[HN Gopher] Facebook, Google to be forced to share ad revenue wi...
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Facebook, Google to be forced to share ad revenue with Australian
media
Author : docdeek
Score : 112 points
Date : 2020-04-19 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| np_tedious wrote:
| I don't understand. If they wanted to tax it for the government /
| social programs it would sort of make sense. But why distribute
| it to old media companies?
|
| Is there any merit to this at all?
| tensor wrote:
| The old media companies business model collapsed (newspapers).
| So they are essentially turning the old media companies into
| public companies, but instead of using tax dollars they are
| arbitrarily punishing Google and Facebook because they have a
| lot of money.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I think the point is, if somebody shares a link to an article
| of Sydney Morning Herald on Facebook, and Facebook runs an ad
| along side the article, that the SMH should get some of profit
| from the ad.
|
| It's a super dumb idea that will never go anywhere.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I know you're not defending it, but even this steelman
| doesn't make sense. They don't run an ad alongside the
| article; They run it alongside the _link_ to the article, and
| the Sydney Morning-Herald runs an ad alongside the article.
| Facebook is providing aggregation and sharing of the link,
| and advertising alongside that aggregation and sharing. Does
| the Aus gov't think that telecoms or smartphone manufacturers
| should be paying extortion money to media companies too?
| cormacrelf wrote:
| I can't back any of this up, but I think this is the logic.
|
| Facebook is essentially a link distribution platform. It
| only continues to get visitors because media companies keep
| providing, like spooky magic, new links to be shared on
| there every day. Many of their visitors would drop away
| immediately without news. The news is the basis for a ton
| of engagement once the visitors arrive (39.2K likes, etc.).
| If that were all true you'd think it would be enough to get
| Facebook to pay to keep news companies afloat, but it
| isn't: they don't care _which_ news organisations survive,
| only that there are still new links every day. Importantly,
| because nobody reads articles, only headlines, news orgs
| get nothing without the click. So "link aggregation"
| without ad revenue or subscription revenue is worth zero in
| the usual case. Fb doesn't have a problem letting good
| journalism die out as long as there are enough Breitbarts
| going around producing engagement on Fb. It takes a lot
| less $ per link to produce fake news than real news with
| facts in it, and those headlines are pretty damn engaging,
| so those places will die out last or more likely never die
| out because the margins are still fine and their
| competitors have died out.
|
| I think that means they have to pay fake news places as
| well, otherwise promoting quality news (Fb can control how
| much attention a link gets) costs more tax and is
| disincentivised.
| polemic wrote:
| Read the article, it's not for social programmes.
| Panini_Jones wrote:
| That's what their comment said.
| seemslegit wrote:
| Because "old media companies" are Rupert Murdoch, who does in
| real life what George Soros is accused of doing by media
| outlets controlled by... Rupert Murdoch.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Frankly, it's just another case of the non-US developed world
| deciding that demanding extortion money is better than trying
| to innovate and create value for the world. The US economy has
| plenty of pathologies and plenty of things to learn from the
| rest of the OECD, but stuff like this is the flipside. I
| thought this was mostly Europe's wheelhouse, but apparently
| it's broader than that.
| tikkabhuna wrote:
| Tariffs and such have been used to even the playing field
| though. When scalability and network effects are strong how
| would a company in Australia compete with the existing
| players who can structure themselves to pay extremely little
| tax.
|
| If US tech companies want to generate profit from EU and
| other OECD countries why shouldn't they be taxed in the
| countries they generate that money from?
| jasonlfunk wrote:
| What if Google and Facebook just said "No, thank you."? I think
| Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship, which
| might say something about the tech giants. The only possible
| thing the Aussies could do is block the websites, and that sounds
| like political suicide to me. I'm guessing the companies will
| decide to play ball, but if other countries start to follow suit,
| it might be interesting to see what happens if they start pushing
| back.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Is it truly the only thing they could do? They could force
| phones to use different defaults. They could ban
| preinstallation of their apps. They could force preinstallation
| of competing apps. They could throttle them so their services
| get slow. They could force providers to show a large banner in
| addition to the site when showing it. They could I suppose add
| an additional tax on android phones to hurt Google, or even
| through the providers tax Facebook and Google usage until
| compliance. They could ban their apps and app stores. They
| could freeze bank accounts. They could send the army to destroy
| their hq. Banning their websites is merely the most sensible
| action in this situation.
| jariel wrote:
| It would be crazy for G/FB to play that kind of hardball. For
| Google, it would be an existential and permanent loss of
| business.
