
An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia - lunchbreak
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/changes-to-facebooks-services-in-australia/
======
pawnednow
Australian government and more specifically Rod sims, the chair of ACCC should
get some counselling. Really good counselling. They clearly don't understand
how publishing works and have a biased understanding of who is benefitting
from this relationship.

However, the entire Australian media has been nothing but puppets controlled
by murdoch. The one true less biased source is ABC which has been muddied by
constant federal government censorship and budget cuts almost to a point where
independent journalism and Australia cannot be spoken in one sentence.

I hope they move forward with this code and I hope that both Google and FB
remove news from their site so that newscorp can die quickly. It a shame they
are doing this. Come next election I am voting against both SCOMO and the
likes.

~~~
pfundstein
> the entire Australian media has been nothing but puppets controlled by
> murdoch

You're going a bit heavy on hyperbole there. There's a decent amount of non-
murdoch news; ABC, SBS, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, The
Conversation, etc.

~~~
stephen_g
It's actually getting worse and worse. The Age and the Herald, having been
sold to Nine are much lower quality than they once were. The Government is
putting more and more pressure on the ABC, with constant (effective) funding
cuts, and both direct editorial interference or indirect (i.e. threatening
more funding cuts because of journalists publishing articles they don't like).
With the ABC, this has been going on for years - in 2013, they withheld a
detailed analysis of the flaws of the Liberal's NBN plan (which has been
proven accurate) by Nick Ross before the election because of pushback from
"the Turnbull camp", and then eventually he was made redundant because of
pressure from the Government. Last year, emails were leaked of the chairman
saying they needed to "get rid of Emma Alberici and Andrew Probyn because the
Government hates them and they put our funding at risk" \- for Alberici
because she wrote some articles that got a lot of traction while the
Government was trying to push big company tax cuts, pointing out that tax cuts
haven't historically correlated with increased economic growth or employment
growth (this is true). Last month, Emma Alberici was made redundant...

~~~
ludston
That's not even mentioning that the chairman of 9News is former treasurer of
the conservative party which Murdoch is backing.

------
threeseed
As I've mentioned before you only need to look at the fact that public and
smaller news organisations e.g. ABC, SBS are not compensated to get an idea of
the intention of this policy.

It's purely to prop up News Corp which is struggling (16% loss in 2020
revenue) because of weak newspaper sales and Foxtel bleeding customers to
Netflix, Disney etc.

And unfortunately just like in UK and US whenever Rupert Murdoch says jump you
better say how high or else your government will go down in the next election.

~~~
jrott
News Corp is impressive I think they are the only company that can actually
make Facebook look sympathetic.

------
abdulla
Stratechery has a good analysis of the "News Media Bargaining Code":

[https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-
bargainin...](https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-bargaining-
code-breaking-down-the-code-australias-fake-news/)

~~~
abdulla
Committing the faux pas of replying to myself, here's another take:

[https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/08/31/scott-morrison-v-
facebo...](https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/08/31/scott-morrison-v-facebook-
google/)

------
julienb_sea
As far as I can tell Facebook makes a good point. The Aus government designed
heavy-handed regulation which clearly plays favorites and is totally one-
sided. This is not behavior that we should tolerate. I absolutely support
Facebook standing up for themselves here.

------
valleyjo
I don’t like FB as a company. However I have to admit, they are correct that
news organizations benefit the most from this relationship. Why doesn’t google
do the same thing? Don’t index news sites. Googles response seemed less
effective than FB’s.

~~~
boloust
The legislation explicitly prevents platforms from deindexing/downranking news
sites that participate in the code in favour of other sites that do not.

Which places Google in a more difficult position, because if a user searches
for some news, Google is essentially forced to return results from a
participating news organisation, or not show any relevant news results at all.

