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Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how much I agree with the law about charging for news links, but then I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline, photos and often a few lines of a story, and FB does get a lot of benefit out of them.

However I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law, and I have friends in Australia who have said how much better the facebook experience is now. It's actually gone back to being a feed of posts by people they know about things that are going on in their lives. That was the whole value proposition of the platform, for me, and the endless link-sharing has made it incredibly unappealing. I can read news and follow link aggregators elsewhere.

I hope Australia get to keep their new facebook, especially as I'm moving there soon!

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News orgs could already block that content if they wanted using robots.txt, but have chosen not to - indeed, they go out of their way to sprinkle Facebook's opengraph and other metadata to make their content more searchable and present better when shared.

The law is bad. I'm all in favour of our government actually taxing FB, Google, and others that manage to offshore all their profits to lower tax jurisdictions, but a pseudo-tax based (partly) around links is unacceptable.

I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.

> I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.

Why? Many comments I read are trying to make this a google -vs- Oz issue where you can only take one side. I'm taking a side where I want to see Google regulated and charged as an internet ad&search monopoly, Newscorp regulated and charged as news provider monopoly, and Oz to just put more taxes on huge companies and stop playing with Murdoch. FB can get penalties for lack of moderation while we're at it. They're all bad, we don't have to take any evil person/org's side.

I'm taking Facebook's side on this particular issue only (and I don't even like that, because they're - as you note - bad).

I agree with all of the things you want, but this isn't a tax on Google or Facebook (and we need more taxes on Google, Facebook, and their ilk that offshore profits to low tax locations), it's an attempt to tax links.

This is a good read and worth your time - https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/2/17/paying-for....

I was supporting general tax, not the google-news deal. We're in agreement :)

Tax will hurt you, it always does. You're at the bottom of the pile and so it will ultimately be push down to you in some fashion or other.

Australia 2018: $559B

US 2018: $3.33 trillion

Why in God's name would give these idiots anymore money.

Tax does not always hurt, or always hurt the poorest. It can shape markets to the benefit of the people, and it can provide for public works and infrastructure.

There are definitely arguments about how much people should be taxed and what is done with the tax money, and the Australian tax revenue figure does seem massive compared to the US or UK (they do get better services for it, IMHO). But the sweeping idea that "tax bad" is silly.

How is it silly to assume that giving unqualified morons the right to take money away from productive individuals is inherently dangerous.

If the idea is to take away from someone just because they are successful that is very much silly. If you would like enforce a recompense for some transaction that can not be captured by the market then yes.

I've been to both countries, i'd say for anybody really at the bottom of the pile that Australia is at least ten times better, unless you live in a cabin in West virginia and go by the nearest piggy wiggly by horse. Then public services aren't that important if you don't intend to have kids, and the US is true freedom.

> Why in God's name would give these idiots anymore money.

I enjoy the public services I get and would like more of them available for everyone.

> it will ultimately be push down to you in some fashion or other.

Google / FB / ad services are the few companies where it's much less likely than elsewhere. Ad spend relies on profit it generates. If they raise ad prices, they'll lose some customers. There's no easy way for them to pass on any extra tax.

Which public services, they're all pretty awful from my estimation that often times optimise for less that optimal outcomes.

Unemployment and disability benefits, schools, hospitals and medicare, roads/transport. Could it be better managed? Sure. Would I prefer lower taxes and private companies taking those over? Never.

Why view it as taking FB side?

It's really more why the hell has Newscorps got the Australian government as their bully man. It outrageous that they can so easily sway the government of a nation to play to their tune, that's what should worry everyone the most.

Again and again it's the government, they can not avoid being manipulated by these larges corporations and so giving them more power to some how constrain said corporations is vain hope at best and plain stupidity at worse, we will just give them more power to be abused by said corporations.

> News orgs could already block that content if they wanted using robots.txt, but have chosen not to - indeed, they go out of their way to sprinkle Facebook's opengraph and other metadata to make their content more searchable and present better when shared

Google is a monopoly on search. You could block it from indexing and it would drastically hurt you and your discoverability. Cutting your hand to spite you kind of thing. The same way you could in theory just not get telephone service or just not buy oil in historic US anti-trust actions. Media sites can't live of the little that trickles to them, and can't live without it either, with some exceptions ( like expensive paywalled editions like Financial Times). Thanking most news sources to piss off Murdoch and stop his crap from spreading might be worth it, for a few days but would be disastrous long term.

