I'm not sure how much I agree with the law about charging for news links, but then I guess we're not really talking about links so much as a headline, photos and often a few lines of a story, and FB does get a lot of benefit out of them.
However I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law, and I have friends in Australia who have said how much better the facebook experience is now. It's actually gone back to being a feed of posts by people they know about things that are going on in their lives. That was the whole value proposition of the platform, for me, and the endless link-sharing has made it incredibly unappealing. I can read news and follow link aggregators elsewhere.
I hope Australia get to keep their new facebook, especially as I'm moving there soon!
> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself
They are not standing up for themselves, they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law, its a common tactic they look for. Any media newsgroup that's not in their pocket already they fear. They have an incredible track record on this and with journalists.
The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
> they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law
Erm ... do laws not apply on the internet? That's a very sweeping criticism and not one I'm on board with.
> The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
I'll have to take your word for that. From here it looks like a positive development, or at least an interesting one, a nation state entering open conflict with a tech giant.
(Not that I'm going to be able to vote for some time, but last time I lived in Aus was under the Gillard government, and I did not form favourable opinions about the liberal-national coalition. I'm not arguing with you from a position of support for them)
They are heavily bank rolled and supported by Murdoch controlled media, tech giants allow smaller non-Murdoch controlled media to get more reach within Australia. This legislation was pushed for, drafted by and endorsed heavily by Murdoch controlled entities. A large number of the staffers for this governments politicians are all ex-Murdoch staff.
This current government has a long history of only doing things their donors ask for and not siding with the best interests of the public.
Australian here. Laws absolutely apply on the internet - if you can enforce them. FB here decided that Australia __could__ enforce this law, and chose to comply with it by not hosting links that the law would require them to pay for. If the LNP was actually serious about "controlling" foreign multinationals or "protecting" local businesses, they would simply enforce the tax obligations for these companies correctly. Note that Newscorp avoids tax in Australia [0], yet somehow they are owed money by FB for the privilege of having their content distributed on FB's graph?
> I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law
The first and second half of that sentence really need to be separated; "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying.
But it's an interesting point; a big part of the "Facebook is a danger to democracy" stuff is about the sharing of misinformation on there, and zapping all the news on there has removed some of the most toxic and dangerous content. Especially all the News Corp stuff - from the organisation driving this law in the first place.
However, it's not so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as launching both baby and bath into the sun.
> "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying.
I'll concede that sentence is a little too wide. If they were standing up for themselves on some newly introduced corporal punishment laws, for instance, I'd be a lot less keen.
Perhaps I should rephrase - "I'm not sure how much I agree with this law, it seems to have some merit though may not come from the best of places, but I applaud the Australian government for standing up to facebook nonetheless."
I don't buy "you should pay to link" but news articles are a large part of what makes up a facebook feed these days, usually in the form of a large-ish picture, a full headline and the lead-in sentence. I can definitely see the argument that they are using it as content.
They can choose to block that, even specifically for Facebook and Google while leaving others alone, just by messing with their robots settings.
If you post a link to content that is being excluded using robots.txt you'll get a link and no full headline, no lead in sentence, no picture - those are the things that the news orgs have gone out of their way to provide to Facebook.
I guess it's a commercial reality they all have to do it or none of them can - they can't afford to block FB as so many people get their news that way, so either they get paid by FB or the whole platform goes news-free, and either of those new situations works better for them.
I guess it's a race to the bottom. AN individual org is faced with the choice to give their content to fb for nothing or lose readership.
What do you think about requirement to release everytime they change how their algorithm works to news corp nazi propaganda lite to game and rank high?
And Google cannot choose to not index news site. Literally making Google a propaganda machine. How is this not clear to anyone?
Also, honestly I think people having less engagement with news in general would be a good thing.
Yes you need to be informed, but perhaps constant political reporting/link-sharing/outrage shouldn't be in a social space? I know, it's not my right to force that on FB, we should start a new social network, with blackjack and ...
But I do wonder if this constant engagement with news and outrage isn't part of what opens the door to the misinfo and conspiracy.
