactly the same as before, except for Facebook" which would be very bad for everyone else.
- jeeeb 6y ago
  So far it seems like only press statements have been released. ABC is reporting some small tweaks to the law (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-23/facebook-reverses-news-ban-on-australian-sites-media-code/13173984 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-23/facebook-reverses-new...) 1. Introduction of a good faith mediation period prior to compulsory arbitration 2. Introduction of a clause requiring the treasurer to consider existing deals before applying the code. Basically it seems like FB have agreed to pay media companies but with a stronger hand in negotiations.
gorgoiler 6y ago
Australian authorities will now introduce further amendments, including a two-month mediation period before government-enforced arbitration kicks in. Mediation which will now include empirical data from the blackout. Going dark has meant a bad news cycle for FB but in the long run they now have data to prove it’s FB driving NewsCorp’s revenue and not the other way around.
nickpp 6y ago
From all this, Microsoft stance was the worst: using the power of Big Government to attack competition. Shameful.
- f6v 6y ago
  This is the reason people get frustrated, right here. Having expectations that a for-profit tech company doesn’t behave one. Why wouldn’t they use everything at their disposal to slam the competitors?
  - nickpp 6y ago
    Well, its like in sports: there are some things that you could do to win, but you don't - because you are not scum and you know the game would be worse for all if everybody would do them. It's called fair play.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    When people get tired enough of crappy behavior from other people, regardless of the excuse, people tend to do something about it. This is why we have sayings like "what goes around comes around." Business exists to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humans created it to serve human needs. Humans can exist without business. Business doesn't exist without humans. Historically, the honey bee was revered as a symbol of a civilizing force and the force it symbolized was trade. Trade -- aka business -- is how you make the world better pragmatically. It operates on the idea that both sides gain something of value. I don't know how or why, but we seem to have collectively forgotten that.
yarcob 6y ago
A lot of people are using Facebook as their newsfeed, so I think it's not quite honest to claim that Facebook is not gaining anything from sharing news stories. Facebook would be a lot less compelling without news. People used to browse headlines on newspaper sites, then Facebook came and aggregated all the headlines, and "stole" all the visitors of the news sites. Reporting on stories is a lot of effort (especially local stories where you can't just copy paste some press release), and Facebook wants to put the headlines on their website for free. Publishers should be happy about the exposure! I understand that publishers are pissed. They are doing the work, but Facebook makes money from the content, and all they get in exchange is a small percentage of people who view a post actually click through to read the full story.
- efwfwef 6y ago
  > Facebook would be a lot less compelling without news. Yet everyone complains here (me included) that Facebook should go back to its roots, and offer news about your friends only
  - yarcob 6y ago
    Yes, but the people complaining here are not really Facebooks core audience anymore. Facebook has basically become a news sharing platform, because that's how they keep people "engaged". Most people just don't have enough relatives that they can browse baby photos all day. But there's an endless stream of news headlines...
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  If there’s market value for news then news sellers should stop giving it away for free and starting charging a price. If press barons instead want to leverage free news to gain power and influence then who cares if the cost of doing so in 2021 is much higher than in 1981? So what if the emergence of Google et al indirectly pushed up the price of tabloid influence over democracy?
  - yarcob 6y ago
    > news sellers should stop giving it away for free and starting charging a price But that's exactly what they are trying to do? The news stories obviously have a value for Facebook, and the publishers are trying to get them to pay for it. Radio stations also pay royalties to play music, why shouldn't websites have to pay royalties for content they show in their feeds?
berndi 6y ago
So we're now at a point where Big Tech can overtly strong-arm a nation into changing legislation proposed by their democratically elected government. Facebook didn't bat an eye before blocking the pages of food banks and emergency service providers in the middle of a pandemic for an entire county, all in service of avoiding a drop in their advertising revenue [1]. That should tell you a lot. You might not like the proposed laws but Facebook's reckless conduct is indefensible. If you compare this to Facebook's history in Myanmar, you will find that they have no issue with subsidising the spread of their platform while it is being used to incite a literal genocide [2]. But they draw the line and take swift action when their profits are endangered. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-australia-news-ban-emergency-services-charities-government-accounts-crossfire-2021-2?r=DE&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-australia-news-ban-... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and-confusion-in-myanmar/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-...
- johnnyYen 6y ago
  "Facebook didn't bat an eye before blocking the pages of food banks and emergency service providers..." No, FB obeyed the law. The legislation of what constitutes a "news organisation" is opaque. The legislation said pay for links or don't show them. FB complied with the law and elected not to show them. I cannot see the problem here - FB obeyed the law.
  - berndi 6y ago
    The alternative would have been for FB to clarify what you say is opaque about the legislation. The fact that FB would rather outright ban charities and emergency service providers instead of clarifying the spirit of the law shows you that they are not operating in good faith and will maximize their profits at all societal costs.
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  Big News used to be the strong men. IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It We are merely spectators watching the giants fight it out, ironically, by following news media’s coverage of events.
MertsA 6y ago
"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 forced negotiation," I bet Google wishes they would have waited a bit longer before negotiating those agreements. It's nice that the government finally caved on the most egregious part of the legislation. Looking at the media response over the past few days has been absolutely shameful. Just about every piece out there completely glosses over the fact that the legislation originally outright forced Google and Facebook to pay and still host content even if a mutual agreement wasn't reached. It was a deal you can't say no to.... legally.
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Facebook had all the leverage here, so I find it really really odd that Zuck caved to Murdoch^WThe Liberal Party. Related: given the new proposed Australian law, I would love to see Twitter use this against News Corp - a hell of a lot of their articles is just commentary on a few tweets (i.e the actual news source of the story). Twitter should start demanding payment from News Corp because they’re stealing their revenue.
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  My biggest concern about the proposed laws were that the government wanted publisher’s (i.e News Corp’s) approval of future changes to Google and Facebook’s “algorithms” before they went to production... How on earth did these two companies even agree to meet let alone completely roll over because they’ve now just let News Corp be part of their future CI/CD pipeline approval process?! :mindblown:
merricksb 6y ago
Other article posted a little before this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26233897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26233897
Digit-Al 6y ago
Something that I don't recall seeing discussed anywhere: does anyone else think that news sites having social media sharing links at the head or foot of their articles kind of undermines their case?