|
| Imagine if you woke up and G was not available in your country?
|
| You switch to an alternative: Bing, DDG etc..
|
| Alternatives that many Aussies may not have really been aware
| of.
|
| And now, 100% of G's user base is being 'conditioned' on
| competitors' products - their default behavior, the icons they
| click, the default search engine for browsers changing over.
|
| And for most people - DDG/Bing is probably just as good as
| Google.
|
| A month later, G comes back to Australia, how many people
| bother to switch back? How many people have come to 'be fine'
| with something else? How many people resent G?
|
| Does the Aussie Gov, which will realize that 'search' is an
| essential aspect of operating ability, will even allow
| government workers to use a service from someone who will drop
| it instantly, and sign a service contract with Bing?
| Corporations who see it as an existential flaw and require
| everyone to have 3 search solutions 'at the ready'.
|
| For FB obviously it's a different story, however, a smart
| politician would paint FB as a 'foreign enemy' and turn the
| tide of populism against them as well. Because Aussie didn't
| 'ban' them, FB/G pulled out themselves, denying people their
| service, most people would 'blame them'.
|
| FB has some seemingly essential aspects in terms of
| communication, but I think that people would soon discover that
| it's not essential at all.
|
| It would be a disaster for both of them.
|
| The other risk is that this disaster becomes contagious.
|
| If G 'shuts down' in Australia - what does the UK government
| do? The EU gov? If they are smart they react with legislation
| forcing more 'choice' in search on every level.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| This has the assumption that Bing/DDG won't be forced out due
| to the same law. Would you mind clarifying why that would be
| true?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| This doesn't seem implausible to me, based on the different
| competitive positions that Google and Bing hold. I can
| imagine a scenario in which Google doesn't want to pay this
| tax to avoid a ripple effect across their business in other
| countries, while Bing opportunistically decides that paying
| protection money is worth establishing a foothold as the
| primary search engine in a developed, Anglophone country.
| jariel wrote:
| There is zero chance that Google 'pulls out' to avoid a
| 'ripple effect' - because this would cause a much more
| existential 'ripple effect' in other ways.
|
| Google pulling out of any regular nation would be
| existentially damaging.
|
| MS/Bing would weaponize this to the nth degree - they
| already have service contracts with businesses and
| corporations around the world and they'd be in a global
| push to 'drop Google' for the inherent risk of pullout
| they just witnesses.
|
| This would be the #1 talking point for their massive
| global salesforce.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > There is zero chance that Google 'pulls out' to avoid a
| 'ripple effect'
|
| Why are you quoting the words "pulls out" next to an
| actual quote from my comment? I didn't use it in my
| comment, and neither did anyone else in the comment
| thread. Google refusing to play ball here could take any
| number of forms, from the extreme hardball of simply
| refusing and tying it up in the courts (and getting fined
| and perhaps blocked), to just blacklisting links to the
| companies that the government is extorting them on behalf
| of. The latter wouldn't even be "hardball"; companies
| that are explicitly disagreeing with Google's terms for
| inclusion aren't included in their results, in the same
| way that robots.txt allows for.
|
| > Google pulling out of any regular nation would be
| existentially damaging.
|
| There's plenty of precedent for this level of targeted
| reduction in service as a response to gov't demands. They
| shut down Google News in Spain, removed French news links
| under very-similar demands, etc etc. None of this has had
| the ripple effect you're describing, and is evidence in
| favor of the fact that Google is concerned about a
| broader ripple effect: Why else would they give up all
| the revenue from referral to these sites instead of
| paying a portion of the revenue in protection money?
| jariel wrote:
| + If they don't want to pay the tax, they would have to
| leave ... I didn't mean to imply that's what you implied
| although I see how one could read it that way.
|
| + " They shut down Google News in Spain, removed French
| news links under very-similar demands, etc etc. None of
| this has had the ripple effect you're describing"
|
| The 'ripple effect' is happening right now in Australia.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| These laws are being brought in due to the news
| aggregation, not due to the search engine. If the search
| engine forwarded you on to the news site, and didn't
| clutter up their UI with all the extra information, it
| wouldn't be as legally exposed. Which was, you know,
| Google's original business model.
| jariel wrote:
| First - if G doesn't want to be in Aussie due to some tax,
| it's their 'choice' they're not forced out.
|
| Second - it doesn't matter that much where the tit-for-tat
| is - it would be existentially disastrous for Google or FB
| in either sense.
