
Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news - nreece
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-regulator/australia-to-make-facebook-google-pay-for-news-in-world-first-idUSKCN24V3UP
======
ipsum2
People in this thread seem to believe that this is only relevant to Google
News. This is actually for _all_ of Google, including Search. According to
[https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-
marketing/facebook-a...](https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-
marketing/facebook-and-google-face-10m-for-media-code-
breaches-20200731-p55h6p)

> Mr Sims said if Google took a similar approach to its actions in Spain when
> it was asked to pay for news on its Google News tab, it would be irrelevant
> because the code covered news content in Google's primary function, search.

So it seems like the ultimatum is: pay Australia media companies ~$1b or don't
list any news media (including international news) on Google Search for
Australian users. Interesting dilemma.

~~~
pjc50
Well, this is easy: remove the news. Also deals with all accusations of bias
at the same time.

> pay Australia media companies ~$1b

This is Rupert Murdoch, isn't it.

~~~
Mandatum
Murdoch is the Australian Bezos - except he has way more political clout in a
larger area of the world, and has been running his empire for 30+ years. Bezos
is building those relationships with his expansions, and he's obviously got
more cash to fund them - but Murdoch's empire shouldn't be underestimated.

~~~
monkeynotes
His organization also has significant clout in the US and UK where he owns big
media corporations. He's long influenced British politics, and through Fox US
politics. This bill looks to be sponsored, and crafted by Murdoch.

------
jerf
Thank you to the several people who have posted a link to the bill itself.
I'll add to the pile to make it easier to see:
[https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20EM%2...](https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20EM%20-%20NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%20BILL%202020.pdf)

There's something interesting in there that nobody in this discussion has yet
mentioned, nor does the original news article, section 52S:

    
    
        Subsection (2) applies if the registered news
        business corporation for the registered news
        business makes a request, in writing, to the
        responsible digital platform corporation for
        the digital platform service to do any of the
        following:
    
         (a) ensure that the registered news business
             corporation is provided with flexible
             content moderation tools that allow
             the registered news business corporation
             to remove or filter comments on the registered
             news business’ covered news content that:
          (i) are made using the digital platform service; and
          (ii) are made on a part of the digital platform
               service that is set up and able to be edited
               by the registered news business;
    
         (b) ensure that the registered news business
             corporation can disable the making of such
             comments;
    
         (c) ensure that the registered news business
             corporation can block the making of such comments:
          (i) by particular persons; or
          (ii) in particular circumstances.
    

If I am reading this correctly (a big if!), this gives the news corporations
the right to exert complete control over all "comments" on their news articles
on these "digital platform services", meaning that, for instance, Hacker News
or Reddit, if covered by this law, would no longer be independent sites to
discuss news, but would be forcibly placed under the control of the news site.
(Not sure those sites _would_ be covered, just using that as an example.)

So if the newspaper leans X, they can shut down all the comments from people
who lean the other way, or people who disagree with the article, or anything
they like (possibly subject to other laws, but certainly no restrictions are
placed here).

That's... full of implications, to say the least.

~~~
profmonocle
Unless I'm misreading, "and are made on a part of the digital platform service
that is set up and able to be edited by the registered news business" suggests
this only applies to the news agency's own social media pages. I.E. they
wouldn't be able to censor comments on links to their content posted by third
parties.

~~~
dragonwriter
> suggests this only applies to the news agency's own social media pages

1.88 seems to indicate that pretty clearly, providing this example:

“In the case of a social media service such as Facebook, this rule deals with
the situation where the news business has posted its covered news content on
the news business’ own social media page. Comments on the news business’
articles posted by somebody else on another Facebook page are not covered by
this law ”

~~~
jerf
(For context, I'm not trying to be alarmist, merely observe something
interesting that I acknowledge I may not fully understand that nobody else was
talking about.)

Even that is pretty amazing on its own terms, essentially carving out the
new's site on those platforms. Interestingly, I don't see it _taking away_
control from the host, either, so either of them ought to be able to censor.
It would be interesting to see a vigorously anti-Facebook article get posted
on Facebook, with Facebook nuking everyone supportive of the article and the
news site nuking everyone arguing against it. (And both of the nuking the
"where are all the comments?" comments.)

Is there someone knowledgeable about Australian law that can explain how the
"clarification" stands in relation to the actual law? In the US system, where
AFAIK such clarifications would have low priority vs. the actual text of the
law, I'd be nervous as a "digital platform provider" relying on the
clarification to save me from the text of the law, which to my eyes do not
contain that carveout, but under a different system these may be given higher
priority.

(& with all due respect to the many fine Internet Lawyers (TM) on HN,
International Internet Lawyers (TM) even, I am asking for people who actually
_know_. I can provide myself with all the knowledge-free speculation I need
already.)

~~~
asdfaoeu
It's worthwhile noting that the courts have been holding media companies
responsible for the comments on their pages which I imagine at least some part
of the motivation for this.

[https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/media-companies-
liable-f...](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/media-companies-liable-for-
facebook-comments-made-by-others-court-finds-20190624-p520rf.html)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Social media content isn't hosted on _their_ property. If they can't comply
with such laws they should delete these accounts rather than claim digital
squatter's rights.

