Thanks Dylan for writing something which at least attempts to outline Facebook’s side of the story here - which is a contrast to most major news organisations, especially Australian ones, which stand to benefit hugely should this code enter into law in its current form.
There was one thing you did get wrong in this post though, which is that Facebook does take excerpts from links that it’s users post. Here’s an example https://imgur.com/uR83C1m . (thankfully webworm or substack won’t have to pay imgur an unknown amount for me linking this image). The user didn’t upload this image, the headline, and an excerpt from the article. Facebook did scrape it. This is what the news organisations, and the Australian government think is losing them money. They think most people don’t click the link, they just read the scraped information and move on with their life - only having looked at Facebook’s ads - not the news organisation’s - and therefore Facebook is wholly profiting off the content it has “stolen” from news organisations. This is a fair argument. However as you correctly pointed out, the law includes only having the link to the content as a way it “makes news content available”. Which is where the law gets ridiculous and Facebook rightly disagrees.
This is just problem number one in this proposed law. It also starts opening some more uncomfortable areas where Facebook is now responsible for the content it’s users post. For example - if webworm were australian and makes more than $150,000 per year, it could be eligible to become a registered news organisation under this law. So if I now wanted to share a link to one of these posts to my friends on Facebook, Facebook would have to pay webworm a flat amount for the ability for it’s users to post your links. It gets weirder when you consider if webworm itself had a Facebook page and posted it’s own links, Facebook would still have to pay webworm the flat amount.
Another point you didn’t address is why Facebook inadvertently removed posts on “necessary” pages such as health departments and local fire services. Facebook says this is because under the new law (and if they didn’t want to comply) they would have to remove everything which the law considers news. The definition of news under this law is here https://imgur.com/NMvewNQ and it is incredibly broad and vague. So Facebook has come up with some algorithm which removes all posts which contain news as defined by this law. They obviously made some mistakes here, and have all but admitted to this by reinstating government Facebook pages etc. that were initially wiped.
The law also leaves two major powers up to the Australian government. Who this law actually applies to can be decided wholly by the Treasurer of Australia under only these incredibly broad guidelines https://imgur.com/7RSqXDJ . It isn’t metric based or rules based. What happens when a new Treasurer comes along who has a dislike of Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, or Youtube whos users all partake in the same practice of linking content as Facebook’s and Google Search’s. The Australian Communications and Media Authority would also have the power of deciding who’s going to get paid by Facebook and who isn’t - quite a large step towards some state controlled media - and conveniently for the ACMA they have plenty of ground to reject news organisations from becoming registered. The news organisation has to pass four “tests” to become registered. https://imgur.com/a/b0ajosh . This also causes a huge imbalance in the law. For large news organisations - think News Corp who seem to conveniently be this law's number one fan - this isn’t too much of a hurdle. However it gives a disadvantage to smaller publications which might not strictly reach the standards set by this law. It will become a lot harder to compete when your competitors are getting huge lump sums from Facebook just for the ability for their content to be shared.
There is also another section of this law which gives registered news organisations an advantage. The law requires that platforms inform registered news organisations whenever they make a “significant” change to their discovery/ranking/curation algorithm 14 days in advance. The relevant section is here https://imgur.com/pna7SfA .The law applies to any "alterations to the ways in which a service distributes content". The law never actually defines what this means, but it gives a bunch of examples that go beyond ranking. For example, anything that affects a particular "class of content", such as deciding whether or not to make all videos auto-play, is an alteration. Basically, this law would prevent Facebook from deploying just about any non-trivial change to its product without first doing a detailed analysis of how it would affect the Australian news business, in order to determine whether a notification is required.
Lastly, Facebook and Google have a problem with how they would be forced into a commercial agreement with every registered news organisation that the ACMA lets in. The two parties are initially allowed to negotiate freely but if no agreement is reached the ACMA appoints an arbiter whose job is to take the two final offers from both the companies and decide which is more fair and then that final offer is legally binding - no negotiating of the final offer. This may seem extreme but the Australian government itself says this will be the case in 75% of the agreements.
Lastly, Facebook and Google aren’t making a fuss about all this just because they don’t want to pay news organisations. In fact, even without this law, both companies have entered into commercial agreements with news companies to pay for their content. Google has even been doing this in Australia already https://blog.google/products/news/google-news-showcase-launches-australia/ - and Facebook was ready to follow suit with Facebook News as they have already done in the US and UK https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/26/facebook-starts-rolling-out-facebook-news-to-uk-users.html . Oh and if Facebook or Google are found in breach of this new law the penalty is in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars per infringement - slightly more than the usual slap on the wrist Facebook is used to.
