7 ms·

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

by 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
  Well then let's start talking about headlines, not news. What is the value of a headline?
- Silhouette 6y ago
  This seems to be the crux of the issue to me. Merely linking to another site is clearly not something that should incur any responsibility or financial liability. Breaking this breaks the Web. If most of the value in news reporting is truly in the headline/lede/photo, then there is an argument that linking to a news site but also scraping that content from them to display a much more detailed preview with the link is something that should be compensated. However, there are a couple of problems with this argument. The first problem is that lots of news publishers voluntarily choose to serve their content with open graph metadata that was designed by Facebook for this exact purpose. If that isn't an acknowledgement that those news publishers are inviting sites linking to them to show those more detailed previews, what is? The second problem is that the usual justification given for protecting established news media organisations through government intervention in the market is that they provide deep reporting and original investigative journalism that are valuable to society. If this is true, and if a headline attached to a link really is announcing an important news story backed by substantial research and deep analysis, then surely someone reading that preview is more likely to click through the original source and read further? On the other hand, if the problem is that people aren't clicking through clickbait headlines to tabloid fluff pieces as much as the tabloids would like and it's hurting their business model, is that really the type of journalism we should be intervening to protect? I suspect both Facebook and the Australian and other watching governments will have learned a valuable lesson from this incident. Facebook has been reminded that there is a price to pay for arrogance and that governments around the world are still in charge if they want to be. At the same time, governments have been reminded that if a business is providing a useful service, you can't just impose unreasonable restrictions on it that create a hostile environment and expect no consequences to follow, and that includes transparent cash grabs that are suspiciously well aligned with the interests of your political sponsors.
- sullyj3 6y ago
  Exactly. This is why, when someone sees the front page of a physical newspaper in a store, we detain then until they've paid 10 cents for the privilege.
mrjin 6y ago
Not sure about FB as I'm not a FB user. But for Google that's was not the case long time ago. In the past Google was sending visitors to the source link/original location but that practice now becomes showing the visitor a digest by default and diminished the original link in small grey text and thus most visitor can hardly spot the original link and and the page visiting the original site deserves is not going to happen any more.
- h0nd 6y ago
  How does such a digest look like? Does it allow to read news articles without leaving google?
wombatmobile 6y ago
> What is news? That's a good question. A slightly different question that might help you to understand what is happening in Australia with this legislation is "What was news?" Facebook and Google between them receive more than 80% of all digital advertising dollars spent in Australia. [1] This advertising revenue used to be known as "rivers of gold" when it flowed 80% to newspapers and television, in the decades before the internet existed. In those days, the advertising business was coupled to journalism, because journalism is how media businesses got their product into peoples homes and living rooms every day. 20 odd years ago, the Australian newspaper business began to be hollowed out by new competitors on the internet, such as Seek.com.au for job ads, Domain.com.au for property ads, carsales.com.au for automobile ads, eBay.com.au for the rest of the classified ads, and google and yahoo for display ads. The dozens of pages that used to make up classified ads in newspapers disappeared. As the rivers of gold dried up, the number of journalists employed in Australia declined dramatically. Whilst you are correct that Facebook and Google don't actually publish news, they do receive the rivers of gold in advertising revenue that once funded journalists wages. This new legislation pretends to redress the imbalance that lead to the decline in journalism by diverting advertising revenue back to the old man who owns most of the newspapers in Australia. [2] The old man's business doesn't employ half the number of journalists as it did twenty years ago, and the new legislation doesn't require him to hire any more. [1] https://www.adnews.com.au/news/chart-google-and-facebook-s-share-of-digital-ad-spend-just-got-bigger-in-australia https://www.adnews.com.au/news/chart-google-and-facebook-s-s... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/20/very-australian-coup-murdoch-turnbull-political-death-news-corps https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/20/very-australia...
- PoignardAzur 6y ago
  I think that's a terrible argument. Auto makers shouldn't have to pay a tribute to horse stables for putting them out of business. Refrigerator makers shouldn't have to pay a tribute to ice diggers. Uber shouldn't be required to pay a tax to licensed Taxis. E-learning sites shouldn't have to pay a tax to school tutors. No business is entitled to a comfortable monopoly. The idea that Google should pay a tribute to traditional media where the amount is entirely at the discretion of media giants because the internet can do everything the old press did better just serves to maintain entrenched old interests.
kristofferR 6y ago
The act defines it as: "Journalism about publicly significant issues; journalism that engages Australians in public debate and informs democratic decision making; and journalism relating to community and local events."
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cheph 6y ago
> 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? Can't agree more, this law by the Australian government was the most asinine and ill considered thing since the GDPR which got us bloody cookie popups all over. Governments are entirely useless with regulating the internet.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> In my opinion the news creators should be grateful to facebook (or google etc.), bringing them interested visitors, potential customers. I'm not a fan of Australia's policy in the least. But I understand why they made it and your comment is about as misguided as Australia's policy. Yes, publishers benefit greatly from Facebook. Facebook also benefits greatly from publishers and content providers content. Facebook is the forum, the news and articles people link is a good chunk of what draws people in to Facebook. If it wasn't for outside media, people would quickly blow through the pictures of their friends and family and be off the platform. Baby pictures don't foster long debate and engagement, people look at them and move on. It's the media (aka news) which causes engagement (and debate). Engagement is where Facebook makes their money. So Facebook needs the media, the media needs Facebook, no problem right? Well not quite. The problem is, while they both "need" each other, there is a lot of competition for news, and Facebook is a monopoly. The end result is Facebook (and Google) sucks all the profit out of the room. As I mentioned initially, Australia's policy is crappy. But the current situation isn't sustainable either.
- Fernicia 6y ago
  How does Facebook have a monopoly over news discussion? Isn't that what we're doing here? And reddit, and twitter?
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Where does the insane fallacy that "anything which uses your input in anyway entitles to 100% of the profits or else it is automatically theft" come from anyway? It is recognized as absurd to try to sue TV guide for listing your shows name yet it is the right thing to do with references towards news stories?
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    I’m not even sure how this post relates to what I said. I didn’t suggest anyone was entitled to anything.