|
| If a corporation was 'out' of a major, regular western
| nation for any reason I think the CEO's job would be in
| serious trouble, even Zuck.
| PeterisP wrote:
| "Playing hardball" does not require Google to abandon
| Australian customers, it just requires Google to have special
| treatment for Australian media sites - not providing any
| snippets from these sites, prioritizing all other sites when
| possible (so Australian sites only show up in searches for
| local news, and not on e.g. lifestyle articles) and of course
| they can simply not show any ads on the (very small portion)
| of the searches linking to Australian news sites, so that
| they get a percentage of $0.
|
| I think the media conglomerates overestimate their importance
| to Australian customers - for countries like France there's a
| language barrier, but the vast, vast majority of searches by
| Australians can be served well without needing any content
| from the Australian news companies. If linking to your
| content is expensive, and linking to other content is cheap,
| then it's perfectly reasonable and generally legal to prefer
| cheap sources whenever possible.
| luckylion wrote:
| > The only possible thing the Aussies could do is block the
| websites, and that sounds like political suicide to me.
|
| The first thing they could do is fine them. Google and FB might
| say "ha! but we don't have bank accounts in Australia!" and the
| government will simply collect from companies in Australia that
| have outstanding bills from Google for e.g. Adwords or Google
| Cloud.
|
| Google can still run their websites to be reachable from
| Australia, but they wouldn't be able to do business in
| Australia. And what's the point of running an ad tech empire if
| you can't make money off of it?
| RareSoft wrote:
| Could Australian ISPs be instructed to just blacklist
| Google's and Facebook's Ad servers nationally?
| shakna wrote:
| There are currently several sites banned in Australia, and
| the blacklisting took the form of ISPs hijacking the DNS
| lookup. Which means it is totally ineffective. Our
| government is not well known for mandating the right tool
| for the right job, when it comes to tech.
| speedgoose wrote:
| China has the technology.
| tikkabhuna wrote:
| Perhaps the Australian government would prohibit Australian
| companies from advertising with FB/Google?
| antjanus wrote:
| plus, it'll be easier for them to obfuscate the data somehow
| and share some specific piece of information that's
| _technically_ correct but is useless.
|
| They can also just drag this out in court for a long time
| until everyone forgets, they restructure how their money
| works, and _then_ they 'll share the useless info freely.
|
| Just my take on the situation.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Couldn't Google just remove sites demanding special treatment
| from their search results? It would be right in line with
| their current behavior, ethically and mechanically; a media
| company whining to the Australian government for
| protectionism is just a high-overhead way of disallowing all
| crawler traffic in robots.txt.
|
| Less pithily: Google crawls the web, offering a standard set
| of terms on which it does so. No website is compelled to
| accept these terms and have their links displayed on
| google.com, even if they're public-facing. The mechanism by
| which you can opt out, fully or partially, is a robots.txt
| file specifying to the crawler what it can and can't crawl
| and display. Australian media companies are saying that they
| don't accept Google's linking terms; they proposed counter-
| terms of licensing fees for linking, and Google can refuse
| them. As the two sides have failed to agree to terms on which
| the media sites can be linked to by Google, they fall neatly
| into the category of a website blocking robots.txt
| notatoad wrote:
| Fine them for what though? they don't seem to be breaking any
| regulations, they just have a lot of money and the local
| media companies want some of it.
|
| that's not a fine.
| luckylion wrote:
| > they don't seem to be breaking any regulations, they just
| have a lot of money and the local media companies want some
| of it.
|
| That's a great way to get a law passed ;)
|
| I'm not saying that I believe the Australian government has
| a legitimate case or anything, just that between "Google
| can do whatever it likes" and "all of Google's websites are
| blocked at ISP levels", there are a few levels of
| escalation that they can pick.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| True, but the escalation goes in both directions. Google
| and Facebook are American companies, Australia and the US
| have existing free-trade agreements. Imposing fines on
| foreign businesses to force them to roll over for the
| benefit of local businesses is exactly the sort of thing
| that free-trade agreements forbid in no unclear terms.
| There are a lot of factors at play. Trump dislikes Google
| because the conservative hive mind has turned against it,
| but favors Facebook because it's supposedly essential to
| his campaign operations. Plus he's got a protectionist
| bent and loves trade sanctions.
| blondin wrote:
| feel like we discussed this here before and it was a
| different country (france?)
|
| so the issues is using content in google news or in
| snippets shown in google search results. i commented before
| that i seldom leave news or the main search anymore because
| of these snippets.