~~~
arrosenberg
Isn't Facebook arguing that they have become a public square though? If we
accept that argument, then they can't have it both ways - a merchant who has
set up a booth on the public common is not a squatter. While subject to the
rules of the common, they still retain full control over their booth and
wares.

~~~
chillfox
Yes they are, but it’s not entirely up to them. The other side is arguing that
they are just a publisher.

It remains to be seen where they end up.

------
postingawayonhn
I really hope they just block all the news sites from their platforms. Let's
see how they like it when thier traffic dries up. From other reporting I've
read the law does say they have to treat domestic and international news the
same so it could cause an issue with that approach.

~~~
smabie
Yeah, honestly, that's what I hope they do. The amount of entitlement and this
holier than thou attitude among the media is pretty annoying. Figure out how
to make money like any other business. And if you can't, we'll then I guess
you don't matter that much.

This decision is crony capitalism at its worst.

~~~
simias
I would 100% support this mindset if tech giants paid taxes where they make
their money. I don't know what the situation is like in Australia but in
Europe it's pretty insane. You can't abuse the system on one side and then
argue the "efficient market hypothesis" on the other.

Google&friends are not making money and competing "like any other business".

~~~
marcus_holmes
> Google&friends are not making money and competing "like any other business".

I don't understand this. Can you explain, please?

~~~
jokethrowaway
Several big-enough companies use tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes or lobby
the government themselves.

This is not specific to big tech though, it's a single point of failure of
having a centralised government that is easily corrupted by rich corporations.

~~~
marcus_holmes
sorry, again, I'm not following you. How does the ineffectiveness of tax
regimes mean that Google and friends aren't competing like a normal business?

~~~
thedevilslawyer
This reads like sealioning. You really can't see why an entity A that gives 1%
in taxes is at an advantage in competing with an entity that gives say 20% in
taxes?

~~~
marcus_holmes
but this behaviour (as said above) is not unique to tech. All sufficiently
large, sufficiently multinational businesses effectively stop paying the full
rate of tax

------
mmahemoff
Typical mainstream coverage of a tech story that glosses over all the detail,
leaving everyone in this thread to speculate about all the details, such as
which results it applies to and how will they distribute the revenue.

My 2p guess is it's all about snippets and any other displayed information
which would stop the user proceeding to an external result. Some % of total
revenue distributed to owners of the snippet content, though it would be hard
to determine the breakdown even for a single result page.

~~~
mxxx
Yeah, can anyone explain to me how FB/G are actually accused of giving paid
content away for free? All the Murdoch content is behind paywalls in Aus. Is
it literally just headlines and the free 3 sentences or whatever a
scraper/aggregator would display?

~~~
AniseAbyss
This is the best way to do it: just paywall your articles.

The internet made people believe everything is free. But free news is either
propaganda or a disguised ad.

~~~
himinlomax
The problem is that they all have their own account management. I'd be ok with
paying a subscription service that gave access to several sites and took care
of distributing revenue per usage, but managing dozens of subscriptions is a
hassle.

~~~
tomatocracy
Pressreader offers something a bit like that.

------
ma2rten
Didn't Spain try to do the same thing with Google News, which just ended up
with them shutting down the product in Spain?

[https://support.google.com/news/publisher-
center/answer/9609...](https://support.google.com/news/publisher-
center/answer/9609687?hl=en)

~~~
squiggleblaz
The article says that European countries "tried and failed" to rein in the
tech giants. Although I'm not sure if shutting down Google News is actually
"tried and failed" so much as "tried and succeeded, but not according to first
preference".

I mean, if you can't go to google news to get your news, maybe you do go
directly to the website of some major news company (and get a monoculture).

~~~
0xfffafaCrash
While it's not the selling point politically, I think those lobbying for
things like this are very much happy with any monoculture that results.

With services like Google News, people can get exposed to news from various
media outlets, but by killing it through lobbying for absurd regulatory
burdens on aggregators the well known larger outlets can choke out access to
their competition. This of course is hampered to some extent by the reality
that many will just rely on other users posting on social media for news
updates, and if that too is choked out through regulation on platforms, many
will probably just skip the news or reduce their consumption in favor of other
things like entertainment.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I used to use Google News to find different articles from different companies
whenever a news story interested me. It was good to get often very different
points of view.

I now just spend a little time on Apple News+ to skim what is happening. While
I am locking myself more into a mono culture just looking at US news, I
decided that I needed to greatly decrease the amount of time I spent on the
news every day.

The world situation is what it is. I try to accept the world as-is, invest as
little time as possible understanding the world and concentrate on my own
productivity, fellowship with friends and family, and generally appreciating
culture and nature.

News watching is an addiction that too many of my friends have.

------
marban
_I 'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that
if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's
your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product. But then they
always say that they're helping you, and that's true too, but still, if people
didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to
themselves, the news wouldn't have any news. So I guess you should pay each
other. But I haven't figured it out fully yet._

\-- Andy Warhol

~~~
alexmingoia
Says the guy who took other people’s images and sold them...

