Planet Rugby Forum

kiwigreg369 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:51 pm Awesome to see that your ignorance stretches away from PE to this topic Towny. To be fair you’re on the money with the REds but wrong above.

Salient wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:48 pm

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:36 pm I got a bored reading some of this drivel after half the first page. I can’t imagine it was going to get better. I thought the ignorance here was mostly focused on rugby, but it seems it extends to every topic. I’ll make some points and then you guys can use emojis in place of reasoned argument.

This entire episode is government extortion from a corrupt administration that obediently does Murdoch’s bidding. Google paid Murdoch off last week and the government did somersaults of joy. Now Google is off the hook. They don’t need to hand over their algorithms and all of the other apparently essential things that were demanded of them - they paid Murdoch cash and they have no case to answer according to the government. Facebook is a completely different case, and good on them for calling the corrupt government’s bluff.

But let’s see what the current status is:
- Facebook links zero (0) content from Australian news sites
- Facebook users post links on Facebook
- Australian news sites posts links on Facebook

When someone clicks on one of these links, the user is directed to the news site, which creates advertising revenue for the news company. Facebook gets $0 of this advertising revenue on the news site.

That’s right - Facebook generates traffic and over $400m of revenue for Oz news sites and takes nothing for it.

So, what are they being asked to do? Pay the news sites. For what? For...... the news sites failing business model.
It’s just a shake down.

So, how much are they being asked to pay? Well, there’s a simple process:
- Facebook nominates a number
- News site nominates a number
- Arbitration selects one of these numbers
- Can the arbitrator choose a number in the middle? No they can’t.

Can Facebook choose not to have any Australian news content? No they can’t. They must have all Oz news content by the above rules or no news content of any kind. And don’t forget, if they want to have Oz news content, they must pay whatever they’re told to.

So, Facebook does the right thing and tells the corrupt, inept government and their corporate masters to go f*ck themselves. News content is about 4% of their business - pics of cats is just as good. What happens? The Australian media industry blows up because they’re farked without Facebook. They’re heavily dependent on the platform to generate traffic to their failing sites and without it many won’t survive. They’re angry because Facebook isn’t going to pay them whatever they demand to send free visitors to their sites and now they’re out of pocket to the tune of $400m.

Fark them all. The Australian media can suck my dick. They knew that this corrupt shakedown was on and they all quietly stood by with their hands out. None of them wrote an article with any facts - they wrote outright lies to justify the shakedown. And the Australian people generally aren’t bright enough to know anything more than “Facebook = bad”; however they’ll all still spend their time there trading pics of cats.

Half of me wishes Google pulled the trigger as well. Of course, this would have destroyed thousands of businesses and had a noticeable effect on the Australian economy, but at least Murdoch wouldn’t have gotten his way.

Nail on head Bro.

People need to wake up to the fact that it also creates a very dangerous precedent. Someone links a news article here to some dribble on news.com.au, does that mean PR should pay for the link? Anyone see where I'm going with this.

In short the ScoMo Gov are once again out of their depth, admittedly shallow to begin with, when it comes to understanding the internet. What they don't actually acknowledge is they have the tiger by the tail, what happens when the Murdoch empire turns on them and actually reports on their ineptitude, they will be well and truly rooted. But at least Murdoch gets propped up as his "rivers of gold" dry up.

News just in, as expected SocMo has done some sort of back flip, waiting on actual news rather than Murdoch conjecture.

Salient wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:48 pm

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:36 pm I got a bored reading some of this drivel after half the first page. I can’t imagine it was going to get better. I thought the ignorance here was mostly focused on rugby, but it seems it extends to every topic. I’ll make some points and then you guys can use emojis in place of reasoned argument.

This entire episode is government extortion from a corrupt administration that obediently does Murdoch’s bidding. Google paid Murdoch off last week and the government did somersaults of joy. Now Google is off the hook. They don’t need to hand over their algorithms and all of the other apparently essential things that were demanded of them - they paid Murdoch cash and they have no case to answer according to the government. Facebook is a completely different case, and good on them for calling the corrupt government’s bluff.

But let’s see what the current status is:
- Facebook links zero (0) content from Australian news sites
- Facebook users post links on Facebook
- Australian news sites posts links on Facebook

When someone clicks on one of these links, the user is directed to the news site, which creates advertising revenue for the news company. Facebook gets $0 of this advertising revenue on the news site.

That’s right - Facebook generates traffic and over $400m of revenue for Oz news sites and takes nothing for it.

So, what are they being asked to do? Pay the news sites. For what? For...... the news sites failing business model.
It’s just a shake down.

So, how much are they being asked to pay? Well, there’s a simple process:
- Facebook nominates a number
- News site nominates a number
- Arbitration selects one of these numbers
- Can the arbitrator choose a number in the middle? No they can’t.

Can Facebook choose not to have any Australian news content? No they can’t. They must have all Oz news content by the above rules or no news content of any kind. And don’t forget, if they want to have Oz news content, they must pay whatever they’re told to.