Stop. Using. Facebook. My wife has been having a Facebook free February and she’s less anxious and getting a lot more done. As for publishers, get substack or Wordpress. Take control of your content.
In a Kiwi living in Australia and I'm torn because I don't agree with either side in this fiasco.
I do believe Facebook benefit (someone below made an excellent point about the preview headers and excerpts that Facebook does share, not just a url) from all the engagement with the news posts that users are doing, all without even leaving Facebook! So I think Facebook is the ultimate winner from AU news headlines and teasers designed for being shared in exactly that way, via Facebook. Because we've all seen the clickbait headlines and frothing arguments that ensue on Facebook...
But I also wish the Australian government had been smarter. Gathered international support for better global regulation rather than bluffing Facebook makes far more sense to me. If the EU can align to create GDPR, surely Australia could have championed something that had a similar effect, but with more countries behind it.
Meanwhile all the posts from women's refuge and a bunch of other NFPs went down yesterday when this ridiculous staring match began.
1) The world is getting ever weirder and more dangerous. I deleted Facebook a while back in a fit of morality, but also because I didn’t think it was adding anything positive to my life. Have not missed it.
2) That’s a very gorgeous cat. Is he a British Shorthair as someone else asked? I have a blue tabby British kitten and she is just heaven.
3) I guess it’s sunblock, but Mark Zuckerberg looks like a French mime on a surfboard.
an Australian clothing company i follow had the same thing happen to them.
Napoleon is an excellent name for a cat, although i may be biased by my own Napoleon. She is the best cat on the planet, and has a very round head, much like this little friend. Is he a british shorthair? (Mine is not, she’s just a bit spherical) I love seeing him on your instagram.
Yeah I'm not massive fan of FB, particularly in terms of the negativity you get on it but I do like to keep up with what my friends are doing (the original purpose of FB?). This does seem like it will have a negative affect on news media. They shouldn't underestimate how many readers and subscribers they get via articles shared on FB. You also make an excellent point that disinformation and conspiracy theories will have an even stronger platform. Crazy stuff.
I'm miffed about it as it blocked the queer news pages i read. Found local, good, non-terfy community and that's gone. And half my feed was ABC pages and the like. Glad BoM was reinstated!
Also biased with Sebastian as my cats name is Sebastian.
Everybody I know complains about Facebook, yet few are willing to walk away. I liked the original concept I signed on to years ago; it connected me to long-lost friends and was fun to scroll, but as it morphed into this current narcissistic monopoly, buying competitors to have it all plus blast my page with advertisements, I decided to delete facebook, instagram, messenger and whatsapp (2 years ago). I never used social media to get my news, so deleting it wasn't that difficult. I thought I'd miss staying in touch with friends, but the truth of it is most of the content was crap anyway. I have a phone. I've gone back to chatting and texting with friends. No love lost here!
By far the best (most balanced) explanation of this. My initial reaction to the news (as a social media avoider) was to label Facebook an evil bully. Reading commentary on the big news sites (Guardian etc), who quoted lots of government around the world condemning Facebook actions, reinforced that view.
But a part of my brain niggled away... of course those big news orgs will hate on Facebook, and of course they'll reference governments who also hate on Facebook... and that's just reinforcing your thoughts about Facebook and you're jumping headfirst into the self-confirming bubble....
This piece, and commentary on Crikey! brought me back to reality. I'll end the day more knowledgeable that I started it. And a cute kitten. Thanks David.
As someone who shut down the "wall" part of Facebook, this anarchy was a pretty entertaining watch. Unfortunately I need to use messenger because my friends don't see Facebook as a risk.
What's really infuriating is NewsCorp touting that they are protecting the economic viability of journalism when in reality, they are trying to crush independent journalism which relies on social media in large part to achieve some sort of reach. They've realised that a portion of the population (maybe larger than I'd like to admit) read headlines only which translates to no ad revenue for them. I actually agree with the concern from a commercial perspective however the people in charge don't understand how technology works and they are afraid to provoke Daddy Murdoch by disagreeing with him even slightly.
We all need more kitten pictures in this world, David. I've actually never had a Facebook account (no, I not 100 years old) and writing like yours is a lifeline to me as I care deeply about what's going on in the world. It's independent, referenced and on-pointe. I really, really appreciate Webworm!
I'm happy to read your thoughts on it as they're the same as mine!.. i thought i was going mad but then realised that all the new news sources i had been looking at were related to Newscorp, so everything was angled in their defence.
It's imperative the news is accessible especially during a pandemic. I'd hope governments all over the world went after Facebook to pay tax and make laws around news on any platform needing to be true and accurate before this nonsense.
Thanks Dylan for writing something which at least attempts to outline Facebook’s side of the story here - which is a contrast to most major news organisations, especially Australian ones, which stand to benefit hugely should this code enter into law in its current form.