While Facebook can just prevent users from sharing any news links, Google
can't exactly stop users from searching for news.

~~~
floatingatoll
Google absolutely can stop users from searching for News, by removing all News
tabs, News boxes, and News News-specific metadata uses (such as current events
timeliness) in search results at Google.com.au. They can then legitimately
claim that they are no longer indexing news, only websites in general, and if
site operators don’t wish to be indexed they can follow the standard practices
for exclusion.

Whether they (Google) will do so or not is a timely question to consider.

------
paxys
Regardless of politics, media and big tech dynamics, anyone who thinks that
sharing links can or should be charged for just doesn't understand the
fundamental nature of the internet.

------
smcleod
Somewhat related, from Daring Fireball's clipping of
[https://themargins.substack.com/p/facebook-the-pr-
firm](https://themargins.substack.com/p/facebook-the-pr-firm):

> So, in that way, I read Facebook less as a tech company, but instead a
> communications one. Not a telecom communications, but more like a PR /
> marketing consultancy. There’s nothing original about Facebook. It’s a
> company that hires people to build others’ ideas, and, more often than not,
> it does that better and faster than them too. And when it can’t do that, it
> just buys them outright. There is a lot of building, but the ideas are
> outsourced. But what Facebook is really good at is actually doing all this
> while fighting what seems to be a never-ending, at least since 2016 or so,
> PR battle while not giving an inch.

> With all the negative press around, you might think they are not doing a
> good job at avoiding criticism, but consider the alternative that they’ve
> been able to weather all this because they’ve been able to deflect the
> criticism and avoid scrutiny and accountability. I know this all sounds
> pretty unhinged right now, but, stay with me. This is a company who hires
> conservative politicians to its highest ranks in multiple countries, while
> maintaining a veneer of political neutrality. The same company pretends its
> not the arbiter of truth while employing tens of thousands of people to do
> exactly that. Ask yourselves: What has changed at Facebook?

------
ryan-allen
I'm no fan of the Murdoch media and the damage it has done to Australia in
terms of our internet infrastructure, but if Facebook are to block news media
from their platform it will not affect me in the slightest, I don't trust
_any_ of them to provide me the correct information.

I don't trust Facebook to serve me news, and I don't go there for news, and I
don't think anyone should go to Facebook (or Google) for news.

I don't think Australians have a lot to lose from any big tech company
blocking all news media on their platforms, and if they do so as a result of
this legislation, and if it furthers the bleeding of these conglomerates, it
sounds like a win/win situation.

There are probably negative follow on effects I'm not considering, though.

~~~
brokenmachine
I agree with your assessment.

------
throwaway13337
Social media sharing helps accelerate the sensationalism of news. Which in
turn has been creating very bad situations in our reality. Without social
sharing of news, maybe it would be more tame.

The quality of discussions on those platforms would also very likely benefit.

Hopefully other laws are passed with similar responses from tech companies in
other countries.

It would be a great sort of reverse-monkey-paw fate. The world could certainly
use some good luck right now.

------
grecy
It really does feel like Murdoch has reached Bond villain status with this
one.

He's has made the Australian government write a law that specifically and
_only_ targets two multi-billion dollar global companies (Facebook and Google)
and forces them to give him more money.

It specifically isn't going after other online companies that don't have a
huge net worth, and it specifically isn't even attempting to hide the intent
by also giving money to the not-for-profit news outlets in Australia (ABC,
SBS).

Because he controls the very vast majority of media in Australia he can
obviously force the government to do his bidding - one by ensuring all his
government buddies stay rich, and two by promising not to publish anything
that would result in them getting voted out.

A fiction writer couldn't come up with such an outrageous idea.

As an Aussie, I can confidently say Australia has utterly lost the plot, and I
applaud Facebook for standing up to them. I sincerely hope Google follow suit,
and they both refuse to come back even if the legislation is scrapped. I hope
News Corp. dies a rapid death without the 2.3B clicks

------
gonzo41
If Facebook really wanted to fight the government it could unleash it's
democracy crippling social network to hurt this toxic government we have here
in Aus. Wink wink Zuck.

But seriously this is just regulatory capture from News Ltd. Our Government
works for them. Corruption is becoming a real and visible problem in Australia
these days.

~~~
swiley
Because that worked so well in the US?

~~~
gonzo41
Yeah I know, I'm just wishing bad things on our current government who really
don't live up to the word 'liberal'.