49 points by frob 6y ago

"The tech giant drew a wide backlash from Australian users." This is patently false, the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook. On this particular issue Facebook is clearly in the right, it is straight up insane to expect them to pay for links to news that users choose to share.

King-Aaron 6y ago
Not quite. You look at any of the posts by politicians and you'd see vast numbers of people lapping up the anti-facebook rhetoric. The sad part is that it's not entirely unjustified. It's just in this instance Facebook was objectively not being the bad guy, yet there's enough mistrust in the population that it's easy to be told that they (facebook) were in the wrong.
- steve_taylor 6y ago
  You look at any of the posts by politicians and you'd see vast numbers of people lapping up the anti-facebook rhetoric. There was already a lot of anti-facebook rhetoric here in Australia as a result of perceived left-wing bias and censorship on Facebook’s part during and after the US election. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed it’s basically the same type of people in both cases – uneducated right-wing anti-vax flat-earthers.
loktarogar 6y ago
> This is patently false, the only evidence of backlash has been from reports in mass media, we were all loving the new newsless Facebook. I only use facebook for extended family and friends of the family and noted a lot of people pissed off about not being able to share links.
- anothernewdude 6y ago
  Well that's on Murdoch and his shitty empire
Reventlov 6y ago
[[ citation needed ]] It works in both ways. Anectdotal evidence is not quite evidence.
ImaCake 6y ago
I personally found it really annoying. Facebook is a good means of delivering useful links to people who otherwise not see them. During this stupid fight my ability to connect friends and family with useful resources was ruined. I think this is a bad vs bad fight, but I think facebook deserves more of my ire for this one.
efwfwef 6y ago
The only thing that annoys me is that some of the articles in Facebook news are behind a paywall

crowf 6y ago

to clarify for all who only read the headline "Going forward, the government has clarified [Facebook] will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that [Facebook] won't automatically be subject to forced negotiation," so it looks like Facebook won in the game of chicken between them and the Australian government.