News orgs could already block that content if they wanted using robots.txt, but have chosen not to - indeed, they go out of their way to sprinkle Facebook's opengraph and other metadata to make their content more searchable and present better when shared.
The law is bad. I'm all in favour of our government actually taxing FB, Google, and others that manage to offshore all their profits to lower tax jurisdictions, but a pseudo-tax based (partly) around links is unacceptable.
I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.
> I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.
Why? Many comments I read are trying to make this a google -vs- Oz issue where you can only take one side. I'm taking a side where I want to see Google regulated and charged as an internet ad&search monopoly, Newscorp regulated and charged as news provider monopoly, and Oz to just put more taxes on huge companies and stop playing with Murdoch. FB can get penalties for lack of moderation while we're at it. They're all bad, we don't have to take any evil person/org's side.
I'm taking Facebook's side on this particular issue only (and I don't even like that, because they're - as you note - bad).
I agree with all of the things you want, but this isn't a tax on Google or Facebook (and we need more taxes on Google, Facebook, and their ilk that offshore profits to low tax locations), it's an attempt to tax links.
Tax does not always hurt, or always hurt the poorest. It can shape markets to the benefit of the people, and it can provide for public works and infrastructure.
There are definitely arguments about how much people should be taxed and what is done with the tax money, and the Australian tax revenue figure does seem massive compared to the US or UK (they do get better services for it, IMHO). But the sweeping idea that "tax bad" is silly.
How is it silly to assume that giving unqualified morons the right to take money away from productive individuals is inherently dangerous.
If the idea is to take away from someone just because they are successful that is very much silly. If you would like enforce a recompense for some transaction that can not be captured by the market then yes.
> Why in God's name would give these idiots anymore money.
I enjoy the public services I get and would like more of them available for everyone.
> it will ultimately be push down to you in some fashion or other.
Google / FB / ad services are the few companies where it's much less likely than elsewhere. Ad spend relies on profit it generates. If they raise ad prices, they'll lose some customers. There's no easy way for them to pass on any extra tax.
Unemployment and disability benefits, schools, hospitals and medicare, roads/transport. Could it be better managed? Sure. Would I prefer lower taxes and private companies taking those over? Never.
I've been to both countries, i'd say for anybody really at the bottom of the pile that Australia is at least ten times better, unless you live in a cabin in West virginia and go by the nearest piggy wiggly by horse. Then public services aren't that important if you don't intend to have kids, and the US is true freedom.
It's really more why the hell has Newscorps got the Australian government as their bully man. It outrageous that they can so easily sway the government of a nation to play to their tune, that's what should worry everyone the most.
Again and again it's the government, they can not avoid being manipulated by these larges corporations and so giving them more power to some how constrain said corporations is vain hope at best and plain stupidity at worse, we will just give them more power to be abused by said corporations.
> News orgs could already block that content if they wanted using robots.txt, but have chosen not to - indeed, they go out of their way to sprinkle Facebook's opengraph and other metadata to make their content more searchable and present better when shared
Google is a monopoly on search. You could block it from indexing and it would drastically hurt you and your discoverability. Cutting your hand to spite you kind of thing. The same way you could in theory just not get telephone service or just not buy oil in historic US anti-trust actions. Media sites can't live of the little that trickles to them, and can't live without it either, with some exceptions ( like expensive paywalled editions like Financial Times). Thanking most news sources to piss off Murdoch and stop his crap from spreading might be worth it, for a few days but would be disastrous long term.
...right. Doesn't that say that news orgs get benefit from Google and Facebook then? Maybe Google should charge News Corp for highlighting and driving traffic towards them?
Australian here - day one of the news blackout is really weird. Some determined friends are sharing bit.ly links to news articles, most are just weirded out. Our national broadcaster (which can't even legally advertise anyway) is even disallowed.
It's an impressive shoe of strength and a really terrible decision imo.
Our current PM is a fairly hard religious conservative, and I've never seen as much support for him from bipartisan circles as I'm seeing right now as he stands up to Facebook's "bullying".
