Are Australia and Facebook going to war? If so, who's going to win?
Are Australia and Facebook going to war? If so, who's going to win?
Are Australia and Facebook going to war? If so, who's going to win?
No, Facebook(Mark Zuckerberg) and News Corp(Rupert Murdoch) are going to war, and Murdoch is trying to user the Australian government as a weapon against Facebook.
https://reason.com/2021/02/18/everybodys-wrong-about-the-facebook-murdoch-standoff-in-australia/
All of this is to say that the fight between Facebook and Australian media companies—which boiled over Wednesday with an announcement that Facebook would no longer allow users to share links to news stories from outlets based in Australia—is not about "democracy" or monopolies in any way, shape, or form. It's about advertising revenue, and who gets it.
There's a lot more to the bill than just revenue (covered below in more detail). While the revenue aspect is the easiest one for the platform companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to argue the one that is most likely going to hurt them and their bosses the most is in having to provide clear recognition of the source of the original article as stated in Subdivision C of Division 4 and in Division 5 where they must ensure that nothing they do within their own operations provides any differentiation or extra weight to any of the news media services over the other news media services.
In short, the big hit will be that Division 5 means the platform companies can't prioritise the news from one outlet over another in any way, thus the platform companies' past preferences / bias for some services like CNN et al will have to stop for any Australian clients - which will probably mean a stop for all clients or a stop of all news for Australian clients or a stop of all services in Australia.
Revenue Aspects
The reason platform companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have links to other organisations, be they links users put up or ones the platform company staff put up, is somewhere in the process of having people read those posts and use the links or material they copy from the other organisations there's revenue generated for the platform companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook. That revenue is sometimes direct and sometimes indirect through leverage for higher advertising charges. The proposed law simply states that the people who did the original work and own the copyright being mentioned should get some revenue from it and not just the platform companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter who are riding the coattails of the people being linked to. Thus it requires the platform companies to pay the news sources for the information the platform companies are using from those sources. Considering the amount of activity on those platform companies that is about news items it will have a significant affect on the platform companies' posts and income, which is why they're arguing against having to pay for the links and quoted material.
The basic concept is that the platform companies pay for what the copyrighted material they use from the news services in the same way that radio stations pay a royalty for playing one song from an album.the
That revenue is sometimes direct and sometimes indirect through leverage for higher advertising charges.
No, Facebook, Twitter, et al, have zero direct revenue from links users post.
No, Facebook, Twitter, et al, have zero direct revenue from links users post.
I never said they get revenue direct from the link, I said they get direct revenue. Any money paid direct to the platform company from any source is direct revenue, while the indirect revenue is the extra leverage for higher charges they get due to being able to quote high user numbers and higher usage figures.
The classic example is if I see a post that is on an interesting subject and I go to that post the money the platform is paid for the advertising that appears on the page is a direct advertising revenue to the platform. Where the post is about a news item with quotes from a copyrighted news source then that source has a right to royalties from it.
Another example of direct revenue is the money the platforms get for selling information about their users, be it their contact information or just what subject they like dealing with, that is a direct revenue to the platform. And when that information is worth more due to the higher activity from having the news links, then there's a correlation between the two.
The fact the platform companies are fighting this so hard shows there is an affect on their revenue and not just the expenditure. As soon as it was proposed they could've simply banned the use of news media links from their platforms, but they didn't. Instead they spent a lot of time and money in publicity against the bill. That, alone, shows they know it will affect their revenues as if a ban had no affect they would've immediate put it in place world wide.
I never said they get revenue direct from the link, I said they get direct revenue. Any money paid direct to the platform company from any source is direct revenue, while the indirect revenue is the extra leverage for higher charges they get due to being able to quote high user numbers and higher usage figures.
Unless FB is getting revenue from a user posting the link there is no moral reason why they should owe the site linked to anything.
Unless FB is getting revenue from a user posting the link there is no moral reason why they should owe the site linked to anything.
There are two reason why they should be paying someone else for the link or the material copied from the link:
1. It's copyrighted material the copyright is entitled to earn money from unless they give specific approval otherwise.
2. Having the link and / or copied material in the post is bringing people to the site and user to read and discuss the content of that post. If the material wasn't there the people wouldn't be there and thus there would be no visitors for the advertising and other revenue to be raised from.
As I said before, if the platforms did not receive some benefit from having the links they wouldn't give a damn about them or the legislation and would've simply banned all news links from their platforms instead of mounting a large and expensive publicity program to fight it.
Those platform companies can start talking about taking the moral high ground when they start paying the users the majority of the revenue their posts and accounts brings in to the platform company.