jonny383 6y ago
Despite the Australian Government's big scary words about not backing down last week. What an embarrassment.
- throwaway69123 6y ago
  Old media saw their traffic stats crater, I think.
  - King-Aaron 6y ago
    I would be interested to know what the net loss in click/ad revenue was over this period
    - stubish 6y ago
      I don't know about revenue, but Chartbeat said a drop in total traffic of 13% https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-facebook-traffic-idUSKBN2AJ028 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-facebook-...
  - aneemzic 6y ago
    I think more importantly, the government realized how badly Facebook could hurt their influence in the Asia Pacific region. Without Australian news on Facebook, people in nearby developing countries would be getting their international news from from other countries (china).
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago

langfo 6y ago

What I don't understand, please correct me if I'm wrong but don't the journalists, news agencies etc upload their own news content or links to news stories to the Facebook platform? Should they then get paid for that? Anyway, I'm into about day 6 of my feeble attempt to delete my Facebook account.

pfundstein 6y ago
I didn't delete my FB account. Instead I restricted the permissions to make my profile barely visible and prevent people posting on my wall and then simply stopped using it.
PurpleFoxy 6y ago
You are understanding correct. The Australian government wanted Facebook to let news companies post their news on Facebook and Facebook to pay them for doing so. Facebook then decided that they would rather not have the companies posting on fb. This caused a massive loss of profits for the news companies so it looks like the government has backed down.

rblatz 6y ago

So the news sites all knew exactly how much of their traffic came from Facebook, and they should have known that people’s habits change slowly. What did they expect? They started this game of chicken and didn’t even have the will to wait over a week for user habits to change?

zz_throwaway_zz 6y ago

The news reporting on the news, this ought to be reliable.

probably_wrong 6y ago

The article is light on details. Do we have an idea of what the text of the amended law will say? I imagine Australians could end up with a law that says "exactly the same as before, except for Facebook" which would be very bad for everyone else.

jeeeb 6y ago
So far it seems like only press statements have been released. ABC is reporting some small tweaks to the law (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-23/facebook-reverses-news-ban-on-australian-sites-media-code/13173984 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-23/facebook-reverses-new...) 1. Introduction of a good faith mediation period prior to compulsory arbitration 2. Introduction of a clause requiring the treasurer to consider existing deals before applying the code. Basically it seems like FB have agreed to pay media companies but with a stronger hand in negotiations.

gorgoiler 6y ago

Australian authorities will now introduce further amendments, including a two-month mediation period before government-enforced arbitration kicks in. Mediation which will now include empirical data from the blackout. Going dark has meant a bad news cycle for FB but in the long run they now have data to prove it’s FB driving NewsCorp’s revenue and not the other way around.

nickpp 6y ago

From all this, Microsoft stance was the worst: using the power of Big Government to attack competition. Shameful.

f6v 6y ago
This is the reason people get frustrated, right here. Having expectations that a for-profit tech company doesn’t behave one. Why wouldn’t they use everything at their disposal to slam the competitors?
- nickpp 6y ago
  Well, its like in sports: there are some things that you could do to win, but you don't - because you are not scum and you know the game would be worse for all if everybody would do them. It's called fair play.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  When people get tired enough of crappy behavior from other people, regardless of the excuse, people tend to do something about it. This is why we have sayings like "what goes around comes around." Business exists to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humans created it to serve human needs. Humans can exist without business. Business doesn't exist without humans. Historically, the honey bee was revered as a symbol of a civilizing force and the force it symbolized was trade. Trade -- aka business -- is how you make the world better pragmatically. It operates on the idea that both sides gain something of value. I don't know how or why, but we seem to have collectively forgotten that.

yarcob 6y ago

A lot of people are using Facebook as their newsfeed, so I think it's not quite honest to claim that Facebook is not gaining anything from sharing news stories. Facebook would be a lot less compelling without news. People used to browse headlines on newspaper sites, then Facebook came and aggregated all the headlines, and "stole" all the visitors of the news sites. Reporting on stories is a lot of effort (especially local stories where you can't just copy paste some press release), and Facebook wants to put the headlines on their website for free. Publishers should be happy about the exposure! I understand that publishers are pissed. They are doing the work, but Facebook makes money from the content, and all they get in exchange is a small percentage of people who view a post actually click through to read the full story.