So, Facebook does the right thing and tells the corrupt, inept government and their corporate masters to go f*ck themselves. News content is about 4% of their business - pics of cats is just as good. What happens? The Australian media industry blows up because they’re farked without Facebook. They’re heavily dependent on the platform to generate traffic to their failing sites and without it many won’t survive. They’re angry because Facebook isn’t going to pay them whatever they demand to send free visitors to their sites and now they’re out of pocket to the tune of $400m.

Fark them all. The Australian media can suck my dick. They knew that this corrupt shakedown was on and they all quietly stood by with their hands out. None of them wrote an article with any facts - they wrote outright lies to justify the shakedown. And the Australian people generally aren’t bright enough to know anything more than “Facebook = bad”; however they’ll all still spend their time there trading pics of cats.

Half of me wishes Google pulled the trigger as well. Of course, this would have destroyed thousands of businesses and had a noticeable effect on the Australian economy, but at least Murdoch wouldn’t have gotten his way.

Nail on head Bro.

People need to wake up to the fact that it also creates a very dangerous precedent. Someone links a news article here to some dribble on news.com.au, does that mean PR should pay for the link? Anyone see where I'm going with this.

In short the ScoMo Gov are once again out of their depth, admittedly shallow to begin with, when it comes to understanding the internet. What they don't actually acknowledge is they have the tiger by the tail, what happens when the Murdoch empire turns on them and actually reports on their ineptitude, they will be well and truly rooted. But at least Murdoch gets propped up as his "rivers of gold" dry up.

News just in, as expected SocMo has done some sort of back flip, waiting on actual news rather than Murdoch conjecture.

Mog The Almighty wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:58 pm

Salient wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:48 pm

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:36 pm I got a bored reading some of this drivel after half the first page. I can’t imagine it was going to get better. I thought the ignorance here was mostly focused on rugby, but it seems it extends to every topic. I’ll make some points and then you guys can use emojis in place of reasoned argument.

This entire episode is government extortion from a corrupt administration that obediently does Murdoch’s bidding. Google paid Murdoch off last week and the government did somersaults of joy. Now Google is off the hook. They don’t need to hand over their algorithms and all of the other apparently essential things that were demanded of them - they paid Murdoch cash and they have no case to answer according to the government. Facebook is a completely different case, and good on them for calling the corrupt government’s bluff.

But let’s see what the current status is:
- Facebook links zero (0) content from Australian news sites
- Facebook users post links on Facebook
- Australian news sites posts links on Facebook

When someone clicks on one of these links, the user is directed to the news site, which creates advertising revenue for the news company. Facebook gets $0 of this advertising revenue on the news site.

That’s right - Facebook generates traffic and over $400m of revenue for Oz news sites and takes nothing for it.

So, what are they being asked to do? Pay the news sites. For what? For...... the news sites failing business model.
It’s just a shake down.

So, how much are they being asked to pay? Well, there’s a simple process:
- Facebook nominates a number
- News site nominates a number
- Arbitration selects one of these numbers
- Can the arbitrator choose a number in the middle? No they can’t.

Can Facebook choose not to have any Australian news content? No they can’t. They must have all Oz news content by the above rules or no news content of any kind. And don’t forget, if they want to have Oz news content, they must pay whatever they’re told to.

So, Facebook does the right thing and tells the corrupt, inept government and their corporate masters to go f*ck themselves. News content is about 4% of their business - pics of cats is just as good. What happens? The Australian media industry blows up because they’re farked without Facebook. They’re heavily dependent on the platform to generate traffic to their failing sites and without it many won’t survive. They’re angry because Facebook isn’t going to pay them whatever they demand to send free visitors to their sites and now they’re out of pocket to the tune of $400m.

Fark them all. The Australian media can suck my dick. They knew that this corrupt shakedown was on and they all quietly stood by with their hands out. None of them wrote an article with any facts - they wrote outright lies to justify the shakedown. And the Australian people generally aren’t bright enough to know anything more than “Facebook = bad”; however they’ll all still spend their time there trading pics of cats.

Half of me wishes Google pulled the trigger as well. Of course, this would have destroyed thousands of businesses and had a noticeable effect on the Australian economy, but at least Murdoch wouldn’t have gotten his way.

Nail on head Bro.

People need to wake up to the fact that it also creates a very dangerous precedent. Someone links a news article here to some dribble on news.com.au, does that mean PR should pay for the link? Anyone see where I'm going with this.

In short the ScoMo Gov are once again out of their depth, admittedly shallow to begin with, when it comes to understanding the internet. What they don't actually acknowledge is they have the tiger by the tail, what happens when the Murdoch empire turns on them and actually reports on their ineptitude, they will be well and truly rooted. But at least Murdoch gets propped up as his "rivers of gold" dry up.

News just in, as expected SocMo has done some sort of back flip, waiting on actual news rather than Murdoch conjecture.

That's a great rant. I actually copied and pasted it and sent it to some of my other friends who have been discussing this.

But yes, absolutely spot on. The hide of it all is insane.

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:02 pm
Man, don’t send them my drivel.

Wait..... are they hot?

Mog The Almighty wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:07 pm

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:02 pm
Man, don’t send them my drivel.

Wait..... are they hot?

I thought it was a quality rant. You could be a writer or journalist.

It's hard to write huge long slabs of text and keep people engaged and interested.