------
rhema
This may not kill the large newspapers, but surely it will destroy the local
newspapers. When does a tech blog become news? Can you even share anything on
the internet through Facebook?

~~~
stephen_g
News Corp (who lobbied to get this bill created) already did a lot of that
this year [1] - over the last few decades, they had bought up most of the
newspapers in regional Australia, and then ended up deciding they were
unviable and shuttered 125 of them in May this year.

They're keeping some kind of digital version but let go basically all the
local reporters, photographers, etc. and closed all the local offices, and I
think just run all the remaining online versions out of just a handful of
locations now.

1\. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-28/news-corp-makes-
regio...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-28/news-corp-makes-regional-
papers-digital-only/12295408)

~~~
totetsu
New Zealand has seen a proliferation of local news apps, employing local
journalists, payed for by advertisements from local business, come to fill
this gap
[https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2...](https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018644094/local-
apps-fill-news-gaps)

------
ropable
Without reading the legislation in detail, I have to say that I'm inclined to
just take the side of whoever News Corp is upset at.

~~~
judge2020
If you change your mind,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337359)

------
wnbc
If you are like me and wondering what the legislation draft is, please see

[https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-
platforms/news-m...](https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-
platforms/news-media-bargaining-code)

Some of articles discussing this topic do not provide a link to the the draft
legislation source.

------
kevyin
Nevermind the reasoning

If the result is no more/fewer news on FB, doesn't that mean it will be a more
difficult platform for political parties and Rupert Murdoch's of the world to
manipulate?

~~~
anon84598
Murdoch already has his news distribution systems in place in Australia -- the
less other outlets can gain visibility the better as far as he is concerned

~~~
gizmonty
News Corp is losing money across almost all of its Australian properties. The
government keeps finding ways to prop them up under the guise of subsidies for
local sports coverage because News Corp provides them with such favourable
coverage. It’s blatant corruption.

------
Barrin92
I haven't followed this debate too closely but this seems pretty disingenuous.

 _> The ACCC presumes that Facebook benefits most in its relationship with
publishers, when in fact the reverse is true. News represents a fraction of
what people see in their News Feed and is not a significant source of revenue
for us_

News may not directly contribute much ad revenue but it surely is a huge
driver of engagement on the website, which in turn indirectly keeps people
engaged with the facebook ecosystem at large. Political commentary involving
news pieces certainly seems to be a feature on Facebook's most popular pages.

Also I haven't figured out yet what part of the law actually would imply that
Facebook needs to blackout news wholesale. As I read it the law merely
requires that Facebook negotiate with each publisher.

~~~
valleyjo
Facebook can remove news and it will minimally effect engagement. I wonder
what happens to the publishers when they lose 2.3BN clicks.

~~~
Barrin92
Which would indirectly prove the point of the legislation right? That Facebook
has immense market power in the social media / ad space with no competitor in
sight, which would mean expanding bargaining power for news orgs is
legitimate.

Because switching to a competitor would actually be the answer to your
question in a functioning market.

~~~
joshuamorton
No, because the argument being made is that facebook is paying the news orgs
less than they're owed. But the reality is that facebook is providing a free
service to the news sites.

You normally have to pay someone for advertising. Facebook (and Google) give
it away for free.

~~~
Barrin92
This seems to miss the point because normally platforms also have to pay for
content. Facebook is a platform that hosts user/business produced content. No
content, no reason to go to facebook. Likewise, Facebook brings attention to
content owners. All of this is 'free' nominally.

That's not the question, the question is who has more market power and
squeezes who.

~~~
joshuamorton
Are you saying that Google should pay me to include my website in it's search
results?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
If they're stripping your information to hand out to users via their scraping
mechanics, absolutely. That's what news companies, and plenty of other sites,
have been subject to for years: "Google would like to scrape your content and
serve it on their own site. Agree or delist yourself from search."