(Note: I am not sure if I support the legislation that led to this showdown.)
> Our current PM is a fairly hard religious conservative
No he's not. He's a left-leaning centrist, like both major Australian parties. Trying to apply American-flavoured extremism to the Australian political spectrum is exactly why getting rid of bubblegum news is a good thing.
For those playing at home, Scott Morrison the "hard religious conservative" who famously said[0] "the Bible is not a policy handbook, and I get very worried when people try to treat it like one" also happens to belong to the party that:
* Outlawed general access to firearms
* Legalised gay marriage
* Introduced GST (VAT)
* Introduced women-centric divorce law
* Gave people free money for having more children
* Made healthcare for pensioners free
Ad nauseam. None of these actions are "conservative" in the slightest, unless you're comparing them to literal communists, of course. The Australian Liberal Party is probably more left leaning than the American Liberal Party.
Uh... he's a right leaning conservative, like both major Australian parties. He's not off the scale nuts like the US, but only by looking through an American lens could you conclude that he was left leaning.
Yes,but still: He's a conservative, rightist, anti unions, climate denying, pro coal, Murdoch bum-sucking, sacked ad-man. He's just not as right wing as Americans.
If he could have avoided any of the things you listed, he would have. He depends on the support of mouth breathers who believe Islam is evil, and who lock up refugees. He is incapable of bipartisanship. He basically dumped all Labor state leaders under the bus, backing only liberal state governments and refused to give credence to science. He did not stop antivaxx messages from his party.
He used his religion to further his career. His church faith group harboured a notorious paedophile pastor, and uses scripture to justify wealth at any cost. Pentecostal churches are not apolitical neutral bodies.
He did well, politically. He's not as right wing as pinochet. He's still right wing.
> No he's not. He's a left-leaning centrist, like both major Australian parties
What? He's a money worshiping pentecostalist (and I mean that in a literal sense). The LNP are pretty far right. They're no one nation, but they're not for behind.
> famously said[0]
(2012) also action speak louder than words. I mean they literally introduced a bill Called the Religious Discrimination Bill that entitles people to discriminate on the basis of religion (or lack thereof)
I'm really not sure what you're trying to show here. They are left-leaning centrists and your comment doesn't challenge that. The fact they introduced gay marriage, divorce legislation, doubled public healthcare spending and introduced additional standardised taxes indicates they're not bible-thumping conservatives as the parent comment tried to indicate.
Saying "they're pretty far right" and the parent's comment suggesting the PM is a "fairly hard religious conservative" when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary is literally just political propaganda. Trying to say "but they're not [far] behind" a party headed by overt racists is exactly the type of entirely fabricated, exaggerated American-type political b/s that we need to get washed out of mainstream Australian political thought ASAP. It's entirely the type of cancer introduced by state-funded rags like ABC who make it seem like anyone who isn't a brown vegan lesbian is literally Hitler.
Repeat after me: Australia is not America, Australian politics sees no reflection in American politics. The two political systems are entirely different, the political atmosphere is entirely different and the two parties that dominate are closer to classical socialists in every way more than they are right-wing religious conservatives.
The day that the Australian Liberal Party compels you to pay tithings to the Church, removes the socialised healthcare and bans abortion is the day you can start to argue that they've gone "far right." Until then you're going to have to face a cold, harsh reality: Australian politics is not that interesting. 95% of the political goals have bipartisan alignment and the disagreements are only about the implementation details, not about the policies. Sucks, I know.
I know its not really the point, but I struggle and am conflicted about crediting the LNP with gay marriage. Yes, they did pass the law, but in the most laborious and drawn out way possible. They did not do it "willingly".
It was one of their 2016 election promises to introduce gay marriage to a postal plebiscite. The day after the results, a gay Liberal Party member introduced the proposed legislation amendments.
It was an LNP election promise, an LNP plebiscite and an LNP piece of legislation. It was LNP through and through and the credit is theirs.
You can only judge a politician by the Overton window of their country, and I agree in principle that ScoMo is painted as a hard-edged Bible basher by the left-wing end of our political reporting here in Aus.