There was one thing you did get wrong in this post though, which is that Facebook does take excerpts from links that it’s users post. Here’s an example https://imgur.com/uR83C1m . (thankfully webworm or substack won’t have to pay imgur an unknown amount for me linking this image). The user didn’t upload this image, the headline, and an excerpt from the article. Facebook did scrape it. This is what the news organisations, and the Australian government think is losing them money. They think most people don’t click the link, they just read the scraped information and move on with their life - only having looked at Facebook’s ads - not the news organisation’s - and therefore Facebook is wholly profiting off the content it has “stolen” from news organisations. This is a fair argument. However as you correctly pointed out, the law includes only having the link to the content as a way it “makes news content available”. Which is where the law gets ridiculous and Facebook rightly disagrees.
This is just problem number one in this proposed law. It also starts opening some more uncomfortable areas where Facebook is now responsible for the content it’s users post. For example - if webworm were australian and makes more than $150,000 per year, it could be eligible to become a registered news organisation under this law. So if I now wanted to share a link to one of these posts to my friends on Facebook, Facebook would have to pay webworm a flat amount for the ability for it’s users to post your links. It gets weirder when you consider if webworm itself had a Facebook page and posted it’s own links, Facebook would still have to pay webworm the flat amount.
Another point you didn’t address is why Facebook inadvertently removed posts on “necessary” pages such as health departments and local fire services. Facebook says this is because under the new law (and if they didn’t want to comply) they would have to remove everything which the law considers news. The definition of news under this law is here https://imgur.com/NMvewNQ and it is incredibly broad and vague. So Facebook has come up with some algorithm which removes all posts which contain news as defined by this law. They obviously made some mistakes here, and have all but admitted to this by reinstating government Facebook pages etc. that were initially wiped.
The law also leaves two major powers up to the Australian government. Who this law actually applies to can be decided wholly by the Treasurer of Australia under only these incredibly broad guidelines https://imgur.com/7RSqXDJ . It isn’t metric based or rules based. What happens when a new Treasurer comes along who has a dislike of Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, or Youtube whos users all partake in the same practice of linking content as Facebook’s and Google Search’s. The Australian Communications and Media Authority would also have the power of deciding who’s going to get paid by Facebook and who isn’t - quite a large step towards some state controlled media - and conveniently for the ACMA they have plenty of ground to reject news organisations from becoming registered. The news organisation has to pass four “tests” to become registered. https://imgur.com/a/b0ajosh . This also causes a huge imbalance in the law. For large news organisations - think News Corp who seem to conveniently be this law's number one fan - this isn’t too much of a hurdle. However it gives a disadvantage to smaller publications which might not strictly reach the standards set by this law. It will become a lot harder to compete when your competitors are getting huge lump sums from Facebook just for the ability for their content to be shared.
There is also another section of this law which gives registered news organisations an advantage. The law requires that platforms inform registered news organisations whenever they make a “significant” change to their discovery/ranking/curation algorithm 14 days in advance. The relevant section is here https://imgur.com/pna7SfA .The law applies to any "alterations to the ways in which a service distributes content". The law never actually defines what this means, but it gives a bunch of examples that go beyond ranking. For example, anything that affects a particular "class of content", such as deciding whether or not to make all videos auto-play, is an alteration. Basically, this law would prevent Facebook from deploying just about any non-trivial change to its product without first doing a detailed analysis of how it would affect the Australian news business, in order to determine whether a notification is required.
Lastly, Facebook and Google have a problem with how they would be forced into a commercial agreement with every registered news organisation that the ACMA lets in. The two parties are initially allowed to negotiate freely but if no agreement is reached the ACMA appoints an arbiter whose job is to take the two final offers from both the companies and decide which is more fair and then that final offer is legally binding - no negotiating of the final offer. This may seem extreme but the Australian government itself says this will be the case in 75% of the agreements.
Lastly, Facebook and Google aren’t making a fuss about all this just because they don’t want to pay news organisations. In fact, even without this law, both companies have entered into commercial agreements with news companies to pay for their content. Google has even been doing this in Australia already https://blog.google/products/news/google-news-showcase-launches-australia/ - and Facebook was ready to follow suit with Facebook News as they have already done in the US and UK https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/26/facebook-starts-rolling-out-facebook-news-to-uk-users.html . Oh and if Facebook or Google are found in breach of this new law the penalty is in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars per infringement - slightly more than the usual slap on the wrist Facebook is used to.
Sorry this turned out to be so long.
Stop. Using. Facebook. My wife has been having a Facebook free February and she’s less anxious and getting a lot more done. As for publishers, get substack or Wordpress. Take control of your content.