[https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-
celebritynet...](https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-
celebritynetworth-com)

Google's monopoly position gives them complete negotiating power, because you
can't survive on the Internet without them. What Australia is doing here seems
extreme, but only because you aren't accounting for how extreme Google and
Facebook's existing negotiating power is. If you don't understand how abusive
Google and Facebook are, you'll think this deal is unfair. It's not.

~~~
joshuamorton
Right but we're talking about news, where that _isn 't_ the case. I open
Google news and I see a list of headlines. I click one one and go to the full
article.

I mean, if you're arguing that news provides zero value beyond a headline,
that's certainly an indictment, but not of Google and facebook.

Extending this, any aggregator would need to pay to link to things. Hackernews
included. It's the link-tax all over again.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article,
versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main
point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with
ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.)

Is Google News ripping off the monetizeable property of every news site's
homepage for zero cost? Yes. Sure, it may not present the full text of every
article, but you've stolen the front page of every newspaper, at minimum.

It is the link-tax "all over again"... because it's still what needs to
happen. (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by
Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a
scraper site tax.) The problem is Google is so immense, and so powerful, it is
able to obliterate any one nation's attempts to do this.

We actually need a unified front of governments stating that Google and
Facebook need to pay for the content they scrape, or go out of business. And
it probably won't be successful until a large enough contingent of governments
can do it at once. (This is why the EU as a whole has generally been
successful whereas attempts at regulation from France or Spain independently
have failed.)

~~~
joshuamorton
> Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article,
> versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main
> point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with
> ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.)

For _me_ the answer is, either I get a headline that I don't care about, or I
read at least some of the article.

> (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's
> public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper
> site tax.)

It's absolutely a link tax and _not_ a scraping tax. A scraping tax would
apply to anyone _scraping_ the site. But the link tax proposals don't apply to
people scraping the site, they only apply to sites linking. Why? Because if I
go and scrape CNN.com, they just block me. But if Google does it, they don't
want to block the scraping, because the net value of the scraping is nonzero,
but they want to be paid anyway.

You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!"
"Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing
the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense.

And "scraping" doesn't even apply at all to Facebook's case, where if _I_ post
a link to CNN on facebook, now Facebook owes CNN money. WHAT?!? It's literally
a cost on links. It's antithetical to the _inter_ net. But you're right, it's
not a link tax. It's more akin to link-licensing. Which should sound even
scarier.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
> You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay
> me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep
> doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero
> sense.

But that is the level of craziness we are under in the Google regime: Accept
Google's terms or go out of business. That's the whole problem. Google has
infinite negotiating power. The counter to that does indeed sound insane,
because where we already are is insane.

Yes, Australia is giving news companies a loaded gun, but it's because Google
already has a boot to their neck, and they're barely still conscious. Where we
are right now is _really, really_ bad. Tech companies are bleeding journalism
dry.