Mog The Almighty wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:07 pm I thought it was a quality rant. You could be a writer or journalist.

It's hard to write huge long slabs of text and keep people engaged and interested.

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:42 pm I see that I agree with Mog and GS.

Suddenly my confidence is shaken.

kiap wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:00 pm

Mog The Almighty wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:07 pm I thought it was a quality rant. You could be a writer or journalist.

It's hard to write huge long slabs of text and keep people engaged and interested.

The truest thing he wrote was this...

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:42 pm I see that I agree with Mog and GS.

Suddenly my confidence is shaken.

kiap wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:00 pm

Mog The Almighty wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:07 pm I thought it was a quality rant. You could be a writer or journalist.

It's hard to write huge long slabs of text and keep people engaged and interested.

The truest thing he wrote was this...

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:42 pm I see that I agree with Mog and GS.

Suddenly my confidence is shaken.

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:04 pm Is that so? What errors in fact did I make?

kiap wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:19 pm

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:04 pm Is that so? What errors in fact did I make?

Are you saying your rant was omni-perfection?

It wasn't just slapped together with balloons and doof-doof music for Mog?

Aus media: You need to pay for our news
Facebook: But....you post it all yourself?
Aus media: You still need to pay for it
Facebook: Ok, we have removed the ability for you to post your own news so we don't have to pay for it
Aus media: Wtf! Ok you don't have to pay for it, but you need to agree to let us post it
Facebook: Deal

kiwigreg369 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:43 am GS - try this - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/google.

The Guardian will appreciate the click, and it not be viewed via Facebook feed where they get no benefit.

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:36 pm I got a bored reading some of this drivel after half the first page. I can’t imagine it was going to get better. I thought the ignorance here was mostly focused on rugby, but it seems it extends to every topic. I’ll make some points and then you guys can use emojis in place of reasoned argument.
Nothing here yet. But I can see why Mog laps this shit up....
This entire episode is government extortion from a corrupt administration that obediently does Murdoch’s bidding. Google paid Murdoch off last week and the government did somersaults of joy. Obviously not only Newscorp but Seven, Nine and others. And have they actually paid $$ yet? Not so much.
Now Google is off the hook. They don’t need to hand over their algorithms and all of the other apparently essential things that were demanded of them As you well know, the essential bottom line here is the money. The algorithms are the means to the end, on both sides of the coin. - they paid Murdoch cash and they have no case to answer according to the government. Facebook is a completely different case, and good on them for calling the corrupt government’s bluff.

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:36 pm But let’s see what the current status is:
- Facebook links zero (0) content from Australian news sites
- Facebook users post links on Facebook
- Australian news sites posts links on Facebook

When someone clicks on one of these links, the user is directed to the news site, which creates advertising revenue for the news company. Facebook gets $0 of this advertising revenue on the news site.

That’s right - Facebook generates traffic and over $400m of revenue for Oz news sites and takes nothing for it.
Facebook are not a charity. They take plenty. So, what are they being asked to do? Pay the news sites. For what? For...... the news sites failing business model. Correct.

It’s just a shake down.

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:36 pm So, how much are they being asked to pay? Well, there’s a simple process:
- Facebook nominates a number
- News site nominates a number
- Arbitration selects one of these numbers
- Can the arbitrator choose a number in the middle? No they can’t. That's not the full process, but the fallback. I'll add a bit more later.

Can Facebook choose not to have any Australian news content? No they can’t. They must have all Oz news content by the above rules or no news content of any kind. And don’t forget, if they want to have Oz news content, they must pay whatever they’re told to.

So, Facebook does the right thing and tells the corrupt, inept government and their corporate masters to go f*ck themselves.

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:36 pm News content is about 4% of their business Awesome - pics of cats is just as good. What happens? The Australian media industry blows up because they’re farked without Facebook. They’re heavily dependent on the platform to generate traffic to their failing sites and without it many won’t survive. How many won't survive? I thought you said Google had been "shaken down" to cash them up? They’re angry because Facebook isn’t going to pay them whatever they demand to send free visitors to their sites and now they’re out of pocket to the tune of $400m.

Fark them all. The Australian media can suck my dick. They knew that this corrupt shakedown was on and they all quietly stood by with their hands out. None of them wrote an article with any facts A big claim. Did you read many? - they wrote outright lies to justify the shakedown. And the Australian people generally aren’t bright enough to know anything more than “Facebook = bad”; however they’ll all still spend their time there trading pics of cats.

Half of me wishes Google pulled the trigger as well. Of course, this would have destroyed thousands of businesses and had a noticeable effect on the Australian economy, but at least Murdoch wouldn’t have gotten his way.

guy smiley wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 1:10 am

kiwigreg369 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:43 am GS - try this - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/google.

The Guardian will appreciate the click, and it not be viewed via Facebook feed where they get no benefit.

I cancelled my subscription to the Guardian over their stance on this issue.

Still waiting.

We should be able to access their monopoly platform and have the right to monetise our content as a result.

guy smiley wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 4:09 am Much is made of the blanket blocking of a multitude of sites by Facebook. I mentioned this before but it bears repeating... Facebook suspended the pages of all sites that fell under the governments definition of news site. That included such unlikely entities as the BOM and a multitude of blogging sites. The terms of the legislation were written to match... exactly... the description that was included by NewsCorp in their submission.