efwfwef 6y ago
> Facebook would be a lot less compelling without news. Yet everyone complains here (me included) that Facebook should go back to its roots, and offer news about your friends only
- yarcob 6y ago
  Yes, but the people complaining here are not really Facebooks core audience anymore. Facebook has basically become a news sharing platform, because that's how they keep people "engaged". Most people just don't have enough relatives that they can browse baby photos all day. But there's an endless stream of news headlines...
gorgoiler 6y ago
If there’s market value for news then news sellers should stop giving it away for free and starting charging a price. If press barons instead want to leverage free news to gain power and influence then who cares if the cost of doing so in 2021 is much higher than in 1981? So what if the emergence of Google et al indirectly pushed up the price of tabloid influence over democracy?
- yarcob 6y ago
  > news sellers should stop giving it away for free and starting charging a price But that's exactly what they are trying to do? The news stories obviously have a value for Facebook, and the publishers are trying to get them to pay for it. Radio stations also pay royalties to play music, why shouldn't websites have to pay royalties for content they show in their feeds?

berndi 6y ago

So we're now at a point where Big Tech can overtly strong-arm a nation into changing legislation proposed by their democratically elected government. Facebook didn't bat an eye before blocking the pages of food banks and emergency service providers in the middle of a pandemic for an entire county, all in service of avoiding a drop in their advertising revenue [1]. That should tell you a lot. You might not like the proposed laws but Facebook's reckless conduct is indefensible. If you compare this to Facebook's history in Myanmar, you will find that they have no issue with subsidising the spread of their platform while it is being used to incite a literal genocide [2]. But they draw the line and take swift action when their profits are endangered. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-australia-news-ban-emergency-services-charities-government-accounts-crossfire-2021-2?r=DE&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-australia-news-ban-... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and-confusion-in-myanmar/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-...

johnnyYen 6y ago
"Facebook didn't bat an eye before blocking the pages of food banks and emergency service providers..." No, FB obeyed the law. The legislation of what constitutes a "news organisation" is opaque. The legislation said pay for links or don't show them. FB complied with the law and elected not to show them. I cannot see the problem here - FB obeyed the law.
- berndi 6y ago
  The alternative would have been for FB to clarify what you say is opaque about the legislation. The fact that FB would rather outright ban charities and emergency service providers instead of clarifying the spirit of the law shows you that they are not operating in good faith and will maximize their profits at all societal costs.
gorgoiler 6y ago
Big News used to be the strong men. IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It We are merely spectators watching the giants fight it out, ironically, by following news media’s coverage of events.

MertsA 6y ago

"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 forced negotiation," I bet Google wishes they would have waited a bit longer before negotiating those agreements. It's nice that the government finally caved on the most egregious part of the legislation. Looking at the media response over the past few days has been absolutely shameful. Just about every piece out there completely glosses over the fact that the legislation originally outright forced Google and Facebook to pay and still host content even if a mutual agreement wasn't reached. It was a deal you can't say no to.... legally.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

Facebook had all the leverage here, so I find it really really odd that Zuck caved to Murdoch^WThe Liberal Party. Related: given the new proposed Australian law, I would love to see Twitter use this against News Corp - a hell of a lot of their articles is just commentary on a few tweets (i.e the actual news source of the story). Twitter should start demanding payment from News Corp because they’re stealing their revenue.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago
My biggest concern about the proposed laws were that the government wanted publisher’s (i.e News Corp’s) approval of future changes to Google and Facebook’s “algorithms” before they went to production... How on earth did these two companies even agree to meet let alone completely roll over because they’ve now just let News Corp be part of their future CI/CD pipeline approval process?! :mindblown:

merricksb 6y ago

Other article posted a little before this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26233897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26233897

Digit-Al 6y ago

Something that I don't recall seeing discussed anywhere: does anyone else think that news sites having social media sharing links at the head or foot of their articles kind of undermines their case?