~~~
slim
every artist does that. he just did it in a straight, sorryless way. hence the
concept in his conceptual art.

~~~
yesenadam
> every artist does that.

Um, no.

------
ajxs
Lots of the comments here are criticising this decision on the basis of News
Corporation's very clear political involvement. While I share their sentiment
regarding News Corporation and their blatant partisanship, I would like to
highlight that Facebook is not an apolitical entity. My view is that anyone
concerned about the blatant partisan politics of the Australian news media
should be equally concerned about the political overreach of big tech. The
latter being far more equipped for the propagation of information benefiting
their own agenda.

~~~
makomk
The two aren't comparable. News Corporation is political in the sense that
they effectively decide who wins the next election in countries like Australia
and the UK and all the political parties have to seek out their favour and
pursue policies that meet with their approval to win. Facebook is political in
the sense that they refused to use their power to tilt the last US
presidential election towards the candidate the mainstream media wanted. That
the media considers the latter to be the threat to democracy says a lot about
who they think should actually control the country.

~~~
vkou
> That the media considers the latter to be the threat to democracy says a lot
> about who they think should actually control the country.

A man who, when asked about whether or not he will accept the next election's
result, responds with 'We'll see', is _objectively_ a pretty serious threat to
democracy.

Simply voicing that opinion (and never following through on it) makes him a
threat to, at minimum the public perception of the legitimacy of democracy -
since democracy is one of those things that only works when people believe in
it.

~~~
frockington1
He knows how to play the media that's for certain. For a grand total of $0 he
was able to have his face on television and plant a seed of doubt against his
opponents integrity. So much so that all some people can talk about is Trump.
Meanwhile Bloomberg spent record amounts on campaigning and all I remember was
that he was the stop and frisk guy

------
dantheman
Isn't this something the publishers can just stop with a robots.txt? Or do
they want Google to continue to link to them and just charge them for it? I
hope Google just drops them from the index.

~~~
criddell
I hope Google and Facebook recognize the value they get from news publishers
and understand the value society gets from journalism and they do more to
support that journalism that benefits everybody.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I recognize the value I get from news publishers and try to support them. It
would never in a million years occur to me that, when I tell someone "here's
this neat article I read about new studies on the minimum wage", _I_ owe the
_newspaper_ for being allowed to do that.

~~~
criddell
Sure. If telling people about the news is making you money, why not share some
of the profit from doing that with the newspaper? If you don't do that, aren't
you in effect killing the golden goose?

~~~
Nasrudith
Do you give money to the construction workers who built the road every time
you drive to work? Even if it is taken for granted as a common good doesn't
make the monetization model wise or justified.

A taxation model by "lottery" which randomly takes everything from an unlucky
N people a year would work terrible in so many ways. Wanting a funding model
that isn't terrible doesn't mean they don't want a functioning government.

~~~
criddell
> Do you give money to the construction workers who built the road every time
> you drive to work?

In a way, yes. There are lots of usage taxes around driving that help fund
road construction.

------
HugThem
Is this about copyright? Aka "If you copy more then X words, your violate the
authors copyright" so that one has to negotiate with the author about copying
more then X words?

Or do they _force_ Google and Facebook to publish those snippets and pay for
them? Making media kind of state controlled? If so, who decides which news
have to be included?

Or what is this about?

~~~
HugThem
Reading Google's point of view on what happened in Spain they had yet another
model over there:

"Legislation in Spain requires every Spanish publication to charge services
like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their
publications, whether they want to or not."

[https://support.google.com/news/publisher-
center/answer/9609...](https://support.google.com/news/publisher-
center/answer/9609687)

Maybe it is similar to that? I wonder who defines what "news" are? If part of
this text I am writing ends up quoted on a website owned by someone in Spain,
I would be forced by law to send them an invoice?

~~~
anticensor
No, copyright union will send the invoice on behalf of you, just as in music
royalties. They will have to pay the copyright union, even if you choose not
to receive it yourself.

------
acd
I have an issue with that people consume news from these sites through
recommendations algorithms. Recommendations algorithms just suggest news that
you might be interested in, so you miss reading the rest. Ie you consume news
through filter bubbles. A filter bubble is where you see the world through
your personal curated filter glasses. I would argue that such filtering
creates polarized world views where you get less accommodating for views which
does not match your own filtered world view. In summary these platforms may in
some sense undermine democracy where we respect other with different view
points than our own. Plus it’s essential for democracy that we pay for local
news journalists which dig and investigate local politicians decisions. Local
news feed national news networks which in turn feed international news.

Filter bubble article mentioning news filtering
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)

Article that social media may cause polarized views
[https://scholar.harvard.edu/sounman_hong/political-
polarizat...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/sounman_hong/political-polarization-
twitter-social-media-may-contribute-online-extremism)

Local journalism [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/28/local-
journali...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/28/local-journalism-
democracy-us-newspapers)

------
Jedd
> For every A$100 spent on online advertising in Australia, excluding
> classifieds, nearly a third goes to Google and Facebook, according to
> Frydenberg.

This from the Treasurer of Australia.

I hope he understands that the same holds true for every A$1000 spent, too.

But the local Murdoch outpost's eagerness for this to happen certainly
explains the motivation here.