There’s an inference made that Facebook were guilty of some sort of vindictive action in blocking sites other than news sites but all they did was comply with the mooted legislation and remove their exposure.

I don’t like Facebook’s reach and influence myself, but I support their commercial decision here to protect their interests from a poor piece of legislation.

Ali's Choice wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:36 pm

guy smiley wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:33 pm

Ali's Choice wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:29 pm It's quite amazing that with the stroke of a pen, the Australian govt has made Facebook the financial slave of Rupert Murdoch's Australian based news sites. Facebook must host News Ltd's content and must pay them whatever they demand until the end of time. I've never previously seen a business and a govt collaborate in the shakedown of another business quite so openly and shamelessly.

SS - this is what happens when the human caterpillar GS-AC turns to quickly, some of the shit causes a blockage.

On the actions of Facebook - GS, having read the legislation and Newscorps submission, has confirmed this as fact. They are the same.


Sorry... I haven’t seen any detail of any agreement that either party has entered into, yet you are saying you have.

What is the nature of this agreement and how does that preempt the redrafted legislation that Facebook has announced the govt will put in place allowing them the liberty of a return to business as before?

I was talking about the old legislation. And given Josh Frydenberg has repeatedly boasted that the govt won't be backing down to FB, I just assumed the bill hadn't changed to any significant extent.

Ali's Choice wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:36 pm

guy smiley wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:33 pm

Ali's Choice wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:29 pm It's quite amazing that with the stroke of a pen, the Australian govt has made Facebook the financial slave of Rupert Murdoch's Australian based news sites. Facebook must host News Ltd's content and must pay them whatever they demand until the end of time. I've never previously seen a business and a govt collaborate in the shakedown of another business quite so openly and shamelessly.

SS - this is what happens when the human caterpillar GS-AC turns to quickly, some of the shit causes a blockage.

On the actions of Facebook - GS, having read the legislation and Newscorps submission, has confirmed this as fact. They are the same.


Sorry... I haven’t seen any detail of any agreement that either party has entered into, yet you are saying you have.

What is the nature of this agreement and how does that preempt the redrafted legislation that Facebook has announced the govt will put in place allowing them the liberty of a return to business as before?

I was talking about the old legislation. And given Josh Frydenberg has repeatedly boasted that the govt won't be backing down to FB, I just assumed the bill hadn't changed to any significant extent.

Ali's Choice wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:36 pm

guy smiley wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:33 pm

Ali's Choice wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:29 pm It's quite amazing that with the stroke of a pen, the Australian govt has made Facebook the financial slave of Rupert Murdoch's Australian based news sites. Facebook must host News Ltd's content and must pay them whatever they demand until the end of time. I've never previously seen a business and a govt collaborate in the shakedown of another business quite so openly and shamelessly.

SS - this is what happens when the human caterpillar GS-AC turns to quickly, some of the shit causes a blockage.

On the actions of Facebook - GS, having read the legislation and Newscorps submission, has confirmed this as fact. They are the same.


Sorry... I haven’t seen any detail of any agreement that either party has entered into, yet you are saying you have.

What is the nature of this agreement and how does that preempt the redrafted legislation that Facebook has announced the govt will put in place allowing them the liberty of a return to business as before?

I was talking about the old legislation. And given Josh Frydenberg has repeatedly boasted that the govt won't be backing down to FB, I just assumed the bill hadn't changed to any significant extent.

kiwigreg369 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 5:14 am

SS - this is what happens when the human caterpillar GS-AC turns to quickly, some of the shit causes a blockage.

kiwigreg369 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 5:14 am

Ali's Choice wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:36 pm

guy smiley wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:33 pm

Ali's Choice wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:29 pm It's quite amazing that with the stroke of a pen, the Australian govt has made Facebook the financial slave of Rupert Murdoch's Australian based news sites. Facebook must host News Ltd's content and must pay them whatever they demand until the end of time. I've never previously seen a business and a govt collaborate in the shakedown of another business quite so openly and shamelessly.

SS - this is what happens when the human caterpillar GS-AC turns to quickly, some of the shit causes a blockage.

On the actions of Facebook - GS, having read the legislation and Newscorps submission, has confirmed this as fact. They are the same.


Sorry... I haven’t seen any detail of any agreement that either party has entered into, yet you are saying you have.

What is the nature of this agreement and how does that preempt the redrafted legislation that Facebook has announced the govt will put in place allowing them the liberty of a return to business as before?

I was talking about the old legislation. And given Josh Frydenberg has repeatedly boasted that the govt won't be backing down to FB, I just assumed the bill hadn't changed to any significant extent.

SS - this is what happens when the human caterpillar GS-AC turns to quickly, some of the shit causes a blockage.

On the actions of Facebook - GS, having read the legislation and Newscorps submission, has confirmed this as fact. They are the same.

human caterpillar GS-AC

guy smiley wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 5:54 am Check it yourselves...

https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/f ... s_corp.pdf

kiwigreg369 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:43 am GS - try this - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/google.

