United Nations

Welcome to United Nations, Rutulstan and Agenda TwentyOne. Glad you stopped by. Hope you enjoy your stay in our fair region. Please help yourself to drinks and cookies, masks and sanitizing gel, which you'll find in the hospitality suite. \_/ (::)(::) \_/ (::)(::)

Imperial Eden wrote:

Did anyone see how Facebook outright banned news outlets posting in Australia? What are your thoughts?

That's odd.

Juskalherria wrote:

It's capitalism rearing it's ugly head again. MarkieZ doesn't want content on his site that he would have to pay for --- he only wants to be paid for ad content so he can keep growing his billions. From what I can see it was a preemptive strike against the possibility that the Australian government may pass a law requiring social media to pay for the posting or sharing of news content but the removal was more like a massive fire bombing rather than a "surgical" drone strike since it apparently took out pages of some government entities (like fire departments, etc.) and some charities (like foodbanks, etc.).

IMNSHO this is what happens when people think they are getting something for free when in reality the corporate entity they are patronizing is controlling their behavior and selling their personal information. In the interests of full disclosure I have never had a FB account.

So what do you think? And what's the reaction on the street? Is anyone canceling their FB account and fleeing to MySpace, Reddit or Bluesky?

Oh absolutely Facebook weilds a lot of power in terms of controlling what people see and think. I believe about a third of traffic on news sites was from Facebook. What might surprise a lot of foreigners is that at least as far as I've seen and heard, public sentiment is not necessarily in favour of Facebook, but certainly not in favour of the government.

The legislation, which passed the lower house a day before Facebook instituted its news ban, and is yet to be voted on by the upper house, is largely rejected as absurd by most people who have actually read it. News outlets choose to post to Facebook, because Facebook provides them a large audience. It doesn't make sense to a lot of people that Facebook would be forced to pay media outlets who post links to their platform. Furthermore, the legislation only benefits the major media outlets (Nine and News Corp; Australia has the most concentrated print media industry in the world), and grants them access to the algorithms that Facebook and Google use, as well as forcing them to pay money. There is no benefit to smaller, independent journalism, not even our national broadcaster, the ABC. It's no secret that it's legislation pushed by Murdoch-backed lobbyists, and the government has gone along with it thanks to the favourable coverage that they will receive in turn (especially as there is an election next year).

The whole thing comes as a Senate inquiry has begun into Murdoch's news monopoly in the country, to which former Prime Ministers are providing evidence.

In terms of Facebook's response, as much as I do not like them, I have to concede that they are a private company, they have no obligation to provide a platform for news, and their response was, in my opinion, somewhat justified. Yes, major inconvenience for many, but really brought attention to the absurdity of the legislation. Ironically, the only "news" outlets left were those of our big satirical sites, which have been having a field day. It's like living in an alternate universe hahahaha. Woke up and these satirical sites were the biggest news providers on Facebook. You couldn't have scripted it. In my opinion, the website's actually way better without news 😂

Imperial Eden wrote:

Oh absolutely Facebook weilds a lot of power in terms of controlling what people see and think. I believe about a third of traffic on news sites was from Facebook. What might surprise a lot of foreigners is that at least as far as I've seen and heard, public sentiment is not necessarily in favour of Facebook, but certainly not in favour of the government.

The legislation, which passed the lower house a day before Facebook instituted its news ban, and is yet to be voted on by the upper house, is largely rejected as absurd by most people who have actually read it. News outlets choose to post to Facebook, because Facebook provides them a large audience. It doesn't make sense to a lot of people that Facebook would be forced to pay media outlets who post links to their platform. Furthermore, the legislation only benefits the major media outlets (Nine and News Corp; Australia has the most concentrated print media industry in the world), and grants them access to the algorithms that Facebook and Google use, as well as forcing them to pay money. There is no benefit to smaller, independent journalism, not even our national broadcaster, the ABC. It's no secret that it's legislation pushed by Murdoch-backed lobbyists, and the government has gone along with it thanks to the favourable coverage that they will receive in turn (especially as there is an election next year).

The whole thing comes as a Senate inquiry has begun into Murdoch's news monopoly in the country, to which former Prime Ministers are providing evidence.

In terms of Facebook's response, as much as I do not like them, I have to concede that they are a private company, they have no obligation to provide a platform for news, and their response was, in my opinion, somewhat justified. Yes, major inconvenience for many, but really brought attention to the absurdity of the legislation. Ironically, the only "news" outlets left were those of our big satirical sites, which have been having a field day. It's like living in an alternate universe hahahaha. Woke up and these satirical sites were the biggest news providers on Facebook. You couldn't have scripted it. In my opinion, the website's actually way better without news 😂

I imagine this is a huge victory for Murdoch? Hasn't he been trying to develop his own social media platform for years? But I think his ventures were unsuccessful.

As you say, it was the news media which posted links on FB, not the other way around. But the legislation has passed now after a slight amendment to the part about government arbitration should the news media and FB fail to come to an agreement about how much FB has to pay, right? So it's going to be interesting to see what kind of deal comes out of this. I would imagine it would be similar to what Google already negotiated.

If the satirical sites survived the take down I wonder what algorithm FB was using since it hit a lot of government and NGO sites in addition to the news. Or do you think FB was just flexing it's muscles as a threat?

Imperial Eden wrote:

Did anyone see how Facebook outright banned news outlets posting in Australia? What are your thoughts?

So how's everything shaking out?