by h0nd 6y ago

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
Well then let's start talking about headlines, not news. What is the value of a headline?
Silhouette 6y ago
This seems to be the crux of the issue to me. Merely linking to another site is clearly not something that should incur any responsibility or financial liability. Breaking this breaks the Web. If most of the value in news reporting is truly in the headline/lede/photo, then there is an argument that linking to a news site but also scraping that content from them to display a much more detailed preview with the link is something that should be compensated. However, there are a couple of problems with this argument. The first problem is that lots of news publishers voluntarily choose to serve their content with open graph metadata that was designed by Facebook for this exact purpose. If that isn't an acknowledgement that those news publishers are inviting sites linking to them to show those more detailed previews, what is? The second problem is that the usual justification given for protecting established news media organisations through government intervention in the market is that they provide deep reporting and original investigative journalism that are valuable to society. If this is true, and if a headline attached to a link really is announcing an important news story backed by substantial research and deep analysis, then surely someone reading that preview is more likely to click through the original source and read further? On the other hand, if the problem is that people aren't clicking through clickbait headlines to tabloid fluff pieces as much as the tabloids would like and it's hurting their business model, is that really the type of journalism we should be intervening to protect? I suspect both Facebook and the Australian and other watching governments will have learned a valuable lesson from this incident. Facebook has been reminded that there is a price to pay for arrogance and that governments around the world are still in charge if they want to be. At the same time, governments have been reminded that if a business is providing a useful service, you can't just impose unreasonable restrictions on it that create a hostile environment and expect no consequences to follow, and that includes transparent cash grabs that are suspiciously well aligned with the interests of your political sponsors.
sullyj3 6y ago
Exactly. This is why, when someone sees the front page of a physical newspaper in a store, we detain then until they've paid 10 cents for the privilege.

mrjin 6y ago

Not sure about FB as I'm not a FB user. But for Google that's was not the case long time ago. In the past Google was sending visitors to the source link/original location but that practice now becomes showing the visitor a digest by default and diminished the original link in small grey text and thus most visitor can hardly spot the original link and and the page visiting the original site deserves is not going to happen any more.