The Guardian will appreciate the click, and it not be viewed via Facebook feed where they get no benefit.

The dominance of the five tech giants represents the same existential threat to liberal democracy that Louis Brandeis saw in the huge industrial trusts of early 19th-century America. The Silicon Valley narrative that sees democracies in the role of the guy who followed processional elephants during the Indian Raj, sweeping up their dung, is as ridiculous as it is pernicious. It is high time we called the industry’s bluff.

John Naughton chairs the advisory board of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge

guy smiley wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 6:10 am

Sensible Stephen wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 6:08 am

guy smiley wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 5:54 am Check it yourselves...

https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/f ... s_corp.pdf

So, you lied.

I’m about to go to work. Care to outline your objection civilly or just leave it hanging?

MungoMan wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:58 am

guy smiley wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 6:10 am

Sensible Stephen wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 6:08 am

guy smiley wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 5:54 am Check it yourselves...

https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/f ... s_corp.pdf

So, you lied.

I’m about to go to work. Care to outline your objection civilly or just leave it hanging?

While you’re waiting for Stephen, could you explain why you believe the document you linked demonstrates the Cwth changed the wording of the Bill in line with NewsCorp’s recommendation?

The linked doc is a sub on a draft Foreign Investment Review regulation and, to the extent it deals with the (then) Exposure Draft of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Media blah blah blah) Bill, it does so by expressing a preference for the Exposure Draft’s definition ‘core news content’. Specifically, NewsCorp’s recommendation was to incorporate that definition in the draft reg’s definition ‘Australian media business’.

The wording of definition ‘core news content’ in the Bill now before Parliament has changed since the Exposure Draft (which isn’t unusual). It hasn’t changed in line with any NewsCorp suggestion, tho’, since they never made one in the sub you linked.

Did you link the wrong doc?

Facebook got everything it wanted out of Australia by being willing to do what the other guy wouldn’t
“One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.”
By Joshua Benton @jbenton Feb. 23, 2021, 12:16 p.m.

[Warning: Violent and gruesome metaphor ahead.]

In The Usual Suspects (1995), there’s a scene in which the true extent of ur-villain Keyser Söze’s evil is clarified for the viewer. A gang of Hungarians has burst into Söze’s home and taken his wife and children hostage. “They realized that, to be in power, you didn’t need guns or money or even numbers,” one character, Verbal Kint, narrates. “You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn’t.”

The Hungarians want Söze’s territory, and to show how serious their intentions are, one of them slices the throat of Söze’s youngest boy, to the obvious horror of his wife. The Hungarian grabs a girl and makes it clear that she’ll be next.

Söze shoots two of the Hungarians and then does the unthinkable — remember, he’s the bad guy! — and shoots his own children, one by one, and his wife. Söze tells the Hungarian “he would rather see his family dead than live another day after this.” He lets the last Hungarian go, the better to spread the legend of the villain so heartless he would murder his own family to make a point.

As Verbal puts it: “Keaton always said: ‘I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him.’ Well, I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Söze.”1

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Facebook will restore news sharing in Australia, at least for now
February 23, 2021
In Australia, Facebook just shot the hostages. (Metaphorically, of course.)

Australian regulators have been arguing for months that Facebook derives huge value from the news stories shared on its platform — and that, as a result, Facebook should be forced to compensate the Australian publishers who create them. As with the Hungarians above, Australia’s play can be simplified to: We have something you find incredibly valuable, and unless you give us what we want, we can destroy it.

To which Facebook, by unilaterally banning Australian news stories, responded: You have a really messed up idea of who finds what valuable here. Here, watch me shoot the hostages and show how illusory your “leverage” really is.

It took less than a week for Australia to backtrack. The mandatory arbitration that was the key to Australia’s proposed new law has been reduced to a matter of theory. Facebook can now decide to offer different publishers whatever amount it wants, including nothing at all, without risk of penalty. And Facebook retains the right to shoot more hostages whenever it likes, as Campbell Brown’s statement makes clear:

After further discussions with the Australian government, we have come to an agreement that will allow us to support the publishers we choose to, including small and local publishers. We’re restoring news on Facebook in Australia in the coming days. Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation. It’s always been our intention to support journalism in Australia and around the world, and we’ll continue to invest in news globally and resist efforts by media conglomerates to advance regulatory frameworks that do not take account of the true value exchange between publishers and platforms like Facebook.

The money is not and has never been the issue here. Facebook and Google are both perfectly willing to throw money at publishers to hold off regulation. (I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a petty cash drawer somewhere in Menlo Park labeled Hush Money For Publishers In Anglophone Countries (Small).) As I wrote last year (and, I daresay, it’s held up):

From the duopoly’s perspective, the biggest problem with paying for all the news coursing through their digital veins isn’t the money. (They have plenty of money.) It’s that paying for news in any systemic way would attack their core advantage as platforms: organizing other people’s content.

Say you think Google owes The New York Times money for including all of its news stories in search. Fine. Do they also owe me money for including my old blog from the early 2000s? It’s in Google’s index too. How about Breitbart? How about The Daily Stormer or Stormfront? What about your tweets? DairyQueen.com? All of them are digital content that contributes some sort of notional value to Google as a product. Maybe you think you can draw the line somewhere, but where — and how do you apply it to an index of billions of websites?