|
| why isn't it fair that the ads revenue is shared with these
| news publishers if their content is taken?
| roenxi wrote:
| Google isn't doing anything particularly special. I think
| banning them would be silly, but it isn't like they offer an
| irreplaceable or even particularly complicated set of services.
| kerng wrote:
| Its going to be the new norm and megacorporations have to share
| some of there wealth. Slowly countries and laws are catching
| up.
| notatoad wrote:
| there's already a way for megacorps to have to share some of
| their wealth - it's called taxes and subsidies, and it's a
| well-established system.
|
| what australia, france, spain, and anybody else who is trying
| to enforce revenue transfers from facebook and google to
| their local media companies is trying to do is called a
| state-funded media, but that's apparently a bad look. so
| instead of collecting taxes and then distributing that tax
| revenue to the companies they want to subsidize, they're
| trying to pretend this is still some sort of free-market,
| independently funded media. a newspaper that's staying afloat
| because of government-mandated payments from big tech
| companies isn't any more independent than one being funded
| directly by the state.
| throwaway483284 wrote:
| There would be no political suicide there. It's so easy to make
| Google/Facebook look evil in this case if they don't comply.
| Just say they are not paying taxes and getting _our_ money
| abroad etc.
|
| But there is 0% chance of Google/Facebook not complying.
|
| > I think Google and Facebook have more power in this
| relationship
|
| Not even close.
| ojame wrote:
| >Just say they are not paying taxes and getting our money
| abroad etc.
|
| This is said pretty regularly in the media in Australia, and
| honestly no one cares. Even big mining companies like BHP pay
| little corporate tax on shore, and after years of it being
| 'exposed', honestly the general public don't seem to care.
| Smoosh wrote:
| I think it's more accurate to say the public cares
| somewhat, and consequently politicians do too (they
| sometimes roll out accusations of "un-Australian" tax
| minimization to suit their agenda). But politicians don't
| dare to move against the big companies because they know
| they'll lose. Both in campaign/party donations and in being
| targeted at the next election if their policies are going
| to impact those companies (see what happened with the
| mining companies and the Carbon tax). This same thing could
| happen with these "internet" companies who would only need
| to devote a little of their local advertising to a campaign
| against the change and against the party proposing it to
| have any public support cancelled out and politicians
| quickly reversing their position.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Don't the French and Spanish examples indicate otherwise?
| Spain's link tax in 2014 led to the shutting-down of Google
| News Spain, and France's attempt to charge for Google News
| snippets led to the removal of those snippets for French
| sites (followed by a dip in traffic for pubs that hurt them
| far more than it hurt Google). What makes you think that FB/G
| don't have the power here?
| moralestapia wrote:
| >What makes you think that FB/G don't have the power here?
|
| They also risk losing that entire market as well. Let's be
| honest, nobody loves F or G. If a decent competitor stands
| up people will gladly switch, even more if they market it
| as "by Australians for Australians".
|
| SV companies are big and great and all that, but to think
| they are above state jurisdictions is delusional.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| A lot of people have invested a lot of effort in creating
| the narrative of a techlash, that people are fed up with
| big tech's abuses and would be glad to see the big
| companies go. But it's simply not true. Polls of the
| general public consistently show that Facebook and Google
| are well-loved.
|
| For example:
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/27/16550640/verge-tech-
| surv...
| [deleted]
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Companies are in a sense above the state jurisdictions of
| everywhere but where they are headquartered. Companies
| regularly withdraw from markets because the regulatory
| environment is inhospitable.
| westurner wrote:
| If you don't want them to index your content and send you
| free traffic, you can already specify that in your
| robots.txt; for free.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard
|
| There are no ads on Google News.
|
| There is an apparent glut of online news: supply exceeds
| demand and so the price has fallen.
| Mirioron wrote:
| In the long term the issue with this is that it pushes Google
| and Facebook into your politics. If you use political
| measures to screw with them, then they'll start getting
| involved in the politics more and more to protect themselves.
| And these two companies could have a lot of influence in ways
| that are hard to notice.
| [deleted]
| speedgoose wrote:
| It sounds threatening and I hope you don't work for them
| but anyway, Google and Facebook are already pushing hard
| into politics.
| Mirioron wrote:
| I do not work for them. This is something I noticed over
| the years: as Google ran into more and more obstacles in
| the US that are political the more they seem to have
| started to meddle. Maybe it's because this is easier, but
| maybe it's to protect themselves.