h0nd 6y ago
How does such a digest look like? Does it allow to read news articles without leaving google?

wombatmobile 6y ago

> What is news? That's a good question. A slightly different question that might help you to understand what is happening in Australia with this legislation is "What was news?" Facebook and Google between them receive more than 80% of all digital advertising dollars spent in Australia. [1] This advertising revenue used to be known as "rivers of gold" when it flowed 80% to newspapers and television, in the decades before the internet existed. In those days, the advertising business was coupled to journalism, because journalism is how media businesses got their product into peoples homes and living rooms every day. 20 odd years ago, the Australian newspaper business began to be hollowed out by new competitors on the internet, such as Seek.com.au for job ads, Domain.com.au for property ads, carsales.com.au for automobile ads, eBay.com.au for the rest of the classified ads, and google and yahoo for display ads. The dozens of pages that used to make up classified ads in newspapers disappeared. As the rivers of gold dried up, the number of journalists employed in Australia declined dramatically. Whilst you are correct that Facebook and Google don't actually publish news, they do receive the rivers of gold in advertising revenue that once funded journalists wages. This new legislation pretends to redress the imbalance that lead to the decline in journalism by diverting advertising revenue back to the old man who owns most of the newspapers in Australia. [2] The old man's business doesn't employ half the number of journalists as it did twenty years ago, and the new legislation doesn't require him to hire any more. [1] https://www.adnews.com.au/news/chart-google-and-facebook-s-share-of-digital-ad-spend-just-got-bigger-in-australia https://www.adnews.com.au/news/chart-google-and-facebook-s-s... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/20/very-australian-coup-murdoch-turnbull-political-death-news-corps https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/20/very-australia...

PoignardAzur 6y ago
I think that's a terrible argument. Auto makers shouldn't have to pay a tribute to horse stables for putting them out of business. Refrigerator makers shouldn't have to pay a tribute to ice diggers. Uber shouldn't be required to pay a tax to licensed Taxis. E-learning sites shouldn't have to pay a tax to school tutors. No business is entitled to a comfortable monopoly. The idea that Google should pay a tribute to traditional media where the amount is entirely at the discretion of media giants because the internet can do everything the old press did better just serves to maintain entrenched old interests.

kristofferR 6y ago

The act defines it as: "Journalism about publicly significant issues; journalism that engages Australians in public debate and informs democratic decision making; and journalism relating to community and local events."

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cheph 6y ago

> 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? Can't agree more, this law by the Australian government was the most asinine and ill considered thing since the GDPR which got us bloody cookie popups all over. Governments are entirely useless with regulating the internet.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> In my opinion the news creators should be grateful to facebook (or google etc.), bringing them interested visitors, potential customers. I'm not a fan of Australia's policy in the least. But I understand why they made it and your comment is about as misguided as Australia's policy. Yes, publishers benefit greatly from Facebook. Facebook also benefits greatly from publishers and content providers content. Facebook is the forum, the news and articles people link is a good chunk of what draws people in to Facebook. If it wasn't for outside media, people would quickly blow through the pictures of their friends and family and be off the platform. Baby pictures don't foster long debate and engagement, people look at them and move on. It's the media (aka news) which causes engagement (and debate). Engagement is where Facebook makes their money. So Facebook needs the media, the media needs Facebook, no problem right? Well not quite. The problem is, while they both "need" each other, there is a lot of competition for news, and Facebook is a monopoly. The end result is Facebook (and Google) sucks all the profit out of the room. As I mentioned initially, Australia's policy is crappy. But the current situation isn't sustainable either.

Fernicia 6y ago
How does Facebook have a monopoly over news discussion? Isn't that what we're doing here? And reddit, and twitter?
Nasrudith 6y ago
Where does the insane fallacy that "anything which uses your input in anyway entitles to 100% of the profits or else it is automatically theft" come from anyway? It is recognized as absurd to try to sue TV guide for listing your shows name yet it is the right thing to do with references towards news stories?
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  I’m not even sure how this post relates to what I said. I didn’t suggest anyone was entitled to anything.