And frankly, Google and Facebook can afford this. Tech companies have so much
spare cash they don't know what to do with it, while everyone else is
struggling to survive. Expect laws to feel one-sided against you for a long
time. Let's call it a wealth redistribution. Imagine how much quality
investigative journalism could've been funded with just the money Google spent
developing messaging apps.

~~~
joshuamorton
You can dislike google and facebook, and feel that they need to be regulated,
and still not support objectively bad laws.

> Imagine how much quality investigative journalism could've been funded with
> just the money Google spent developing messaging apps.

If you want to tax big tech companies because you feel the end result of doing
so is good, then do that. Tax them. Don't create some hairbrained scheme to
allow a media conglomerate to extort them. Especially when it won't actually
help investigative journalism. The law is crafted to support an entrenched
tabloid, not local and investigative journalism, which is what's suffering the
most. This law funnels money from tech companies to rupert murdoch. That's not
a win. The fox news guy doesn't need a bailout, he's doing okay on his own.

> Accept Google's terms or go out of business.

What are these "terms"? Aa far as I can tell they're "get traffic for free".
What am I missing? Your counter seems to be that Google posts the headline so
that, you know, you can pick what to click, and that somehow having the
headline means that I won't click on the link. I don't get it.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
> What are these "terms"?

Let me highlight some history from the article above:

> In 2014, Warner got an email from Google asking if he would be interested in
> giving the company access to his data in order to scrape it for Knowledge
> Graph, for free.

> At the end of it, we just said ‘look, we’re not comfortable with this.’”

> “But then they went ahead and took the data anyway.”

The sole way to opt out that Google offered was to delist the site from Google
Search, which is effectively deleting your site from the Internet.

So the terms of your employer are basically "let Google do what it wants or
else". And that's what they've been doing to news companies for years. There's
nothing "objectively bad" about forcing a bad actor to finally pay up for it's
conduct. Allowing Google or Facebook to decline to participate would be simply
allowing the robbers to leave with all of the loot.

To better explain: Google and Facebook are monopolies. One common monopoly
practice is called predatory pricing: Where you price so low, you are losing
money, _temporarily_ , in order to kill competing businesses. For Google and
Facebook, refusing to negotiate here, removing service from a given country,
is similar: They're aware if they decline to participate, a given country's
news organizations will suffer, and eventually relent.

Google and Facebook, as global monopolies, are large enough and profitable
enough that this doesn't hurt them much, so they have no reason to negotiate
fairly and honestly. Hence why Google and Facebook argue the price they should
pay is $0: They currently don't bear a significant enough loss from simply
refusing to play. They must be _forced_ to participate so that honest
negotiation can happen. Realistically, the long term answer is to break these
companies up, but in the interim, we need to use regulation to force them to
pay up in areas where they would have to if they weren't monopolies.

~~~
joshuamorton
Again: I'm talking about news. You keep bringing up a thing that isn't news.
What are the terms for _news_ sites?

> There's nothing "objectively bad" about forcing a bad actor to finally pay
> up for it's conduct.

Correct. That's why I said, essentially, "if you want them to pay up, tax
them". I'm not saying any law that forces tech companies to pay money _must_
be objectively bad. I _am_ saying that _this law_ is. You understand the
difference.

> Realistically, the long term answer is to break these companies up, but in
> the interim, we need to use regulation to force them to pay up in areas
> where they would have to if they weren't monopolies.

And to do this, you support a bit of regulatory capture that instead directs
the funds to a media monopoly. Like I said, it's an objectively bad law.

> One common monopoly practice is called predatory pricing: Where you price so
> low, you are losing money, temporarily, in order to kill competing
> businesses

You're actually arguing that the price, free, which Google and Facebook charge
is too _high_ , and that they need to further decrease it (by subsidizing the
content they aggregate). Is the price too high, or is it predatorily low? You
can't argue both sides. If you were really concerned with predatory pricing,
you'd be against this law, because it (if applied generally) prevents
competitors to Google or Facebook from gaining marketshare, since they can't
afford to pay media companies. So as long as the entrenched actors pay the
tax, upstarts _can 't_ start.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
> "if you want them to pay up, tax them"

Tried that. Your employer as of yesterday has... decided to make the little
guys pay for that too: [https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-amazon-google-
pass-cos...](https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-amazon-google-pass-costs-
digital-services-taxes-2020-9?op=1)

Fundamentally, we're trying a lot of different strategies to fix this, but
Google is greatly invested in dodging any sort of responsibility for it's
externalities and actions. Perhaps the solution here is to both implement a
tax _and_ prohibit harmful over-trillion-dollar-monopolies from raising prices
at the same time? But then, they'll say it's unfair that they can't set
whatever prices they want.

I am not sure Australia's attempt will be any more successful, but it's
increasingly becoming apparent we just need to ban these companies from
operating, forcibly shut them down, and retire their user-hostile services.

------
Wolfenstein98k
Australian here... Not sure who to trust on this.

------
jb775
This is a good thing. Media content quality has primarily been garbage the
past 10+ years (and getting progressively worse), mostly due to the
advertisement click-bait business model forced on them in order to survive.
Social media kind of naturally fell into position to reap the benefits...they
shouldn't be the gatekeeper to news without paying a fair price.

------
harry8
2 Points: Underscoring that facebook is not now, nor was it ever a good source
of news is a very good thing. Don't get your news from facebook. Don't get it
via facebook. Anything on facebook that isn't actually personal is tainted and
horrible to be treated with extreme suspicion. Facebook have earned that
reputation and deserve it.