But he is to the right of the Libs, and only recently has he pivoted to the centre as he took up the PMship. It still matters that he would be right of every major Western leader at the moment.
Who gives a shit? Just visit the damn website through your address bar instead of trying to access it through some walled garden monetizing your every mouse move.
core news content means content that:
(a) is created by a journalist; and
(b) that records, investigates or explains issues that:
(i) are of public significance for Australians; or
(ii) are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or
(iii) relate to community and local events.
Sounds to me like those COVID-19 websites would be included in that. There is no definition of "journalist" included.
I mean really, could the bill itself be any more vague?
The problem is the 'collateral', which is facebook covering their asses, includes such useful services as the Bureau of Meteorology and government health departments in addition to the expected targets.
The idea of Facebook without news honestly sounds wonderful. Only original posts (without any news, links, shares, or any content that's been posted before to avoid memes) would probably be the optimal experience. Where do I sign up for an Australian version of Facebook, without news?
It’s nice. I used to get an endless barrage of anxiety-inducing news, now all I see are posts from old friends and groups I’m interested in.
I would be very happy to relegate news to daily chatter and the 7PM bulletin. I wonder if Facebook will let us keep filtering news once it goes back to normal ... (I kid - of course it won’t.)
Why are people willing to give traditional news media propaganda unfair advantage compared to public to game the algorithm? (This is part of the new bill)
The entire thing will make Google a propaganda machine for news corp and other media giants as Google can neither rank them low nor remove them from search results and be forced to pay to sustain them.
Why are people willing to protect ad ridden news industry when they hate big tech adware so much? What's the difference? Shouldn't you be against both? Have you seen how bad trackers on news site are? I would rather use Google than generic news site full of trackers from everywhere.
Everyone wants to stick it to big tech but big media is suddenly good?
Every newscorp owned site is a cess pool of nazi defender and propaganda.
Any legislation which targets specific companies so blatantly isn't good. Anything which sets a precedent for paying for linking to someone isn't a good idea.
Come up with better anti trust laws instead of whatever this is and target every big tech company.
You think anyone apart from Uncle Rupert had a say in this? In a first-world democracy, every citizen has the right to be ignored by his or her elected representatives.
Remember that people still read the mainstream media as legitimate news, and literally no media property has an incentive to cover this from Google or FB's perspective. In a way this is a massive oversight on Google and FB's part.
This is the same fight that Uber had to fight with taxi cartells. You need to fight, you need to fight hard, and most importantly you need the public on your side. I'm not sure if FB's move is the right one and will get public support, but at least it opens people's eyes to the consequences of this.
Unfortunately you would be wrong, because the ABC has decided it is better to suck up to the Liberal party for funding than to call them out on their bullshit.
Frankly a bit fed up at news orgs in general (Not just in Australia)
If theres one thing the COVID situation has really brought out its just how much they like to use ridiculously false headlines and bury the ledge to draw outrage and clicks.
Someone at Facebook really screwed up today. As well as news sites, Facebook had also blocked some hospitals, government sites and vaccination related info sites.
They blocked the damn fire service pages... during bushfire season. I hope there is some law that is breaking so they can tear Facebook a new one, it's massively irresponsible and outright dangerous
The law requires that they not distinguish between news orgs that sign up to the new legislation and those that don't[1], which strongly incentivises them to err on the side of blocking too much rather than blocking too little.
This fake outrage the Prime Minister told people to feel is a bit embarrassing.
The 'Facebook' pages were down for a few hours. Who cares.
People are so easy to control, that's what is concerning. It's good propaganda like this is off Facebook. As we can see the population is easily played.
Firstly — it shows value that Facebook was providing.
Secondly — that’s what the law says. Those sites include “content that reports, investigates or explains current issues or events of interest to Australians”, and so, as per the law, are news.
If the discussion were ‘Facebook stopped people from sharing Guardian articles on Facebook because they don’t want to pay for them’, there’s no obvious ‘villain’ in the discussion.