It's interesting no one wants to discuss the aspect of the bill about the platform companies having to give all news media outlets the exact same treatment and not give a preference to any. That part of the bill will make it extremely hard for them to justify the blocks they've put on some of the smaller news media services accounts because the platform management didn't like their politics, as they've done in the past.
They have been doing all they can to make them the corporate equivalent of an unperson.
This is like going out, buying 1 copy of today's newspaper, pasting ads for your business and your friends' businesses over top of the paid ads in the newspaper, and running off copies to hand out on street corners.
Keep that up for a while, and nobody will buy the newspaper when they can get the same news for free.
This is like going out, buying 1 copy of today's newspaper, pasting ads for your business and your friends' businesses over top of the paid ads in the newspaper, and running off copies to hand out on street corners.
No it's not. It's not anything like that.
It's like handing your friend your newspaper and saying read this.
We aren't taking about people copying and posting the text of entire articles, we are talking about people posting links to the newspaper's own web site.
And while newspapers have lost advertising revenue, mostly that's not from commercial advertising. It's from the loss of classified adds.
Another quote from the link I posted up thread.
Here's the real deal. According to data from Australia collected over the past two decades, advertising revenue for newspapers has plunged 32 percent over that time, while circulation has remained largely the same. The overall advertising market has actually grown. Almost the entirety of the revenue loss for Australian newspapers has been the loss of classified advertising. It's been almost completely eliminated in the Australian print media because the technological efficiencies of internet searches make online classified systems much for useful for consumers. There's no reason for classified advertising in newspapers to exist any longer. Online is better. If you need proof, watch Saturday Night Live's recent parody advertisement about the nearly pornographic fascination some people have with searching for houses on Zillow.
No it's not. It's not anything like that.
Actually, pretty much it is.
Let me ask you this. Do you live in Australia? Does Ernest? Now, which of the two of you would be better informed on what's going on locally, as it were?
Now, here's where you failed internet economics 101. Click through payments, as well as actual physical hardware and software server limitations.
It's happened many times in the past, courtesy of Matt Drudge. A site gets linked from his, and the volume of traffic that he sends to that site overwhelms the local server. Facebook monetizes the crap out of EVERYTHING. I do some advertising on there for my own business. You don't want to comply with THEIR rules, you don't get to advertise.
So, you're the Sydney Daily Herald. If someone SENDS a link to their friend, hey, read this site, THEN that's telling your neighbor to read this paper. If someone POSTS a link on their Facebook page, hey, read this site, THEN that's taking the link, filling the page it's on with FB''s advertising, and then claiming it's all theirs. They already try to skate things by claiming they're content providers only, which they're not, since they ban people.
In other words, your OPINION is not backed up by the FACTS, and both Ernest and irv are correct. (Seriously, you're trying to support your argument with SNL and parody? That's hilarious, in and of itself.)
nobody will buy the newspaper when they can get the same news for free.
That's the main issue.
Newspapers are going out of business because ads are drying up. While Google and Facebook have the largest ad revenue.
That's what it's about. The newspapers want their ad revenue back.
The newspapers want their ad revenue back.
If it was that simple Facebook et al would simply not allow the use of the newspaper links and it becomes a null event. However, Facebook et al think it's important enough for them to spend a lot of money to fight the proposed law so they can continue to have those links on their platforms instead of taking the option of just no links.
Mind you, the legislation applies to all media outlets including the ones like Rebel Media and Liz Wheeler who Facebook et al keep blocking. And the proposed legislation stops Facebook et all from treating any news media outlet different to the rest. Thus the current preference they give to some will have to stop and the blocking of the outlets the platforms don't like will have to stop. - The hard part of this section of the proposed legislation will be for them to have different filtering based on the country where the viewer is.
If it was that simple Facebook et al would simply not allow the use of the newspaper links and it becomes a null event. However, Facebook et al think it's important enough for them to spend a lot of money to fight the proposed law so they can continue to have those links on their platforms instead of taking the option of just no links.
Facebook has already blocked links to Australian news outlets. That's why this is in the news.
Facebook has already blocked links to Australian news outlets. That's why this is in the news.
True, but only after a few months of a heavy and expensive publicity campaign here in Australia to get the proposed legislation killed before now. Because it's become clear the law is going to pass they've now introduced the blocked links system. Even now the publicity the platform companies are giving the blocking of links is an extension of their publicity against the proposed legislation in the hopes of getting it killed in its last stages.
It should ALSO be noted that Google has agreed - again, after the heavy and expensive publicity campaign - to pay the news sources at least something.
AND that Facebook is doing a blanket ban at this time, including public health information.
Facebook has already blocked links to Australian news outlets.
They've also blocked access to content posted by the news outlets on their own Facebook pages.
AJ
They've also blocked access to content posted by the news outlets on their own Facebook pages.
Yes, given that from what I've read, the law in question would require them to pay the news outlets for those links too.