Facebook deliberately took down Australian government pages during pay-for-news negotiations: report Facebook whistleblowers have alleged that the company deliberately took down the presences of Australian government and emergency services organizations during negotiations on the nation's landmark pay-to-link-to-news laws. In early 2021, Australia negotiated with Facebook and Google over the News Media Bargaining Code which …
On the subject of the Gov Links being blocked and FB pages being inaccessible, I recall at the time one or more of Facebook's own pages was inaccessible as part of the implemented change; happy to be proven wrong if / when the whistle blower reports become publicly accessible, but to me this still reeks of a botched change as opposed to a power flex.
As for the media code working... I would be curious as to which mastheads have been seeing the benefits of the media code, and perhaps more importantly how many of them are independent vs. being owned by Murdoch / 9-Fairfax. I know the independent rags I frequent for non-tech related news have made a point of calling out how the code has done nothing for them. Worth noting as regional and independent mastheads were meant to be (on paper at least) the main beneficiary's of the code.
It's a rather prickly situation.
"this still reeks of a botched change as opposed to a power flex."
The fact that a botched change can create so much discomfort can itself be used as a power flex, it underlines who has control of the information and infrastructure as much as an intentional action.
At the same time, from the previous article by El Reg:
"Australia has also forced both web giants to acknowledge that their products derive value from the work of news-gathering organisations."
Which, while true, is not a complete assessment, as news outlets also derive considerable value from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google, ... It would be interesting to know how much traffic they get from those sites in comparison to spontaneous visits where people have their site bookmarked.
Seems to me that this has nothing to do with fairness or law, just who's got friends in the higher places. A last-century vs new-century media conglomerate peacock fight.
And as you pointed out, everyone else gets what's left, if anything.
News outlets derive little unpaid value from FB,GG. FB and GG derive almost all their income from the content generated by others.
Publishers have outsourced the online advertising function to them, but GG,FB take most of the advertising revenue in return. Big publishers don't really benefit from the search and linking. If it ceased to exist they would be just fine.
Without GG and FB, publishers had readers and advertisers.
Without content generators however, GG, FB would have nothing to index, and nowhere to display ads.
Much as I dislike media corps, the situation is nothing like symmetrical or balanced in value.
Just because it is only well connected media barons that can get something done, does not per se invalidate what was done.
It really is a pity that democratic countries cannot use jail as an impactful means of meaning business.
Because if you are dishonest enough to impede on government sites on purpose just to prove a point, well I think dragging the local CEO to jail until the problems get solved should be standard procedure.
In other words, FB is never going to try that in China.
I'm not sure the OP meant that governments should have undemocratic powre of extrajudicial arrest.
"It really is a pity that democratic countries cannot use jail as an impactful means of meaning business."
For me it means it's a pity that the current laws and do not allow for executive jail time for deliberate malpractice (or laws allow it in theory but in practice it is difficult / impossible to prove / prosecute)
Current law definitely does allow for prosecution of "deliberate malpractice". And I'm pretty sure prosecuting people because he doesn't like them is exactly what was meant. It seems to be a thing for the millennial/gen Z generations - if something makes them emotionally uncomfortable, it has to be banned.
In this case, if FB had simply denied access completely and as a consequence prevented access to the sites mentioned would that have caused as much argument? Surely if FB has become so important to these organisations, that questions the sense of their decisions to restrict their communications to one provider?
The fact that such sites (FB et al) have so much power is a result of their success and provides significant moral control questions but, at a slightly lower level, who should be able to specify or question which links I provide or allow on my slightly less successful website? The last time I looked I didn't live in a dictatorship, I am not forced to provide advertising or communication channels/links for any organisations and similarly no organisation is forced to use my website. If FB are acting within the law, why should FB be treated any differently to TikTok or google or Microsoft or woodworkingweekly.com? If FB were acting outside the law and should be mandated to provide links then *every* website owner who becomes successful must have mandated links on their sites ... that would be a scary situation indeed.
I would rather companies follow a moral compass that's free to swing, with overall power control from democratic lawmakers above, rather than see governments overseers rapidly approaching *every* such compass with a huge magnet labelled "State moral direction finder - made in China" ...
Once entities are big enough to use their influence to tilt the playing field some kind of regulation has to kick in or they will use their power to make it impossible for any small competitors to score.
Regulation has a lot of problems like unfair rules and regulatory capture but i do not think allowing the big players to do whatever they want in a "free market" is better.
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Why in the world would anybody expect the opposition in a legal scuffle to be given access to broadcast using the platform provided by one of the parties to the case?
I'm surprised the Australian government would want to do that, if they were at all serious about cutting off Facebook.
But we all know it was just posturing to appease the masses. :(
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