If it’s ‘Facebook isn’t allowed to let me link to the NSW government’s public health orders without agreeing to give News Corp money’ it’s a bit more obvious where the issue lies.
There’s no reason why Facebook would pretend the law is more reasonable than it is.
I think in some sense this is good. Something like intellectual property rights, if you found the news and reported as one of first hand sources, then you should get paid for it (if you ask for it, because someone is using your work).
Also I think Facebook should register as a news agency in Australia and charge news publishers if they re-post content from FB. This way FB also makes money
> Also I think Facebook should register as a news agency in Australia and charge news publishers if they re-post content from FB. This way FB also makes money
> Facebook should register as a news agency in Australia
This is not about "registering", there are specific guidelines that you must meet to be eligible to get paid by Google and Facebook as a part of this scheme.
A key part is that you must be focused on producing "core news" and make like $150k annually from it. A sports-news-only org would not be eligible, under my understanding.
Scott Morrison is only intimidated by one thing, the multinational News Corp that keeps him in a job [0][1].
Notably, the outcome of the petition by fmr. PM Rudd to have the government formally investigate this relationship is a Senate media diversity enquiry, which begins tomorrow 19.02.21 [2].
Full support for Facebook! Facebook has had it's major share of blunders, but in this case I do not see them in the wrong. The Australian PM is shilling for Rupert Murdoch and wants Facebook to dance to his tune.
Let the people of Australia decide what they like more, it seems to me that each year there are always some problems in Australia. From GPU shortages, bad internet connection, overpriced games, crazy real estate prices to now something like this.
Take a pinch of half truth (this is about protecting journalists), mix with a dusting of nationalism (FB are intimidating Australia) and viola - a news monopoly gets a legislated free ride.
Lets all fight amongst ourselves about government versus FB while the real winners remain invisible.
I know the government and obviously the media are telling the peasants to dislike this move.
But do they?
I would have thought the commoners would support this. Sticking it to the media.
The media is going to run a campaign of lies, so it's going to be tricky to tell. I guess after a while the public will actually believe they feel like the way the media tells them to.
Facebook should just pay the link tax. They then need to add a link insertion fee for the media outlets, when they are the ones creating the links. Don't pay the fee, don't get any links. Make the fee 3-4x the rate of the link tax to cover added expense of everyday users sharing links.
94 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadHowever I applaud the Australian government for standing up for itself regardless of the underlying law, and I have friends in Australia who have said how much better the facebook experience is now. It's actually gone back to being a feed of posts by people they know about things that are going on in their lives. That was the whole value proposition of the platform, for me, and the endless link-sharing has made it incredibly unappealing. I can read news and follow link aggregators elsewhere.
I hope Australia get to keep their new facebook, especially as I'm moving there soon!
They are not standing up for themselves, they are trying to control and influence the internet with the law, its a common tactic they look for. Any media newsgroup that's not in their pocket already they fear. They have an incredible track record on this and with journalists.
The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
When in reality its completely out of context. But again, Murdock's narrative.
Erm ... do laws not apply on the internet? That's a very sweeping criticism and not one I'm on board with.
> The current government doesn't stand up for anything except money.
I'll have to take your word for that. From here it looks like a positive development, or at least an interesting one, a nation state entering open conflict with a tech giant.
(Not that I'm going to be able to vote for some time, but last time I lived in Aus was under the Gillard government, and I did not form favourable opinions about the liberal-national coalition. I'm not arguing with you from a position of support for them)
This current government has a long history of only doing things their donors ask for and not siding with the best interests of the public.
[0] - https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/12/11/news-corp-tax-dodging/
The first and second half of that sentence really need to be separated; "standing up for yourself" via the use of power when you're in the wrong is just bullying.
But it's an interesting point; a big part of the "Facebook is a danger to democracy" stuff is about the sharing of misinformation on there, and zapping all the news on there has removed some of the most toxic and dangerous content. Especially all the News Corp stuff - from the organisation driving this law in the first place.
However, it's not so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as launching both baby and bath into the sun.