|
| These companies don't push themselves into politics
| everywhere (yet), but I'm sure that the more governments
| squeeze them the more they'll get involved.
| vezycash wrote:
| It's a fact of life.
|
| Bill Gates kept politicians at arms length.
|
| If Microsoft had given Washington a little attention, the
| antitrust lawsuit would never ever have happened.
|
| Google has squelched antitrust investigations in US every
| single time through lobbying.
|
| Even Apple would been in hot regulatory soup if they
| didn't buddy up to politicians.
| slv77 wrote:
| The pay-per-click model has already forced news
| organizations towards producing click-bait content. I'm not
| sure why regulators would want to deepen that influence by
| making newspapers more dependent on Google and Facebook.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >interesting to see what happens if they start pushing back.
|
| Nothing. Google isn't going to forego the entire Australian
| market or even an economy as large as the Eurozone. They'd just
| pay their x% tax and suck it up and consider it cost of doing
| business.
|
| Google is a company, not a nation state and governments ought
| to stop kowtowing in front of companies. Reminds me of the
| story about the elephants and the rope
| Mirioron wrote:
| > _They 'd just pay their x% tax and suck it up and consider
| it cost of doing business._
|
| And then after that the companies will get involved in
| politics in those places so that it never happens again. This
| in turn increases the chance of regulatory capture and
| corruption.
|
| Also, don't forget that increasing the cost of doing business
| will discourage others from trying. Oh, and there's also the
| US government too. They might just end up siding with Google
| and Facebook.
| [deleted]
| youareostriches wrote:
| > _And then after that the companies will get involved in
| politics in those places so that it never happens again.
| This in turn increases the chance of regulatory capture and
| corruption._
|
| Sounds like a great reason to change the distribution of
| wealth and systematically reduce the power and influence of
| corporations.
| rasz wrote:
| GM and Ford had no problem extracting itself from Australia,
| I see no barriers for Google and FB to do the same.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| car manufacturers leave expensive countries because there's
| an opportunity cost. If they can move their infrastructure
| from Australia to Thailand they make more money. Google
| already is everywhere. When they leave a country they just
| lose money. The marginal cost of production for large tech
| companies is close to zero so leaving a market virtually
| never makes any sense. Which is of course why all of the
| tech companies would personally grovel in front of the CCP
| if they let them in regardless under which conditions.
| tmh88j wrote:
| >GM and Ford had no problem extracting itself from
| Australia,
|
| The only thing they extracted were their manufacturing
| operations, GM and Ford still sell vehicles in Australia.
| They even have the Focus which Ford dropped for the
| American market! Unless Google and Facebook are going to
| close their offices but still provide service to Australia,
| that seems like an entirely different scenario.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| GM will effectively end sales once they wind down the
| Holden brand over the next year.
| tmh88j wrote:
| They killed off Holden but they're still selling some
| Chevrolet models, and there have been a lot of Cadillac
| test mules spotted around Australia.
|
| https://www.goauto.com.au/news/cadillac/spied-cadillac-
| ct5-p...
|
| https://www.goauto.com.au/news/holden/gm-has-lsquo-a-
| future-...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > entire Australian market
|
| Australia has 25 million people.
|
| That's about half the size of Spain. The GDP of Australia is
| roughly equal to the GDP of Spain.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Funny how this suggestion comes up every time Google or
| Facebook are subject of some minor regulation outside the US.
|
| Yet suggest they should give up their participation in military
| or US border security, two areas that are unlikely to be larger
| than their business in Australia (or, other times, the EU), and
| there's no shortage of people explaining what a stupid trade-
| off that would be.
|
| I guess the tech crowds' priorities are clear: drone targeting?
| So what? This is strictly business!
|
| A bit of taxation to maybe rescue the journalism a democracy
| depends on? To the barricades! We will gladly give up 100% of
| earnings to take a stand against the injustice that is...taking
| 5% of earnings.
| remarkEon wrote:
| "democracy", broadly defined, does not "depend" on
| journalism. This narrative seems to have been invented
| recently as traditional outlets lost the trust of their
| viewers after getting things continually and fantastically
| wrong for at least 2 decades while a new medium (the
| internet) exposed how little they actually know.
| uniqueid wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
| chillacy wrote:
| Democracy definitely depends on citizens being informed
| enough to collectively make intelligent choices, but
| whether infotainment is serving that right now is
| debatable.