Should Facebook pay publishers based on how much value they add to News Feed? Okay — then the biggest check goes to the Daily Mail, and The Daily Wire gets as much as The New York Times.

No, any sort of systematic, performance-driven payments to publishers based on the value they offer platforms are a no-go. So Facebook and Google have responded by looking for other ways to deal with the PR headache by getting money to news companies.

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Google is giving $1 billion to news publishers — to help convince governments not to take a whole lot more than that
October 1, 2020
Hence the various Journalism Projects and News Initiatives of Google and Facebook, which started with innovation grants and have since grown to “Okay, we’ll pay publishers some money, fine, but only for this side product that no one really cares about, and we pick who and how much to pay.”

The tech giants have money, and they have power. They don’t mind giving up money if it gives them something in return: a friendlier regulatory environment, or silence from cranky publishers. What they don’t want to give up is the power: the power to pick winners (whether via algorithm or cash transfer), the power to decide what it’s willing to pay, and — most importantly — the power to maintain their main advantage as platforms, which is to aggregate huge amounts of free information and profit from all the ways they can organize, distribute, and monetize it all.

If there were suddenly a law that says Google has to pay for some kinds of information in its search index — or that Facebook has to pay to have some kinds of information in News Feed — that core element of their model would be at risk. Suddenly, instead of being a toll road that commuters pay to use, you have to pay drivers for the privilege of using you? That’s the unthinkable.

As Google’s Melanie Silva told Australian officials: “The concept of paying a very small group of website or content creators for appearing purely in our organic search results sets a dangerous precedent for us that presents unmanageable risk from a product and business-model point of view.”

The thing about Keyser Söze vs. the Hungarians is that there’s no side to root for. They’re both bad guys with bad intentions, so instead of some sort of moral valence, all you’re left to compare is the raw power on display by both sides.

Facebook is a corporate nightmare that has done very real and meaningful damage to democracy. Australian regulators carry water for Rupert Murdoch and have been proposing a policy that would, as Tim Berners-Lee says, make the web “unworkable.” But a bad company facing bad regulations distills down to pure power, and by shooting the hostages, Facebook made it very clear where that still lies.

Or, to put it another way: “How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?”

‘Government has not given up anything’: ACCC chair backs media code changes

February 24, 2021 — 5.56pm

Competition boss Rod Sims says the federal government has emerged as the victor in its battle with Facebook and Google over the news media bargaining code after weeks of high stakes negotiations about their future in Australia.

Mr Sims rejected suggestions the Morrison government had bowed to Facebook’s demands by amending the code as part of peace deal that brought the social media giant back to the negotiating table with Australian news companies.“In my strong view, the government has not given up anything that really matters to the integrity of the code,” Mr Sims said.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims said the government’s amendments to the media code had not undermined its integrity.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims said the government’s amendments to the media code had not undermined its integrity.CREDIT:JESSICA HROMAS
“Success here was always about, firstly, having the code passed so that it’s always there and can be used as needed. And secondly, the fact that you’ve got commercial deals being done.

“I never wanted anyone to go to arbitration, I wanted the threat of arbitration, to give bargaining muscle to the news media businesses so that they could come to a commercial deal.”

The amended code passed the Senate on Wednesday evening and will return to the House of Representatives for approval on Thursday to become law.

As chair of Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Mr Sims spearheaded the drafting of the early versions of the code following an 18-month inquiry into the market dominance of Google and Facebook and the impact on the news industry.

In a breakthrough on Tuesday, Facebook agreed to reverse its blanket ban of news on its Australian platform, and began re-engaging with news businesses about commercial deals, after the government committed to making four amendments to the code. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg secured the eleventh hour deal over six phone calls with Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg across Monday and Tuesday, as the Senate prepared to vote to legislate the code.

Within hours of the agreement, Seven West Media became the first of the major media companies to announce a forthcoming deal with Facebook. Nine Entertainment Co, publisher of this masthead, and the Guardian Australia had also resumed talks with Facebook by Tuesday evening.

Outgoing Nine chief executive Hugh Marks, said Facebook’s ability to extract concessions from the government was “concerning”, although he did not regard the changes as materially altering the code. Nine is the owner of this masthead.

“The thing that we should all reflect on is that we are prepared to live in a world where a corporation can have a tantrum and that will change legislation as a result. I think that’s concerning,” Mr Marks said.

He said he was confident Nine would strike binding commercial deals with both Google and Facebook that covered payment for news, but said there was “still a bit of work to do”. Industry sources told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age last week that Nine had signed a letter of intent for a deal worth more than $30 million with Google, but the contract has not been finalised. The sources now say this figure could be closer to $45 million.

The code, which Facebook and Google fiercely protested as “unworkable”, sets out a framework for news businesses to force the tech giants to enter a binding arbitration process to seek payment for the use of their news content.

Mr Frydenberg and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher have described the changes, which include inserting an extra two-month period of mediation into the bargaining process, as “technical amendments” and “clarifications”.