I'll concede that sentence is a little too wide. If they were standing up for themselves on some newly introduced corporal punishment laws, for instance, I'd be a lot less keen.
Perhaps I should rephrase - "I'm not sure how much I agree with this law, it seems to have some merit though may not come from the best of places, but I applaud the Australian government for standing up to facebook nonetheless."
I don't buy "you should pay to link" but news articles are a large part of what makes up a facebook feed these days, usually in the form of a large-ish picture, a full headline and the lead-in sentence. I can definitely see the argument that they are using it as content.
If you post a link to content that is being excluded using robots.txt you'll get a link and no full headline, no lead in sentence, no picture - those are the things that the news orgs have gone out of their way to provide to Facebook.
I guess it's a race to the bottom. AN individual org is faced with the choice to give their content to fb for nothing or lose readership.
And Google cannot choose to not index news site. Literally making Google a propaganda machine. How is this not clear to anyone?
Yes you need to be informed, but perhaps constant political reporting/link-sharing/outrage shouldn't be in a social space? I know, it's not my right to force that on FB, we should start a new social network, with blackjack and ...
But I do wonder if this constant engagement with news and outrage isn't part of what opens the door to the misinfo and conspiracy.
As far as the proposed law is concerned, it seems we're talking about any kind of linking. https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...
> "a proposal is developed to recognise original covered news content when ranking and displaying news content on the digital platform service;"
It's very vague.
The law is bad. I'm all in favour of our government actually taxing FB, Google, and others that manage to offshore all their profits to lower tax jurisdictions, but a pseudo-tax based (partly) around links is unacceptable.
I hate to stand with Facebook, but in this case I have to.
Why? Many comments I read are trying to make this a google -vs- Oz issue where you can only take one side. I'm taking a side where I want to see Google regulated and charged as an internet ad&search monopoly, Newscorp regulated and charged as news provider monopoly, and Oz to just put more taxes on huge companies and stop playing with Murdoch. FB can get penalties for lack of moderation while we're at it. They're all bad, we don't have to take any evil person/org's side.
I agree with all of the things you want, but this isn't a tax on Google or Facebook (and we need more taxes on Google, Facebook, and their ilk that offshore profits to low tax locations), it's an attempt to tax links.
This is a good read and worth your time - https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/2/17/paying-for....
Australia 2018: $559B
US 2018: $3.33 trillion
Why in God's name would give these idiots anymore money.
There are definitely arguments about how much people should be taxed and what is done with the tax money, and the Australian tax revenue figure does seem massive compared to the US or UK (they do get better services for it, IMHO). But the sweeping idea that "tax bad" is silly.
If the idea is to take away from someone just because they are successful that is very much silly. If you would like enforce a recompense for some transaction that can not be captured by the market then yes.
I enjoy the public services I get and would like more of them available for everyone.
> it will ultimately be push down to you in some fashion or other.
Google / FB / ad services are the few companies where it's much less likely than elsewhere. Ad spend relies on profit it generates. If they raise ad prices, they'll lose some customers. There's no easy way for them to pass on any extra tax.
It's really more why the hell has Newscorps got the Australian government as their bully man. It outrageous that they can so easily sway the government of a nation to play to their tune, that's what should worry everyone the most.
Again and again it's the government, they can not avoid being manipulated by these larges corporations and so giving them more power to some how constrain said corporations is vain hope at best and plain stupidity at worse, we will just give them more power to be abused by said corporations.
Google is a monopoly on search. You could block it from indexing and it would drastically hurt you and your discoverability. Cutting your hand to spite you kind of thing. The same way you could in theory just not get telephone service or just not buy oil in historic US anti-trust actions. Media sites can't live of the little that trickles to them, and can't live without it either, with some exceptions ( like expensive paywalled editions like Financial Times). Thanking most news sources to piss off Murdoch and stop his crap from spreading might be worth it, for a few days but would be disastrous long term.
Expecting Google and Facebook to provide them this traffic and pay the news orgs for it, not the other way around is nuts.
It's an impressive shoe of strength and a really terrible decision imo.