People going elsewhere on the internet than facebook to get news will reduce
facebook engagment, use and get people in the habit of not going to facebook
first.

Bring it on. Facebook are horrific. The less they do the better. Especially
given they apparently won't do anything about being used for violent
organisation.

About the only organisation guaranteed to be more wrong than the Australian
Government about literally everyting is Facebook.

[1] [https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/28/21406022/facebook-
banne...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/28/21406022/facebook-banned-
violent-militia-groups-kenosha-protests-jacob-blake-shooting-kyle-rittenhouse)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-
facebo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-
facebook.html)

~~~
jedberg
I get lots of news from Facebook. My friends who I trust post articles that
they've read. It's a perfectly fine source of news if your friends are the
kind of people who actually think critically and read the articles.

If the news you get from Facebook is suspect, it's your friends that are the
problem, not Facebook.

~~~
harry8
you get that news from your friends that facebook algorithms deign to show
you.

They have algorithms to influence. They have said so. They were trying to
manipulate people's mood with it for "research"

This isn't contraversial.

It's a garbage source of news because of that filter. Even if your friends are
lovely, wise, empathetic, intelligent and critically minded and their
editorial selection is beyond reproach - that isn't what you get.

------
hcnews
Why does the title say "An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in
Australia" rather than "Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia"? For me
(2) is much more readable.

~~~
goodside
“An update about...” implies the reader is unlikely to care unless already
following the story. If they wanted to reach normal users there would be
A/B-tested headlines, pastel illustrations, and bolded reassurances that your
Facebook isn’t going away.

------
justsee
This is the right move by Facebook (and Google) in the face of naked crony
capitalism.

It's an effort by the Morrison government to engage in rent-seeking on behalf
of Rupert Murdoch's News (which essentially operates as the communications arm
of Morrison's government), Nine (which held a fundraiser after the last
national election for Morrison) and other media groups.

Yes, there are many valid criticisms of and concerns we should have with tech
giants, but this proposed code doesn't deal with any of those concerns.

Australia's former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has stepped up his war
against Murdoch's influence on Australian Democracy in recent years, was
incredibly perceptive and scathing of this proposed code recently [1].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiFTT_QgqIc&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiFTT_QgqIc&feature=youtu.be&t=351)

------
xupybd
Why are we getting hot by this in New Zealand? Last I checked we were
autonomous from Australia and our only legal connections are treaties and the
crown.

~~~
traek
Where are you reading that this affects New Zealand?

~~~
xupybd
Thank you. I see what I did. I read the job title and confused things.

------
notbutreally
How much do we have to pay Facebook to do this in the US?

------
arthens
A week ago back some friends and I looked at the draft of the law... it's
honestly terrifying.

They basically want Google/fb/? to be upfront with all changes. The goal is
clearly to give aussie media outlet an unfair advantage and let them use this
information to manipulate the ranking algorithm and/or bypass whatever
restrictions are put in place. These info need to be "in terms that are
readily comprehensible".

IANAL, but here's a few (reformatted) articles from the draft:

52M:

Google/fb/? will need to give aussie media companies access to:

\- a list and explanation of the data that the digital platform service
collects (whether or not it shares the data with the registered news business)
about the registered news business’ users through their engagement with
covered news content made available by the digital platform service;

\- a list and explanation of the data that the digital platform service
currently has a practice of making available to registered news businesses;

My interpretation: these companies will be required by law to share more user
data than they currently do.

52N:

\- if: changes are planned to be made to an algorithm of the digital platform
service; and the changes are likely to have a significant effect on the
ranking of the registered news business’ covered news content made available
by the digital platform service.

\- then: notice of the change is given to the registered news business
corporation for the registered news business at least 28 days before the
change is made

My interpretation:

The government wants aussie media companies to be able to be proactive and
change their site/service so that ranking changes are minimised

52O:

\- if: the changes are specifically designed to have an effect on the ranking
or display of content behind a paywall.

\- then: notice of the change is given to the registered news business
corporation for the registered news business; and the notice is given at least
28 days before the change is made;

My interpretation:

media companies don't like when Google penalises paywalls. This will give them
a 28 day window to change how they do paywall so that Google won't be able to
detect it. Like a whack a mole where you have to announce what you are about
to hit

and this keeps going:

\- 52P: 28 days notice for changes to how news items are displayed

\- 52Q: 28 days notice for changes to advertising (if it affects news)

\- 52S: media outlet must be able to moderate comments on their items (does
that include comments on shared items? surely not?)

Draft:
[https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...](https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill%20-%20TREASURY%20LAWS%20AMENDENT%20%28NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%29%20BILL%202020.pdf)

