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Comment by elyobo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

> 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.

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 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.

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