------
ehmish
FYI for those interested this is the announcement of the policy on the site of
the organisation that wrote the policy [https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-
areas/digital-platforms/news-m...](https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-
areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code/draft-legislation)

------
travisoneill1
This seems absurd. Companies typically pay Google to drive traffic through
ads, but in this case they are legislating that Google pay them for driving
traffic? This sounds like the store paying the customer to take its product.
Wouldn't the obvious solution be for Google to just stop listing these news
sites? Am I missing something here?

~~~
lopis
You can make a case that Google wouldn't make any money if they didn't have
content. They have trained the market into believing we need them and to pay
them unholy amounts of money to be on top of all search results. But without
content and search results, no one uses Google.

~~~
rightbyte
Google has also started to show generated answers/summaries in the search to
make the user not visit the external site.

Answers and image search should be opt in for copright holder.

------
imgabe
Business idea: Get GPT-3 to churn out newsy-sounding stories for next to
nothing and host them in Australia where the government forces other companies
to pay you for them. Free money.

------
MattGaiser
Google will probably eliminate Google News for Australians. Why exactly would
Google pay money for a service which earns nothing?

~~~
grayhatter
Doesn't the news you choose to read tell Google a lot about you?

Google is very good about shuttering projects that doesn't make them money.
I'm sure if they're still running the service. It's making them money some
how.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
Nowhere near as much as shopping searches. It's kind of hard to monetize an
interest in (say) Singaporean politics or space rockets.

~~~
MajorBee
It's not that hard to monetize interest in damn near _anything_ (as long as it
is not clearly illegal, I guess). For the two examples you've posted, maybe
advertise flights/vacations to Singapore if you show a persistent interest in
Singapore, and market model rockets, space flight simulator toys, really all
sorts of consumer-grade commodity products adjacent to the space industry.

------
jccooper
Google search is basically all "news" now for way too many keywords, due to
their high rankings for "fresh content". I really wouldn't mind if that
disappeared entirely. The product would be better.

Facebook would also be much more pleasant.

~~~
ttmb
The recency bias is painful. If you read a recent article and want more
information on some background from the story, the results are mostly a flood
of more articles on the recent story, with no new info. Your best bet is to
find one of the new articles that actually cited and linked to some older
work.

------
kqvamxurcagg
Large technology companies are creating large market failures, one of which is
the erosion of the print media business model. With Facebook and Google
favouring trending content over high value content state intervention is
probably necessary to save the industry.

------
darwinwhy
I wonder how the quoted "royalty-style system" would work. If it's anything
like reverse ads where Google and Facebook pay per click/impression, what's to
stop them from simply boycotting Australian news sites?

~~~
postingawayonhn
Apparently they'll have to boycott all news sites. I hope they are able to
challenge this law in the courts.

> "They can't discriminate between international and Australian news. So they
> can't turn off Australian news and just use international news. That's
> discrimination. This is a mandatory code, the platforms must participate.
> They could stop showing news media on their platforms completely – that is,
> no local or international media – but short of that, they are compelled."

[https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-
marketing/facebook-a...](https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-
marketing/facebook-and-google-face-10m-for-media-code-
breaches-20200731-p55h6p)

------
hmottestad
I remember back when the music business thought that pirated music would ruin
them and forced governments to put an extra tax on blank cassettes and CDs.

Seems like it's based on the same concept. Newspapers are loosing readers and
they are blaming google and facebook.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy)

~~~
raverbashing
And of course if the legal system was slightly fair, if the levy is being
applied then private copying should have been made instantly legal. Not to
mention you're just charging everybody, regardless of the use they will make
of the media

But of course the lobbying is strong

------
chrismsimpson
Don't be fooled. This is merely a ploy from a conservative government to keep
Rupert relevant. He owns 70% of the print journalism here.

~~~
stevenjohns
Your suggestion aside, I find it odd that people call the Australian Liberal
Party conservative.

They banned firearms, introduced the GST and made same-sex marriage legal.
They've now introduced the largest welfare package in Australian history.

In comparison to most governments in the world, they're probably considered
center-left at worst.

~~~
TOMDM
Let's not pretend the liberal party is some bastion of LGBT rights, gay
marriage was only passed after the politicians in Australia dragged each other
through the mud for so long that the question was eventually put to a non
binding plebiscite that they followed through on.

~~~
shrewduser
Well at least they finally did it, each labor prime minister has been against
it until they left office and miraculously started supporting it.

------
zmmmmm
Some of the most interesting part is not even about paying. For example, they
must notify the news providers of algorithmic changes 28 days in advance
before making them, and enable the news organisation to "filter or remove"
comments on their content.

It is oddly self-contradictory as it both states that a digital platform may
_not_ discrimminate b/w a "registered news organisation" and non-registered
news org, but also mandates a whole raft of areas where it _must_
discrimminate and give special consideration to a "registered news
organisastion". This almost seems like a legal trap so they are in violation
no matter what they do.

Interestingly, when all else fails, the arbitration panel must make a decision
that is "in the public interest" \- which seems to open a loophole where
Google / Facebook could argue that the value of free / open information is
more in the public interest than supporting proprietary news organisation to
paywall their content. It would be hilarious if it backfired, though I am sure
the arbitration panel will be carefully constructed to ensure it is not
sympathetic to tech companies.