~~~
hnick
> The goal is clearly to give aussie media outlet an unfair advantage and let
> them use this information to manipulate the ranking algorithm and/or bypass
> whatever restrictions are put in place. These info need to be "in terms that
> are readily comprehensible".

I wonder what kind of malicious compliance we could see while still being
within the letter of the law.

e.g. Articles that start with "Murdoch is a cancer on society" will be ranked
much higher than those that don't. Enjoy.

------
chris_wot
What I find funny about this reaction is that most Australians are actually
either quite blase about this situation, or actually are quietly enjoying the
fact that massive multinationals who will do anything to avoid paying taxes in
Australia have finally discovered that their power is quite limited in
Australia.

Most Australians have seen what Facebook was up to during the 2016 election.
They have seen the rise of Trumpism and, despite the incredibly conservative
government, don't want that sort of crazy in their nation.

~~~
brokenmachine
I'm Australian and I see this law as confirmation of dementia in the
government. This is all kinds of unrealistic.

Having to notify Murdoch of any changes to search algorithm 28 days in
advance? I wonder if that is even possible - it's probably a magic ML
algorithm that they tweak here and there.

I can't imagine that google/facebook would continue linking to news under
these conditions. The small return is not worth the cost.

------
neximo64
But not Whatsapp so no biggie.

------
chrismsimpson
I am no fan of this right wing government, which is letting Fake News Corp
write it’s media policy, but Facebook does not have an inherent right to other
people’s content.

Rather than redistributing ad dollars away from big tech, this is likely to
force people consuming news to go directly to the source. Either that or it
will further dumb down our discourse (though Fake News Corp is doing a pretty
good job of that anyway). Time will tell.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Facebook is not taking anyones content. News companies willingly submit their
content to facebook and now demand that facebook should pay for the stuff they
submitted. So facebook is taking the logical step by stopping them from
submitting the content.

I can't walk up to someone and hand them the keys to my car and then demand
that they now owe me the value of the car.

~~~
tempestn
They're not even submitting their content; they're submitting _links_ to their
content. Readers still need to go to the publishers' pages to read the
articles.

~~~
chrismsimpson
This isn't even true when you consider news articles that are cached by
Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
The publisher controls whether AMP is used. If they don't want to use it they
can stop publishing it.

------
catmanjan
As an Australian I have no doubt the policy is misguided, but the fact that
these American companies are being so loud about it makes me wonder if the
government is actually on the right track.

In general I would say whatever corporations want is not in my best interest,
so whatever they don't want, might be.

~~~
darkwizard42
That feels like a pretty bad take on how to review changes. You might get
better mileage by looking at the context each time. In this case its pretty
clear that the Australian goverment is acting on behalf of specific vested
news companies and NOT for the consumer...

It seems dangerous to have this kind of government-on-the-right-track reaction
when the corporation cheering it on is in the business of fossil fuels,
factory farming, or opiod manufacturing just because a different corporation
yells loudly about it.

~~~
catmanjan
Fair enough, I simply don't trust any corporation to act in my interest - if
there was a trusted third party lobbying for FB/Google's position I may have
another look

Of course I would like to see the government go further and upset News Corp as
well, but upsetting these two seems like a good first step

~~~
yibg
FB doesn't have to have your best interests in mind for their actions to make
sense. You also don't need to trust them to agree or disagree with them.