|
| In real life that happens through peer networks as much as
| the news.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I'm slightly more bullish on journalism and its importance
| than you are, but I broadly agree. It's been embarrassing
| watching the death throes (or transition period) of
| journalism, seeing people used to being treated as high-
| status pathetically lash out at every possible entity
| involved in exposing their inadequacy.
|
| I do think that journalism plays a role in a healthy
| democracy. I assume that at some point, journalism will
| settle into a new equilibrium and play the role that it's
| always played, without the messianic complex that
| journalism as a whole is currently afflicted with (and so
| dramatically fails to live up to).
| asddubs wrote:
| the new york times intentionally mislead people in order to
| get them to support war in iraq
| [deleted]
| ta1771 wrote:
| Forget which country it is, but there's already another that's
| pushing this on Google (for their News aggregator).
| panda88888 wrote:
| France?
| blarglechien wrote:
| correct, It was France. Last week
| friendlybus wrote:
| The Aussie government's dilemma is to avoid having to build
| their own services to fill a US tech gap. Politicians have
| stated they would prefer not to build their own services from
| the ground up.
|
| I think there's an element of Australian politics that would
| push for homegrown stuff over google/fb.
| joncrane wrote:
| No one HAS to build those services. The services Google and
| FB provide are 100% nonessential to successful society.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but alternatives already exist for
| both.
| chillacy wrote:
| China has home-grown tech for both certainly, but I don't
| know if the fact that everyone uses a flavor of search
| engine and social media proves that they're nonessential.
|
| I guess you could say search engines are nonessential like
| music and entertainment are nonessential. Somehow people
| end up wanting both anyways.
| Bnshsysjab wrote:
| most Australian news outlets are 100% non essential click
| bait trash, too.
| Bnshsysjab wrote:
| They're simply not capable of such things. The government
| fails to grasp technology entirely, passes technically
| impossible bills and destroys even the good things it creates
| (ftth is now fttn).
|
| While there's some precedents with piracy website DNS entries
| removed from ISP dns, I doubt the gov would want to pick a
| fight with a multi billion (trillion?) dollar company who
| would actually fight back.
| adamiscool8 wrote:
| _The code was to require the companies to negotiate in good faith
| on how to pay news media for use of their content, advise news
| media in advance of algorithm changes that would affect content
| rankings, favour original source news content in search page
| results, and share data with media companies._
|
| This seems...confused. At that point why wouldn't Facebook,
| Google, et al just ban the media company links from their
| platforms and avoid the hassle?
| save_ferris wrote:
| Because news media represents one of their largest channels of
| legitimate traffic and engagement. It's why Google put so many
| resources into AMP, Facebook on their curated news feeds, etc.
|
| Removing news links would probably eventually kill social media
| platforms in the long run, or at least accept a new path with
| much less growth.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| Spain tried this and Google just dropped all the Spanish news
| sites from Google News in Spain.
|
| "We regret that due to the Spanish law, Spanish publishers
| aren't featured in Google News and Google News is closed in
| Spain."
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| Here is the link to the google site saying why no Google
| News in Spain.
|
| https://support.google.com/news/publisher-
| center/answer/9609...
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I suspect there's a decent chance the same thing will
| happen in France, if the appeals process doesn't reach some
| kind of more reasonable solution.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I think you overestimate the market pull for the product
| legacy media companies produce. Removing legacy news from
| Facebook and Google would certainly hasten the death of
| legacy news and have no effect on tech companies, who's users
| would just replace legacy news with reddit posts, blog spam,
| etc.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I don't really understand how you can "negotiate in good faith"
| how to pay when the government is holding a gun to the head of
| one side saying that they will have to pay. If the government
| wants to tax internet giants to pay for traditional news media,
| it should just do that.
|
| IMO, news media is basically a public good, in the sense that
| it's non-rival and basically non-excludable. Unfortunately,
| it's also a relatively _low personal value_ public good. What I
| mean is that the typical person cannot make decisions that
| benefit themselves based on the news, and the news provides
| little entertainment value compared to e.g. video games or
| television. That is not to say it has no value, just that the
| value it produces is low compared to what it costs to make.
|
| In the past, news media was more valuable, because there was
| less other media around. Now there are so many media channels
| (videogames, cable, broadcast, music, social, YouTube, etc.)
| that even if they were all equally entertaining to the news,
| news' share of the whole pie would be smaller. But they're not
| equally entertaining, they're _more_ entertaining. So news
| loses out.