See:
[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)

------
belushi
I’ve long been a proponent—as both a user _and_ an advocate of these
companies’ interests—of paid premium (ad-free, tracker-free, priority support)
tiers for the “Internet essentials,” i.e., Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There is, I believe, a surprisingly sizable (and rapidly growing) contingent
of these platforms’ respective user bases willing to pay for privacy and user
experience, and by insisting so stubbornly on maintaining a uniformly ad-
subsidized model, without so much as even experimenting with subscription tier
offerings, these companies are leaving billions of dollars a year in
additional revenue on the table.

Perhaps the increasing cost of supply-side content will finally spur a
rethinking of these platforms’ fundamental business models. Here’s hoping…

~~~
abrowne
> _paid premium (ad-free, tracker-free, priority support) tiers_

Does that risk making privacy only available for those with the means to pay
for it?

~~~
crazygringo
That's the wrong way to frame it.

A product has to be paid for _somehow_. You could just as easily think of
"paid premium" as the default, similar to the way you pay for a physical
newspaper, magazine, etc.

Or you can pay by giving up your privacy instead. It's your choice.

Why shouldn't people who _want_ to give up their privacy in exchange for
personalized ads be allowed to?

~~~
rpastuszak
> A product has to be paid for somehow.

Yes, but maybe businesses like Facebook shouldn't exist in their current shape
given the amount of data required to make them profitable? Is the return worth
the cost?

> Why shouldn't people who want to give up their privacy in exchange for
> personalized ads be allowed to?

Of course, but how many people are educated on what it actually means? How
many people know that Google is an advertising business, not "just a search
engine"?

We all know that the incentives of companies like this are not compatible with
consent. Stronger regulatory actions and waaaay more emphasis on education is
prob. the best we have at the moment.

~~~
crazygringo
> Is the return worth the cost?

That's for consumers to decide.

> how many people are educated on what [privacy] actually means?

Are 99% of consumers suffering any actual harm? They see better personalized
ads, and yes, people are mostly aware of how internet ads "follow" you because
we've all shopped for something and then seen a billion ads for it.

There are absolutely scary areas of privacy. Worries that your info will be
used to determine insurance rates is addressed by legislation, so not a
problem. And if you have real reasons for anonymity (civil rights, protests,
politics, corporate, etc.) then you're already presumably educated on that and
taking anti-tracking measures already.

But for the vast majority of people, their educated decision is to use free
services in exchange for personalized ads. They see it as a deal or else they
wouldn't be doing it.

~~~
rpastuszak
> That's for consumers to decide.

> But for the vast majority of people, their educated decision is to use free
> services in exchange for personalized ads. They see it as a deal or else
> they wouldn't be doing it.

Again, these decisions need to be based on knowledge which they don't have.

> Are 99% of consumers suffering any actual harm? They see better personalized
> ads, and yes, people are mostly aware of how internet ads "follow" you
> because we've all shopped for something and then seen a billion ads for it.

Yes, Cambridge Analytica or Brexit are perfect examples of that.

Adtech, incl. programmatic advertising not only enables but incentivises
sensationalist, emotion-driven and biased content.

This is due to the systemic issues within the industry and in itself is a
wicked problem: different actors in the pipeline are motivated by different
incentives. Think of the sales teams in adtech companies, publishers,
publisher sales teams, brands, users... What motivates them how are they
rewarded for their work?

Sales people talk in terms of budgets ("We just closed $X.000000!"). What do
brands care about? How do you translate the budget into campaign
effectiveness? There's so much lost in the process, which is not a secret.

Now, publishers don't like advertising but rely on it as a revenue stream.
Different ways of monetising publishing content are possible but this would
render the sales people working for publishers redundant and those people not
only have mortgages to pay, kids to send to school, but generally are fairly
influential within their orgs.

Finally we have the users who have... their lives to live. We have the elderly
people falling into scams fueled by retargeting (if we're looking for extreme
cases). How well informed/educated are they?

I don't need to understand the every single part of my car to drive it. I
trust that it won't randomly explode when I start it. Why?

The points I'm trying to convey (poorly) are products of the conversations
with people ranging from entry to CXO level at ad networks, publishers, non-
profits, then readers/consumers. I worked on several sides of the problem
(publishing, ad tech, privacy).

My opinion is that you grossly underestimate the impact of advertising on our
society. We've grown used to it and learned to accept the current situation as
a norm. Bear in mind that advertising in its modern form has its root in
behaviourism and that's for a reason.

[https://twitter.com/HKingaby](https://twitter.com/HKingaby)
[https://twitter.com/ka_iwanska](https://twitter.com/ka_iwanska)
[https://twitter.com/DrRESmith](https://twitter.com/DrRESmith) explains how
complex networks of actors, including the algorithmic ones (i.e. social
media), can be used to increase polarisation.
[https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/)

------
gl3nnleblanc
Why doesn't this incentivize Facebook/Google to create their own news service,
with reporters and all? That would certainly be a bleak outcome.

------
odc
This looks a lot like what France Press did in 2007:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News#EU_copyright_and_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News#EU_copyright_and_database_right)

------
beilabs
I'm wondering if this will cause a further reduction in traffic to certain
Murdoch publications. The only profitable parts of their newspaper divisions
seem to be centered around gambling.

------
gok
They should comply and just delist all News Corp content.

~~~
jackjeff
Exactly what happened for google news in Spain.