Can we please make animal content a permanent feature at the end of all scary newsletters?!
In a Kiwi living in Australia and I'm torn because I don't agree with either side in this fiasco.
I do believe Facebook benefit (someone below made an excellent point about the preview headers and excerpts that Facebook does share, not just a url) from all the engagement with the news posts that users are doing, all without even leaving Facebook! So I think Facebook is the ultimate winner from AU news headlines and teasers designed for being shared in exactly that way, via Facebook. Because we've all seen the clickbait headlines and frothing arguments that ensue on Facebook...
But I also wish the Australian government had been smarter. Gathered international support for better global regulation rather than bluffing Facebook makes far more sense to me. If the EU can align to create GDPR, surely Australia could have championed something that had a similar effect, but with more countries behind it.
Meanwhile all the posts from women's refuge and a bunch of other NFPs went down yesterday when this ridiculous staring match began.
I've just checked and thankfully the Betoota Advocate's posts are still up
1) The world is getting ever weirder and more dangerous. I deleted Facebook a while back in a fit of morality, but also because I didn’t think it was adding anything positive to my life. Have not missed it.
2) That’s a very gorgeous cat. Is he a British Shorthair as someone else asked? I have a blue tabby British kitten and she is just heaven.
3) I guess it’s sunblock, but Mark Zuckerberg looks like a French mime on a surfboard.
an Australian clothing company i follow had the same thing happen to them.
Napoleon is an excellent name for a cat, although i may be biased by my own Napoleon. She is the best cat on the planet, and has a very round head, much like this little friend. Is he a british shorthair? (Mine is not, she’s just a bit spherical) I love seeing him on your instagram.
Yeah I'm not massive fan of FB, particularly in terms of the negativity you get on it but I do like to keep up with what my friends are doing (the original purpose of FB?). This does seem like it will have a negative affect on news media. They shouldn't underestimate how many readers and subscribers they get via articles shared on FB. You also make an excellent point that disinformation and conspiracy theories will have an even stronger platform. Crazy stuff.
I'm miffed about it as it blocked the queer news pages i read. Found local, good, non-terfy community and that's gone. And half my feed was ABC pages and the like. Glad BoM was reinstated!
Also biased with Sebastian as my cats name is Sebastian.
Everybody I know complains about Facebook, yet few are willing to walk away. I liked the original concept I signed on to years ago; it connected me to long-lost friends and was fun to scroll, but as it morphed into this current narcissistic monopoly, buying competitors to have it all plus blast my page with advertisements, I decided to delete facebook, instagram, messenger and whatsapp (2 years ago). I never used social media to get my news, so deleting it wasn't that difficult. I thought I'd miss staying in touch with friends, but the truth of it is most of the content was crap anyway. I have a phone. I've gone back to chatting and texting with friends. No love lost here!
By far the best (most balanced) explanation of this. My initial reaction to the news (as a social media avoider) was to label Facebook an evil bully. Reading commentary on the big news sites (Guardian etc), who quoted lots of government around the world condemning Facebook actions, reinforced that view.
But a part of my brain niggled away... of course those big news orgs will hate on Facebook, and of course they'll reference governments who also hate on Facebook... and that's just reinforcing your thoughts about Facebook and you're jumping headfirst into the self-confirming bubble....
This piece, and commentary on Crikey! brought me back to reality. I'll end the day more knowledgeable that I started it. And a cute kitten. Thanks David.
As someone who shut down the "wall" part of Facebook, this anarchy was a pretty entertaining watch. Unfortunately I need to use messenger because my friends don't see Facebook as a risk.
What's really infuriating is NewsCorp touting that they are protecting the economic viability of journalism when in reality, they are trying to crush independent journalism which relies on social media in large part to achieve some sort of reach. They've realised that a portion of the population (maybe larger than I'd like to admit) read headlines only which translates to no ad revenue for them. I actually agree with the concern from a commercial perspective however the people in charge don't understand how technology works and they are afraid to provoke Daddy Murdoch by disagreeing with him even slightly.
Ps that cat is gorgeous <3
We all need more kitten pictures in this world, David. I've actually never had a Facebook account (no, I not 100 years old) and writing like yours is a lifeline to me as I care deeply about what's going on in the world. It's independent, referenced and on-pointe. I really, really appreciate Webworm!
I'm happy to read your thoughts on it as they're the same as mine!.. i thought i was going mad but then realised that all the new news sources i had been looking at were related to Newscorp, so everything was angled in their defence.
That kitten looks good on you!
It's imperative the news is accessible especially during a pandemic. I'd hope governments all over the world went after Facebook to pay tax and make laws around news on any platform needing to be true and accurate before this nonsense.