|
| Despite its low entertainment value, on a social level, there
| is definitely some value to having an informed public. So maybe
| the government should subsidize the creation of informative
| content, as it does with the BBC in the UK. And maybe funding
| for this should be partially derived from taxes on internet
| companies. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the
| government would basically mandate a transfer of wealth from
| internet companies directly to the wallets of news media
| owners.
| freediver wrote:
| This is indeed a landmark decision and I hope it will snowball
| into what it should really become: Google sharing revenue with
| all sites that it takes content from (hello Wikipedia and every
| blogger out there) not just media sites. Otherwise this measure
| is strongly biased in an unproductive way.
| csunbird wrote:
| Because of the SEO, most of the news sites are already clickbaits
| with junk information in them, it seems like this will grow a new
| industry: Link-tax-optimization.
| wslh wrote:
| It is true that mass media is plenty of clickbaits with junk
| information in them. It is also true that these clickbaits are
| driving profits to Google.
|
| I don't know what is the "ethical" business solution to this
| problem but I know that Google, at least, is favoring
| clickbaits and text spinning over quality. If you write a good
| blog with a single article per week it will be in the tail of
| searchers below text spinning content that has a higher
| frequency of updates.
| tomComb wrote:
| Isn't it consumers who are favoring clickbait (which then
| drivers publishers to do the same)?
| wslh wrote:
| Consumers are being deceived by clickbaits.
| tomComb wrote:
| I don't agree - to me it seems that one can easily
| identify and therefor avoid clickbait without clicking on
| it.
| wslh wrote:
| > I don't agree - to me it seems that one can easily
| identify and therefor avoid clickbait without clicking on
| it.
|
| Do you mean your grandma and grandpa can easily identify
| clickbaits?
| reaperducer wrote:
| I wonder if the news sites wouldn't be so awful if they weren't
| getting their content leached by Facebook and Google.
|
| I frequent the web sites of a two publications that block both
| crawlers and social media referrers, and they're quite
| civilized.
|
| Maybe if they news organizations weren't addicted to the tech
| companies, their sites wouldn't look like a meth addict's grin.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > I frequent the web sites of a two publications that block
| both crawlers and social media referrers, and they're quite
| civilized.
|
| I'd guess the causal arrow flows in the other direction.
| Publications that are explicitly targeting a smaller, more
| specific market can afford to avoid courting the kind of
| person who get their news from Facebook. But pubs that are
| going for a broader audience can't ignore this channel.
|
| I know someone's going to respond "maybe they shouldn't be
| targeting that audience then" but....why? If CNN stops
| pandering to the average dimbulb and said dimbulb's Facebook
| feed becomes even more dominated by Macedonian (actual) fake
| news sites, is that _better_, for either the reader or for
| society? The irreducible reality is that most people like the
| kind of crap that mainstream news sites put out, and those
| people need to get their news from somewhere. (By the way,
| this doesn't exclude mainstream "prestige" publications like
| the NYT that pretend they're going for high-minded audiences;
| their drivel just has one layer extra of tidying up than
| CNN's does).
| crocodiletears wrote:
| That's the most disturbingly apt analogy I've ever seen for
| news sites.
| choward wrote:
| Prime example: I opened up cnn.com which some people consider
| to be a news web site. The main headline is "Experts say
| grocery stores may need to keep customers out"
| (https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/business/grocery-stores-
| coron...). The real story is that grocery store workers are
| dying but a title based on that isn't clickbaity enough. It has
| to make you think the article actually affects you so you click
| it. I probably wouldn't have clicked the link if it was about
| grocery store workers getting covid-19.
|
| And of course their "experts" are just random people who said
| some things. And they mention that even if they do keep
| customers out they while still have pickup and possibly
| delivery. So who cares about that part of the story then?
| Apparently it's not going to affect me.
|
| The media has done nothing to prevent panic buying and
| everything to encourage it with these click bait headlines.
| There is no reason stores should be running out of anything but
| PPE and other things where demand naturally shot up because
| covid-19 like PPE and disinfectant. Demand for toilet paper
| only went up because of the media (and government). The other
| thing the media has been doing is shaming people but I'm not
| going to go there.
| argomo wrote:
| Stores run out of toilet paper because we're no longer
| popping at work: https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-
| getting-wrong-about...
|
| The lockdowns have precipitated a huge shift in how we eat
| and what/where we purchase things. The supply chain is
| responding, but pivoting is expensive and groceries are a low
| margin business... the shortages could have been a lot worse.
| Going forward we may see shortages in imported foods/produce
| due to pandemic impacts in other countries and/or
| regulatory/logistics problems getting that food to market.