I suppose this includes the search engine. So if these people don’t want their
thing to turn up in text results, why not update the robots.txt and close shop
the next month?

I have no sympathy for Google and even less for Facebook. But that’s a shitty
argument to make. It makes me want to create a client side google news clone,
but that actually steal all the article content and remove all ads. Try
blocking that.

------
ehnto
Another flailing grasp at new media as Rupert Murdoch's tabloid empire loses
its grip on the future.

I am only disappointed that our government would be complicit.

Make no mistake, I am no new media fan boy. In fact I hope this has the side
effect of cleaning up the misinformation that spins around Facebook et al. But
it is still sad to see such an obvious manipulation of our government.

~~~
hnzix
The Australian media landscape is a highly unethical duopoly that undermines
democracy. And the alternative seems to be people getting their "news" from
wellness gurus and radio shock jocks.

On the one hand News Corporation and Fairfax Media can rot in hell, but I'm
almost as afraid of what would happen to the national discourse in the
resulting power vacuum.

~~~
mschuster91
> On the one hand News Corporation and Fairfax Media can rot in hell, but I'm
> almost as afraid of what would happen to the national discourse in the
> resulting power vacuum.

Someone's gonna fill in, and most probably it will be Russian or Chinese
propaganda.

~~~
hnzix
Can we convince the Betoota Advocate to pivot?

------
alkonaut
To be clear, this is about snippets that are displayed and lets users consume
the content without ever clicking the link to visit the page?

How is Google normally handling the fact that what they display in excerpts is
copyrighted material? Do they just assume their snippet is short enough to be
fair use everywhere?

And couldn’t these sites just detect the crawlers and display article bodies
that are a smaller, (0-10 words body)?

~~~
sidibe
You can choose whether Google can use snippets or how big they are.

~~~
alkonaut
What does that mean for the regulation in question? That it’s unnecessary
because there is a technical solution? Or that it’s not written in good faith
because they know it’s possible to solve technically but want funding from
Google rather than actually solve it?

------
throwaway3699
HN: Google isn't entitled to it's current business model.

Also HN: Decade old, failing Murdoch empire should be funded by Big Tech under
the law.

~~~
DangitBobby
That's definitely not what I'm seeing in these comments.

------
logseman
Not sure how this is "world first" when Spain already did this (and Google
withdrew the News service as a result).

------
rswail
So before anyone goes off half-cocked, the proposed legislation applies to:

1\. News businesses that are registered with ACMA and comply with the codes
for print/TV/radio regarding content, eg press council etc and publish
predominantly Australian content for Australian audiences

2\. Have revenue over $150K/year

3\. Digital platforms (as determined by the Treasurer)

It requires both sides to:

a) provide each other with information,

b) negotiate in good faith,

c) submit to formal arbitration if they can't agree.

The platforms are required (as a minimum) to not discriminate between news
sources, what they collect about users that click on the news sources (where
that is different to what they normally collect), and how they make that
information available to the news source.

They're required to explain how they display paywalled contant, how they
display non-paywall content, how they display advertising, and, if they change
that, how the change will affect the news sources. It also requires the
platform to, if they allow user comments (eg a FB page), allow the news source
to control/disable/moderate those comments.

The news sources are allowed to co-operate in the negotiations.

It's not a long bill and it's in plain(-ish) English.

[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)

~~~
Majromax
> b) negotiate in good faith,

That's part of the problem, though -- it doesn't define what they're to
negotiate in good faith _over_.

Ordinary negotiations involve some kind of proprietary, property, or contract
right. I negotiate with my employer to provide my services in exchange for a
salary, because absent an agreement neither party is compelled to do anything.
I can also negotiate with my neighbour over compensation to my fence when he
damages it, because that damage was contrary to law -- an action was taken
without legal right.

I _can 't_ force my neighbour into negotiations when he throws a party and
doesn't invite me (because of the stick up my ass about the fence, see above),
because he had no obligation to do so in the first place.

So, how does this apply to Foogle? The negotiations in the bill appear to be
related to news content 'made available' by the platform, but that term does
not appear to be defined. In particular, it does _not_ appear to be restricted
to actions that would be covered by property-like copyright rights.

Instead, this bill appears to be taking a stance based on
anticompetitive/monopolistic behaviours. There is a reasonable basis for this
argument, but in my opinion any action would require much more groundwork to
set out just what behaviours are allegedly harmful. This legislation seems to
sidestep that entirely, and in particular the list of "must-consider" items
for an arbitrator (52ZP) is entirely to the benefit of news corporations over
Foogle.

> It also requires the platform to, if they allow user comments (eg a FB
> page),

To be scrupulously fair here, this doesn't seem to require that Foogle allow
moderation of _all_ user comments on a news story, only those on stories
submitted by the news agency itself (52S.1(a)(ii)). So News Corp gets to
moderate its own Facebook page, but it can't moderate comments on users' walls
when they just discuss a News Corp article.

------
bobthechef
Seems like a great opportunity to entrench Google's and Facebook's power. A
corollary of free market principles, whoever pays for the news decides which
news outlet flourishes and which one fades into nonexistence, or, what the
news outlet reports. News outlets have always been sensitive to advertisers
and moneyed patrons because they make next to nothing from the readership.

All of this is to say that as Google and Facebook become a bigger share of the
revenue of news outlets, the more sway they'll have over what those news
outlets publish, whether they stand or fall, etc.

------
shmerl
Sounds like failing legacy businesses trying to use the government to ensure
profits while facing inability to compete. That's going to work so well for
them. Why does Australian public allow such laws to pass?

------
johnnyYen
Seems like massive legislative over-reach.

1.100 Discrimination in this context will be considered to occur if the news
content of a registered news business is disadvantaged incomparison to other
news content in terms of the crawling, indexing,ranking, display, presentation
or other process undertaken by the digital platform on any service provided by
the digital platform, on the basis ofthe registered news business’
participation in the code.

IANAL, but my simple reading of this seems to imply it will be illegal for
Google to NOT crawl and index News Corps content.

------
quink
Just another point of interest for our international friends and because
'Ctrl-F' for 'Costello' hasn't brought up anything either:

Peter Costello was, until 2007, the deputy leader and treasurer of the federal
government, consisting then of the same parties that are pushing for this
legislation.

Peter Costello, the same, is also since 2016 chairman of Nine Entertainment
Co., the media company that would get the second highest amount of money under
this legislation, right after Murdoch's own.

Yeah, Australia's kind of screwed up like that.

------
mensetmanusman
We need to figure out how to do this correctly.

We don’t want Google subsidizing trash like the Sun, we would rather it
subsidize high quality information sites like Quanta.

I wonder if Google could create some metric where they would be more than
happy to never show results from the Sun, but show results from some places
and pay those entities.

Sounds like a win-win-win.

Google wins because it’s search results are higher quality, the high quality
news sites win because they can have better journalists, and the public wins
because they have better information.

