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

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.

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.

Google sure didn't get a "tax on Yahoo" law, Facebook didn't get legislators to force MySpace to share their revenue with them.

Rest assured, he won't be hiring any more. These are the figures:

- news.com.au publishing (newspaper) revenues in 2019-2020: $1B. [0]

- Amount Google is reportedly paying news.com.au: $30m/year. [1]

- news.com.au decrease in revenue from 2019 to 2019: $119m. [0]

I'm not sure what the legislation is meant to be achieving, but with numbers like that the one thing you can be absolutely sure it won't be doing is saving newspapers, or journalists.

[0] https://newscorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/news-corp-20...

[1] https://theconversation.com/why-google-is-now-funnelling-mil...

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.

If it was copyright infringement why was a new law needed? If it was not (hint: it was not) then why should they pay? And why should they have to pay news companies and not every other site? If you want to re-invent copyright so that search engines become non-feasible, please just don't, because I like search engines, the world is better off for having search engines, maybe just don't use them yourself if you have such a big issue with them.

> But, the problem still exists.

No it really does not.

Someone said "as if Rupert Murdoch himself wrote this law", which I think is quite apt.

Your argument is tantamount to saying the US isn't a free country because you have to take your shoes off when you visit your friend's house. And then saying your friend should be required to pay you for taking your shoes off.

Content you see will be limited to whatever companies have made agreements with each other. Organic search would just be broken.

As paid links are in complete opposition to the way the net works, government intervention is required to dictate the rules of information. Politicians will decide what we see, what services will be given benefits and who misses out.

A link is how the web has decided to say "go here if you want to learn more". It doesn't make any sense to me to make people pay to tell you where you can go find out more about something. It becomes a tax on the transfer of knowledge, which is the worst tax idea I have ever heard in my life.

It also creates perverse incentives. If Google and Facebook have to pay to show you the news, then their obvious incentive is to either not show you news, or make you uninterested in the news. Do you really want a world where Google and Facebook are motivated to convince everyone that the news is a lie, or that it's not interesting, or that the best sources of news are tiny conspiracy theory outlets that are too small to actually have to pay for news?

Also consider that most people use the news as part of their decision on how they vote. Having "the most powerful and profitable technology companies" in the world motivated to mess around with something that directly feeds into the voting process sounds like something that will inevitably lead to a crisis. They helped create the Capital invasion on accident. I shudder to think what will happen when they really start tinkering with the news.

> Why do we need to accept the logic that the most powerful and profitable technology companies in the world get to utilise our data for free?

Because knowledge should always be free. No one should ever be too poor to learn. I accept that sometimes other people will do things I don't love with that knowledge.

> Why do we need to accept the logic that the most powerful and profitable technology companies in the world get to utilise our data for free?

Also, I can see at least 3 other potential solutions in that sentence that don't involve changing the word "free".

"powerful" - use some of your anti-monopoly laws then. They're meant to break up companies that become too powerful.

"profitable" - cool, tax them then. That seems to be the route France is going, and closing down the loopholes where they shift money around.

"world" - if they're that bad, then ban them in your country. I'd rather live in a world without the conveniences of Google than a world where someone can be too poor to know what's going on in the world.

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".

The AU government then specifically included search in the act's explanatory memorandum. Google then threatened to ban search from Australia.

In response to Google threat, the government and Google talked. After the talks, Google withdrew it's threat. The Government claimed Google backed down.

Now we read search is excluded. [1]

How do you know a politician is lying: his lips are moving.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/business/media/australia-...

[1] https://theconversation.com/this-weeks-changes-are-a-win-for...

And it seems like the parent comment makes a bulletproof argument, while you're simply stating "I think it's the other way"

If what you're saying is true, the Australian government should have rejoiced at the departure of Facebook. The fact that they went back to the negotiating table suggests otherwise.

> 4. High quality news will cease to exist because no one pays or even looks at it's ads

If everyone is happy to read just the summary, then why don't news publishers produce only summaries? That would be cheaper for them, and it would also make it unambiguous that Facebook hosting the summary on (or in) their pages would be copyright infringement. I suspect the situation is more complicated than the way you want us to think about it.

Half the people might want (and need) summary-only content. But many people do not trust the editorial spin that most news outlets put on their summaries.

I agree to some extent that a subsidized news media has value (though this needs to be entirely divorced from any kind of control, because even if the government tries to be hands-off with it, if there is even the possible threat of pulling funds, the news outlets start pulling their punches and failing to hold the government to account. Governments are very bad at this, and benefit greatly from doing this badly)

The way the current system works though, and I think what you are saying is, currently those summary-only people are being subsidised by those who are willing to read the full articles (and endure the adverts)

This in itself provides incentives for the publishers to provide low-quality summaries (think clickbait, but many other techniques exist) to force users into their site. For those who cannot deal with the full articles (e.g. eyesight impaired, language barriers and attention deficit), this puts them at a disadvantage, and leaves them more susceptible to misinformation and half-stories.

Aggregators, on the other hand, provide competition, which may be enough to ensure some baseline quality.

So I agree that the route you are proposing has merit; but also there is danger in it, and unless the government is going to stipulate fees that are commercially viable for the likes of Google, the net damage outweighs the gains.

Also, I've not seen anything that tells me this is what the government are doing or that it is even part of their game-plan. But then, maybe it's just not included in the summaries?

It's funny how the human mind tries to make sense out of complete nonsense. (This isn't a dig at you.) You read the act was forcing them to bargain, and you (like me as it happens) immediately assumed to bargain someone must have something to sell and the price is determined by what it is. What it is must be access to news, surely?

So with that in mind, read this direct quote from the act [0]:

> Division5—Non-differentiation 52ZC … (2) The responsible digital platform corporation must ensure that the supply of the digital service does not … (a) differentiate between registered news businesses, because of … (iii) a registered news business being paid, or not being paid, an amount of remuneration

But no, they are not bargaining over access to news. So what, precisely? Well, as far as I can tell the act doesn't say. They just, must, bargain.

I know the advice is not to watch the sausage being made, but geeze ...

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)

Neither FB nor Google pay journalists. But they have the audience. So the newspaper posts their news story to FB and lets Google index it in the hope that enough people click through the link to read their story and see their ads.

But FB and Google both also serve ads along with the story listing, and they often post enough of the story so that the reader doesn't have to click through to the actual news site. So FB and Google get all the revenue that the story generates, and the news site gets none, despite having to pay the journalist to write it.

Does the website pass the traffic on to the source of the content. The content is the reason for the traffic. Google and Facebook actively aim to keep the user from leaving the website and/or try to track the user after she has left.

What makes news content a pernicious case is the media and these websites are in fact in competition since they share the same customers: advertisers. Google and Facebook produce no content, nor do they sell anything. Except online ad services.

It is fascinating that commenters see this as a "shakedown" when it is tech companies who have raised this concept to new levels. Look at companies like Yelp and DoorDash for blatent examples. More subtle examples are everywhere. Middlemen everywhere. The internet is infested with middlemen.

This cannot last forever. Eventually the novelty of internet service wears off and it is just another means of communication. Tech companies are like switchboard operators. The internet is still in its infancy. They seem indispensible. So too were swicthboard operators, at one time. But in the end, we will not need them. That's innovation. Eliminating the middlemen.