|
| I'm not saying that the media has been responsible, just
| don't discount the bigger picture of changes in consumer
| behaviour.
| ta1771 wrote:
| Is this a CNN problem, or indicative of a society problem?
|
| (IMO: both.)
| [deleted]
| xeromal wrote:
| I don't disagree that the media is causing a huge amount of
| problems but demand is actually up because most people are
| working/layed off at home and they're definitely using more
| supplies than they would if they were at work. And before you
| say companies are using less supplies, corporate supply
| chains and home supply chains are COMPLETELY different and
| often use different farmers/gatherers, etc.
| dirtydroog wrote:
| Does anyone care to provide a synopsis? I'm not comfortable with
| registering with an anti-Semitic newspaper.
|
| https://youtu.be/asQ8KFrZY84?t=1067
| ketzo wrote:
| This is one of those things that seems to me, on a very
| superficial level, to be "fair" -- online advertising companies
| have DECIMATED traditional media -- but I can't help but feel
| there are some really strange second- or third- order effects
| coming down the line.
|
| This is just such an unnatural? forced? solution, and in my very
| limited experience, that leads to weird incentives later down the
| line.
|
| It sort of feels like Google and Facebook are being incentivized
| to NOT display the content of traditional media institutions.
| That... doesn't seem like the intent.
| KCUOJJQJ wrote:
| Sounds bad. The government could tax Google and Facebook and
| decide to subsidize the media. Subsidizing the media would look
| weird probably but it would be more honest. Or am I wrong?
| hubbabubbarex wrote:
| I like this. Big tech, time to pay some taxes to countries.. All
| of these big tax avoiding companies.
| Karishma1234 wrote:
| This appears to be theft by political power. I hope Google and
| Facebook unite here and with the help of American government
| thwart such nonsensical efforts to steal their revenue.
| raz32dust wrote:
| Even though the specifics are not clear, we will (and should) be
| having more and more of these kinds of discussions going forward
| to avoid the monopoly created by the distribution reach of tech
| giants. It is in the interest of the tech companies themselves to
| come up with something reasonable, because the governments won't
| be able to, and whatever they come up with will likely be too
| complicated, mired in politics and too specific to each country.
| It is better if the tech companies can nip this in the bud even
| before it becomes too politicized.
|
| Google, Facebook and Amazon owe their power to being great at
| content distribution. And I believe that if they take care to
| compensate content creators fairly, these sorts of upheavals will
| be greatly reduced. I think YouTube does a fair job of this. Not
| perfect, but a better balance, and I believe even that is enough.
| mehrdada wrote:
| How you dragged Amazon in the mix at the end is perplexing to
| me.
| SanchoPanda wrote:
| Amazon's ad network is growing incredibly quickly, and op may
| be referring to the content against which these ads are
| placed.
| mohankumar246 wrote:
| I believe this move should be followed by governments worldwide,
| you are accessing worlwide data by providing services to citizens
| of different countries. You are also generating $ by ad services
| generated by this data(i.e. access to news portals), and it goes
| to profit only one country. Are the ads from only local
| companies?(I don't think so). How fair is that? In a world where
| trade deals are done to benefit both nations in case of
| commodities, why not do the same for bits and bytes of
| information?
| Causality1 wrote:
| The article doesn't really make it clear exactly which ads
| Australia is trying to get a piece of. If Google is taking
| article content from publishers and combining it with ads before
| sending it to the user, I get why they'd want that money. If
| however, they're trying to get ads from Google search results,
| how does that make any sense at all? That's like every business
| in town trying to get ad revenue from the Yellow Pages.
| zarriak wrote:
| This seems like a bad idea in that it doesn't address the actual
| issue: most people just read headlines now. The question that
| leads from that is asking whether that is a result of the design
| of Facebook.
|
| Google is a different problem and it looks like they recognized
| the problem more with them and wanted to deal with the algorithms
| but I still think that people have accepted too readily the
| problem is that people just scan headlines and not that Facebook
| and Google to a lesser extent have an incentive for people not to
| click links too frequently.
| buboard wrote:
| the primary issue is the ad market capture by G+FB. Instead of
| forcing them to pay up, force them to provide evidence that their
| advertising works, and that the market capture is not just
| capture-by-marketing or regulatory-capture of the entire
| advertising pie.
|
| Also, break up their monopolizing tactics, like not sharing
| search queries with target sites (removal of referral) and
| monopolizing the browser search bars. Maybe G should share the
| search term instead of revenue.
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