~~~
bognition
So we let google build an algorithm that tells us which news sources are
trusted? No thanks

~~~
mensetmanusman
It’s not about trust, it’s about quality and who should get funds to make
higher quality information.

------
CrankyBear
Yeah, I've heard this before. Ask anyone in Spanish journalism how well their
laws asking for the same thing worked out for them. Spoiler: It's a complete
fail.

------
erikrothoff
What does this mean for RSS feeds and feed readers? I guess a case can be made
for non-cloud readers to be excempt from this logic, but readers like Feedly
or our feeder.co?

~~~
sjy
The code would only apply to Google and Facebook, but may be applied to other
digital platforms in the future “where fundamental bargaining power imbalances
with Australian news businesses emerge.”

------
imron
What chance to Facebook and Google have when even the laws of mathematics must
bow to Australian law [0].

Be careful what you wish for though. As an Australian, I fear that Australian
news media needs Facebook and Google far more than the other way around.

0: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-laws-of-australia-will-
tru...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-laws-of-australia-will-trump-the-
laws-of-mathematics-turnbull/)

~~~
koheripbal
At the end of the day, you still need a reporter on the ground at location.
That's the origination of any reputable news source.

------
grayhatter
My first instinct was this is a bad move. But given how Google is so quick to
kill projects that don't make them money. (And they're still running the
service... for now at least) Paired with how I personally detest how they
pushed AMP giving them more control and more user data. I can't say I'm
convinced they didn't do this to themselves. Nor am I convinced this isn't
somehow better.

I'm sure at the very least the results will be interesting.

------
rzmnzm
These news organisations should pay twitter every time they source a story
from there.

Hopefully it would stop journos from writting such gripping stories as
"According to some blowhard on twitter...", "These is my opinions, and to back
it up here are three people on twitter who agree with me,...", "Twitter was
OUTRAGED by... (several posts with five likes and one reshare)" etc, etc, etc

------
estebarb
Honestly I don't get it. Media made a lot of money publishing dead bodies, but
they don't pay a dime to victim's family.

------
rvr_
Sooner or later Google will just "AI-parse" the same news story from many
sources and generate a new headline plus snippet.

------
cblconfederate
I wonder why there aren't better news search engine than google? A google
search doesnt bring up any substantial project, and google news itself is
pretty basic and biased and limited. I find myself often wondering "where
could i read about <thing>", and feeling underwhelmed with google searches.

~~~
fagan_m
There are actually quite a few news search engines. I've tried to include the
best and most comprehensive ones on
[https://www.faganfinder.com/](https://www.faganfinder.com/) , although I have
since found some more that I haven't reviewed.

------
ekianjo
Is that a world first? I thought they enacted the same thing in France before?
[https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/france-and-australia-
to...](https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/france-and-australia-to-google-
and-facebook-pay-for-news/)

------
iamben
Aren't a lot of these newspaper sites funded with AdSense as opposed to direct
buys/other ad networks?

So this would end up Google paying the publisher to send traffic to their
site, so the publisher (potentially) earns money from Google for visitor
Google has just paid for? Or something like that?!

------
urthor
Google and Facebook will just stop showing results from participating news
outlets.

Frankly they have enough user generated content already they don't need these
companies. If it bans snippets and allows headlines for free then they'll do
that, but honestly they have no need to pay a cent.

------
throwaway29102
The plus side to this is that it’ll kill (some) off-platform link sharing,
which kills the “drive traffic to make money” strategy, which may reduce the
amount of outrage porn circulating in the English-speaking world.

Best of luck to the Aussies, and maybe we’ll catch up sooner or later.