But the most significant amendments pave the way for the tech giants to avoid the code altogether if they can satisfy the government they have struck enough commercial deals with publishers without needing to resort to forced arbitration.

Swinburne University of Technology’s Belinda Barnet, an expert in digital media, said the amendments proved that Facebook’s news ban had been a successful bargaining tactic, but ultimately the aim of the code was still being realised.

“It’s like the Treasurer has got a big stick in his hand and is saying if you don’t behave as though the code applies to you, then I will make it apply to you,” Dr Barnet said.

“In the end, if [the amendments] get media companies to the table with these platforms and negotiation payments, then that was always the aim.”

Peter Lewis, director of the Centre for Responsible Technology at the Australia Institute, a progressive think tank which supported the code, said a “helicopter view” showed the threat of the code was delivering.

“Deals are being done and money is being transferred from the advertising monopolies to media companies,” Mr Lewis said.

Australia’s efforts to regulate Google and Facebook are being closely watched in other jurisdictions, including Canada where the Trudeau government is also drafting laws to force the tech giants to compensate news publishers.

Microsoft also announced this week that it joined forces with four big European Union news industry groups to push for a similar model of revenue sharing that would “take inspiration” the Australian code.

freewheelan wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 10:37 am Here's an interesting take, and a fairly convincing one at that:

Facebook got everything it wanted out of Australia by being willing to do what the other guy wouldn’t
“One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.”
By Joshua Benton @jbenton Feb. 23, 2021, 12:16 p.m.

grievous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:10 pm ‘Government has not given up anything’: ACCC chair backs media code changes

February 24, 2021 — 5.56pm

Competition boss Rod Sims says the federal government has emerged as the victor in its battle with Facebook and Google

kiap wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:19 pm

towny wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:04 pm Is that so? What errors in fact did I make?

Are you saying your rant was omni-perfection?

It wasn't just slapped together with balloons and doof-doof music for Mog?

freewheelan wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 10:37 am Here's an interesting take, and a fairly convincing one at that:

Facebook got everything it wanted out of Australia by being willing to do what the other guy wouldn’t
“One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.”
By Joshua Benton @jbenton Feb. 23, 2021, 12:16 p.m.

[Warning: Violent and gruesome metaphor ahead.]

In The Usual Suspects (1995), there’s a scene in which the true extent of ur-villain Keyser Söze’s evil is clarified for the viewer. A gang of Hungarians has burst into Söze’s home and taken his wife and children hostage. “They realized that, to be in power, you didn’t need guns or money or even numbers,” one character, Verbal Kint, narrates. “You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn’t.”

The Hungarians want Söze’s territory, and to show how serious their intentions are, one of them slices the throat of Söze’s youngest boy, to the obvious horror of his wife. The Hungarian grabs a girl and makes it clear that she’ll be next.

Söze shoots two of the Hungarians and then does the unthinkable — remember, he’s the bad guy! — and shoots his own children, one by one, and his wife. Söze tells the Hungarian “he would rather see his family dead than live another day after this.” He lets the last Hungarian go, the better to spread the legend of the villain so heartless he would murder his own family to make a point.

As Verbal puts it: “Keaton always said: ‘I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him.’ Well, I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Söze.”1

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In Australia, Facebook just shot the hostages. (Metaphorically, of course.)

Australian regulators have been arguing for months that Facebook derives huge value from the news stories shared on its platform — and that, as a result, Facebook should be forced to compensate the Australian publishers who create them. As with the Hungarians above, Australia’s play can be simplified to: We have something you find incredibly valuable, and unless you give us what we want, we can destroy it.

To which Facebook, by unilaterally banning Australian news stories, responded: You have a really messed up idea of who finds what valuable here. Here, watch me shoot the hostages and show how illusory your “leverage” really is.

It took less than a week for Australia to backtrack. The mandatory arbitration that was the key to Australia’s proposed new law has been reduced to a matter of theory. Facebook can now decide to offer different publishers whatever amount it wants, including nothing at all, without risk of penalty. And Facebook retains the right to shoot more hostages whenever it likes, as Campbell Brown’s statement makes clear:

After further discussions with the Australian government, we have come to an agreement that will allow us to support the publishers we choose to, including small and local publishers. We’re restoring news on Facebook in Australia in the coming days. Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation. It’s always been our intention to support journalism in Australia and around the world, and we’ll continue to invest in news globally and resist efforts by media conglomerates to advance regulatory frameworks that do not take account of the true value exchange between publishers and platforms like Facebook.

The money is not and has never been the issue here. Facebook and Google are both perfectly willing to throw money at publishers to hold off regulation. (I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a petty cash drawer somewhere in Menlo Park labeled Hush Money For Publishers In Anglophone Countries (Small).) As I wrote last year (and, I daresay, it’s held up):

From the duopoly’s perspective, the biggest problem with paying for all the news coursing through their digital veins isn’t the money. (They have plenty of money.) It’s that paying for news in any systemic way would attack their core advantage as platforms: organizing other people’s content.

