It’s one of those things where I am genuinely unsure how to parse, really. I mean I agree that news outlets are struggling and it’s a shame (and I think there’s been a huge run of unemployment in journalism recently which doesn’t help) but equally it’s so rare I don’t read stuff that seems to be written at best by Blairites and at worst by Murdoch hell. And presumably it’ll be Murdoch’s group or similar who’ll be getting the greatest amount of this money (and probably still having to downsize later due to costs or something) if it even happens.
Google have been running these little pop-ups saying, “HEY MAN, YOUR SEARCH RESULTS ARE UNDER THREAT,” and now Facebook is going in hard
I mean I don’t know enough about this
We had also hoped to bring Facebook News to Australia, a feature on our platform exclusively for news, where we pay publishers for their content. Since it launched last year in the US, publishers we partner with have seen the benefit of additional traffic and new audiences.
to know if it’s pure bullshit or marginally improves on what the Australian government proposes (and I guess it wouldn’t affect Google in any case).
So I guess at some point soon if this goes through I won’t be able to post news stories on FB or even find them on Google
Finally watched their video you were mentioning @PaintyCanNed - proper “we’re not evil, honest” energy
It is really weird they go down the patronising route of stupid comparisons. It doesn’t make you think their option is that great because they don’t really talk about what it is.
There’s a Kevin Rudd video that links at the end where he’s much less polished but a lot more reasonable attacking Murdoch.
Although it sounds like he opens it with “K-Rudd here” which is a paddlin’.
Facebook chose to enforce this slapdash decision using a “a combination of technologies“, meaning that non-news pages have been restricted including the Bureau of Meteorology, health authorities, domestic abuse services, charities, politicians small publishers note included by the code.
I think people are surprised they’d do it so badly. I mean pulling in so much content that isn’t remotely regulated by the new code. As my sister-in-law says:
various community service orgs, and even my friend J- who works for the Stella Prize for women’s literature - they’ve been blocked!
That’s cutting into themselves in a way that feels like it could easily backfire.