...right. Doesn't that say that news orgs get benefit from Google and Facebook then? Maybe Google should charge News Corp for highlighting and driving traffic towards them?

And that's precisely the point; the news orgs benefit enormously from the traffic that Google and Facebook send them.

Expecting Google and Facebook to provide them this traffic and pay the news orgs for it, not the other way around is nuts.

> I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline

As far as the proposed law is concerned, it seems we're talking about any kind of linking. https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...

> "a proposal is developed to recognise original covered news content when ranking and displaying news content on the digital platform service;"

It's very vague.

> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law

The first and second half of that sentence really need to be separated; "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying.

But it's an interesting point; a big part of the "Facebook is a danger to democracy" stuff is about the sharing of misinformation on there, and zapping all the news on there has removed some of the most toxic and dangerous content. Especially all the News Corp stuff - from the organisation driving this law in the first place.

However, it's not so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as launching both baby and bath into the sun.

> "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying.

I'll concede that sentence is a little too wide. If they were standing up for themselves on some newly introduced corporal punishment laws, for instance, I'd be a lot less keen.

Perhaps I should rephrase - "I'm not sure how much I agree with this law, it seems to have some merit though may not come from the best of places, but I applaud the Australian government for standing up to facebook nonetheless."

I don't buy "you should pay to link" but news articles are a large part of what makes up a facebook feed these days, usually in the form of a large-ish picture, a full headline and the lead-in sentence. I can definitely see the argument that they are using it as content.

They can choose to block that, even specifically for Facebook and Google while leaving others alone, just by messing with their robots settings.

If you post a link to content that is being excluded using robots.txt you'll get a link and no full headline, no lead in sentence, no picture - those are the things that the news orgs have gone out of their way to provide to Facebook.

I guess it's a commercial reality they all have to do it or none of them can - they can't afford to block FB as so many people get their news that way, so either they get paid by FB or the whole platform goes news-free, and either of those new situations works better for them.

I guess it's a race to the bottom. AN individual org is faced with the choice to give their content to fb for nothing or lose readership.

What do you think about requirement to release everytime they change how their algorithm works to news corp nazi propaganda lite to game and rank high?

And Google cannot choose to not index news site. Literally making Google a propaganda machine. How is this not clear to anyone?

Those seem less good, I agree.

Also, honestly I think people having less engagement with news in general would be a good thing.

Yes you need to be informed, but perhaps constant political reporting/link-sharing/outrage shouldn't be in a social space? I know, it's not my right to force that on FB, we should start a new social network, with blackjack and ...

But I do wonder if this constant engagement with news and outrage isn't part of what opens the door to the misinfo and conspiracy.

There's something to be said for this, but it also necessarily privileges the current power structure.

> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself

They are not standing up for themselves, they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law, its a common tactic they look for. Any media newsgroup that's not in their pocket already they fear. They have an incredible track record on this and with journalists.

The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.

> they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law

Erm ... do laws not apply on the internet? That's a very sweeping criticism and not one I'm on board with.

> The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.

I'll have to take your word for that. From here it looks like a positive development, or at least an interesting one, a nation state entering open conflict with a tech giant.

(Not that I'm going to be able to vote for some time, but last time I lived in Aus was under the Gillard government, and I did not form favourable opinions about the liberal-national coalition. I'm not arguing with you from a position of support for them)

Australian here. Laws absolutely apply on the internet - if you can enforce them. FB here decided that Australia __could__ enforce this law, and chose to comply with it by not hosting links that the law would require them to pay for. If the LNP was actually serious about "controlling" foreign multinationals or "protecting" local businesses, they would simply enforce the tax obligations for these companies correctly. Note that Newscorp avoids tax in Australia [0], yet somehow they are owed money by FB for the privilege of having their content distributed on FB's graph?

[0] - https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/12/11/news-corp-tax-dodging/

They are heavily bank rolled and supported by Murdoch controlled media, tech giants allow smaller non-Murdoch controlled media to get more reach within Australia. This legislation was pushed for, drafted by and endorsed heavily by Murdoch controlled entities. A large number of the staffers for this governments politicians are all ex-Murdoch staff.

This current government has a long history of only doing things their donors ask for and not siding with the best interests of the public.

Implying the opposition has a raft of policies that differ in any significant way and will improve things.

No no, I'm not implying that at all, I'm just sick of the impression people get that good old ozzy politicians doing the brave thing against facebook.

When in reality its completely out of context. But again, Murdock's narrative.

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