------
jelder
So Facebook has a choice between complying with the spirit of this law, or
just appending some Australian news domains to their block list. Facebook has
not shown a genuine interest in promoting the spread of truth over lies. What
an incredibly stupid move.

------
nl
Notably this _doesn 't_ apply to news from non-Australian operating companies
or to the publicly funded broadcasters.

If I was Google or FB I know what I'd be thinking about doing now.

------
m0zg
A year or two from now: Australia doesn't have mainstream news anymore after
Google and Facebook ban links to them from its properties to avoid paying "for
news".

~~~
sjy
It’s now been a year or two since various HN commenters proclaimed that
Australia had “nuked its tech industry from orbit” when the new encryption
laws came in, but that doesn’t seem to have come true.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18616303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18616303)

~~~
m0zg
That's because the tech industry doesn't really care about their users'
privacy. It does care very much about profits, however.

------
lawrenceyan
Does Australia really have either the purchasing power and/or political clout
to make sweeping statements like these and still have people actually care?

~~~
newsclues
$25million people? Probably not

------
raxxorrax
I think it is wrong that these platforms promote certain content and even pay
for the articles. This is how you get an unhealthy, nepotistic media
landscape.

------
peignoir
And with GPT-3 or any similar technology coming journalism will be even more
under pressure of displacement. I guess the future will be data collectors

~~~
baq
wonder if you could use GPT-3 to rephrase snippets or whole articles and avoid
the new fee...

~~~
ardy42
> wonder if you could use GPT-3 to rephrase snippets or whole articles and
> avoid the new fee...

That'd be just wonderful once someone builds an adversarial model to trick the
GPT-3 summarizer to output disinformation or other garbage.

------
la6471
Time for FG to invest in local reporters and hire them for original content ie
original news reporting and also get some royalty out of it :)

------
Waterfall
If only they could encrypt the links! Austria had them beat though, they
outlawed it before this one two punch! Google is over!

------
ferros
What implications will this have elsewhere. Where is the line drawn?

I don’t disagree with this but it feels like this will open a hornets nest.

~~~
Aerroon
It depends on if others follow. Australia and New Zealand are outliers when it
comes to freedom of speech/expression anyway. They officially censor the media
through a censorship office. I believe this doesn't affect the news directly,
but movies and video games (I don't know about books) can't be published
without government approval. That hasn't really had much of an effect for the
rest of the world other than people making fun of Australia.

------
jpollock
Will this create a new copyright license?

Will I be able to pay a license fee and reprint news stories? That could be
really cool.

------
iRomain
Now what would be great is to see Google pay websites it’s stealing content
from to populate its snippet blocks

------
pabs3
Are Google and Facebook also going to charge news organisations per click for
the traffic they send their way?

------
42droids
“In 2019, Google stopped showing news snippets from European publishers on
search results for its French users, while Germany’s biggest news publisher,
Axel Springer, allowed the search engine to run snippets of its articles after
traffic to its sites to plunged.“ This is the sad reality, this is why these
companies can do whatever they want. There is always someone who sells out and
forces everyone to give in.

~~~
smabie
Making money for investors isn't 'selling out'. It's like how, you know, a
business should be operating.

------
tantalor
It's more likely FB/G are operating their news aggregation services at a loss
rather than a profit.

------
NicoJuicy
So, Google would index the social media pages of those corporations.

With even declining revenue

------
known
Sounds rational since somebody has to pay the 'source' of news

------
iammru
Pay who?.. Facebook should pay the users as well.

------
varispeed
Why such corporate lobbying isn't illegal?

------
georgespencer
Spain tried this in 2014. Google simply removed "Google News" and cut off the
healthy supply of clicks they send to the news outlets.

From memory, news outlets soon relented because they needed Google more than
Google needed them.

When France followed Spain, they stopped Google from removing "Google News" by
insisting that it was an abuse of market position to do so. Never mind the
fact that it seems like an abuse of power to compel a company to do business
in your region on terms it doesn't like, and to prevent it from backing out of
the market.

Ben Thompson from Stratechery has some good summaries of this behind his
paywall.

------
biggidywiggidy
So much stockholm syndrome here on HN.

------
badrchoubai
I hope other countries follow suit.

------
OMGCable
How exactly is this going to work?

------
RockmanZero
nice move! Australia

------
chimichangga
socialism at work

------
guidedlight
Unfortunately this will just cause more misinformation and conspiracy theories
to circulate.

Fake news is free. Real news is behind paywalls.

~~~
quink
The main benefactor would be News Corp Australia. Apart from some snippets of
tolerable local coverage it's all a big pile of shit that stinks from Uncle
Rupert's ugly head down.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are what they peddle. This single
company controls 70% of the newspaper market and lies, misleading and cheating
are part of their DNA. I hope they don't see a single red cent out of this and
if it takes the shutdown of Google News then so be it.

------
surajs
a brilliant piece of legislation too by the looks of it, commendable job.

------
lanevorockz
It's very disturbing that Silicon Valley controls so much of public discourse.
Hate Trump as much as you like but having all discourse controlled by faceless
billionaires is not good to anyone. It would be the same if Bernie Sanders was
the president and he did something that would affect them. It's not moral,
it's just money for billionaires.