Say you think Google owes The New York Times money for including all of its news stories in search. Fine. Do they also owe me money for including my old blog from the early 2000s? It’s in Google’s index too. How about Breitbart? How about The Daily Stormer or Stormfront? What about your tweets? DairyQueen.com? All of them are digital content that contributes some sort of notional value to Google as a product. Maybe you think you can draw the line somewhere, but where — and how do you apply it to an index of billions of websites?

Should Facebook pay publishers based on how much value they add to News Feed? Okay — then the biggest check goes to the Daily Mail, and The Daily Wire gets as much as The New York Times.

No, any sort of systematic, performance-driven payments to publishers based on the value they offer platforms are a no-go. So Facebook and Google have responded by looking for other ways to deal with the PR headache by getting money to news companies.

RELATED ARTICLE
Google is giving $1 billion to news publishers — to help convince governments not to take a whole lot more than that
October 1, 2020
Hence the various Journalism Projects and News Initiatives of Google and Facebook, which started with innovation grants and have since grown to “Okay, we’ll pay publishers some money, fine, but only for this side product that no one really cares about, and we pick who and how much to pay.”

The tech giants have money, and they have power. They don’t mind giving up money if it gives them something in return: a friendlier regulatory environment, or silence from cranky publishers. What they don’t want to give up is the power: the power to pick winners (whether via algorithm or cash transfer), the power to decide what it’s willing to pay, and — most importantly — the power to maintain their main advantage as platforms, which is to aggregate huge amounts of free information and profit from all the ways they can organize, distribute, and monetize it all.

If there were suddenly a law that says Google has to pay for some kinds of information in its search index — or that Facebook has to pay to have some kinds of information in News Feed — that core element of their model would be at risk. Suddenly, instead of being a toll road that commuters pay to use, you have to pay drivers for the privilege of using you? That’s the unthinkable.

As Google’s Melanie Silva told Australian officials: “The concept of paying a very small group of website or content creators for appearing purely in our organic search results sets a dangerous precedent for us that presents unmanageable risk from a product and business-model point of view.”

The thing about Keyser Söze vs. the Hungarians is that there’s no side to root for. They’re both bad guys with bad intentions, so instead of some sort of moral valence, all you’re left to compare is the raw power on display by both sides.

Facebook is a corporate nightmare that has done very real and meaningful damage to democracy. Australian regulators carry water for Rupert Murdoch and have been proposing a policy that would, as Tim Berners-Lee says, make the web “unworkable.” But a bad company facing bad regulations distills down to pure power, and by shooting the hostages, Facebook made it very clear where that still lies.

Or, to put it another way: “How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?”

https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/02/faceb ... y-wouldnt/

Ellafan wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 1:16 pm I'll start: Benton is a director of Nieman Foundation of Journalism. He imperiously announces that:

"It took less than a week for Australia to backtrack."

This is a very subjective assessment. You have to ask, has Benton got properly across the facts of what happened, or is just regurgitating the Facebook line? He says "The money is not and has never been the issue here". If so why are Google and Facebook in bite-mode Josh? If it's not an issue why carry on like pork chops?

Do Facebook contribute to Nieman Foundation funding? Have to ask.

Benton's contribution to this debate is almost, but not quite, as unconvincing as Guy Smiley's linking irrelevant documents ...a letter making submissions about amendments to a different regulation, which refers to an existing proposed definition of 'core news' in the Bill, as part of the submission presented (see para 15 on page 3 thereof).

This is probably a good example of why, when you copy links from shouty blogs and echo chamber discussion groups populated by tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorists, that supposedly prove your point, you really should read them yourself, before exposing them to evaluation to better educated people less emotionally invested in the subject matter.

Facebook Inc. backed down from its news blackout in Australia after the government agreed to amend world-first legislation forcing the tech giant and Google to pay local publishers for content. The social-media platform switched off news sharing in Australia last week in opposition to the proposed law, and Mark Zuckerberg and government officials have been locked in talks to find a compromise. Among key concessions, the government said Tuesday it would take into account commercial deals Google and Facebook reach with news companies before deciding whether they are subject to the law, and would also give them one month’s notice. The platforms also won more time to strike deals with publishers before they’re forced into final-offer arbitration as a last resort.

In short, Facebook forced the government to make explicit the implicit quid pro quo I wrote about last Thursday:

The Australian government effectively threatened Google that it would impose completely unacceptable conditions on their product unless they paid up; Google has now paid up, and so the government is satisfied. Never mind that the pay-up didn’t go to the taxpayers of Australia; Rupert Murdoch is happy, so everyone is happy.

Secondly, Facebook retained the right to block all news in the future; the government has to give the company 30 days notice before it imposes those (still!) unacceptable conditions on its product, at which time Facebook can block all news and won’t be held liable if a few links sneak through.

Facebook also secured concessions in terms of being able to offer different deals to different publishers, and to have mediation before arbitration, but clearly the company is prepared to pay up, just on their terms — and with the right to walk away, if publishers get too greedy. In other words, just as you might expect from an incumbent, Facebook is willing to pay off whoever needs paying off as long as their core business is left alone.

So now everyone is sordid.

towny wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 3:58 pm

Every word I wrote was 100% accurate.
But since then the Oz govt caved - FB said they’d pay off media and the govt watered down some of the more ridiculous extortion demands.