Our current PM is a fairly hard religious conservative, and I've never seen as much support for him from bipartisan circles as I'm seeing right now as he stands up to Facebook's "bullying".
(Note: I am not sure if I support the legislation that led to this showdown.)
No he's not. He's a left-leaning centrist, like both major Australian parties. Trying to apply American-flavoured extremism to the Australian political spectrum is exactly why getting rid of bubblegum news is a good thing.
For those playing at home, Scott Morrison the "hard religious conservative" who famously said[0] "the Bible is not a policy handbook, and I get very worried when people try to treat it like one" also happens to belong to the party that:
* Outlawed general access to firearms
* Legalised gay marriage
* Introduced GST (VAT)
* Introduced women-centric divorce law
* Gave people free money for having more children
* Made healthcare for pensioners free
Ad nauseam. None of these actions are "conservative" in the slightest, unless you're comparing them to literal communists, of course. The Australian Liberal Party is probably more left leaning than the American Liberal Party.
[0] https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2012/february/1328593883...
If he could have avoided any of the things you listed, he would have. He depends on the support of mouth breathers who believe Islam is evil, and who lock up refugees. He is incapable of bipartisanship. He basically dumped all Labor state leaders under the bus, backing only liberal state governments and refused to give credence to science. He did not stop antivaxx messages from his party.
He used his religion to further his career. His church faith group harboured a notorious paedophile pastor, and uses scripture to justify wealth at any cost. Pentecostal churches are not apolitical neutral bodies.
He did well, politically. He's not as right wing as pinochet. He's still right wing.
What? He's a money worshiping pentecostalist (and I mean that in a literal sense). The LNP are pretty far right. They're no one nation, but they're not for behind.
> famously said[0]
(2012) also action speak louder than words. I mean they literally introduced a bill Called the Religious Discrimination Bill that entitles people to discriminate on the basis of religion (or lack thereof)
> Outlawed general access to firearms
After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi... with bipartisan support. Firearms have never been a political issue since. I mean, it was a good idea, but I suspect that either party would have done that.
> Legalised gay marriage
They were dragged kicking and screaming after a non-binding plebiscite showed widespread support. They get no Brownie points for that.
> Introduced GST (VAT)
Was an amalgamation of other taxes, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goods_and_services_tax_(Austra...
Saying "they're pretty far right" and the parent's comment suggesting the PM is a "fairly hard religious conservative" when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary is literally just political propaganda. Trying to say "but they're not [far] behind" a party headed by overt racists is exactly the type of entirely fabricated, exaggerated American-type political b/s that we need to get washed out of mainstream Australian political thought ASAP. It's entirely the type of cancer introduced by state-funded rags like ABC who make it seem like anyone who isn't a brown vegan lesbian is literally Hitler.
Repeat after me: Australia is not America, Australian politics sees no reflection in American politics. The two political systems are entirely different, the political atmosphere is entirely different and the two parties that dominate are closer to classical socialists in every way more than they are right-wing religious conservatives.
The day that the Australian Liberal Party compels you to pay tithings to the Church, removes the socialised healthcare and bans abortion is the day you can start to argue that they've gone "far right." Until then you're going to have to face a cold, harsh reality: Australian politics is not that interesting. 95% of the political goals have bipartisan alignment and the disagreements are only about the implementation details, not about the policies. Sucks, I know.
It was an LNP election promise, an LNP plebiscite and an LNP piece of legislation. It was LNP through and through and the credit is theirs.
But he is to the right of the Libs, and only recently has he pivoted to the centre as he took up the PMship. It still matters that he would be right of every major Western leader at the moment.
This ‘outrage’ is a joke
Their primary computing device is most likely a mobile phone.
The impact goes beyond blocking news.
Facebook is also blocked state government (not federal) websites relating to COVID-19 vaccine roll out.
Whilst I don’t support the legislation, Facebook’s move seems like a poor choice.
core news content means content that: (a) is created by a journalist; and (b) that records, investigates or explains issues that: (i) are of public significance for Australians; or (ii) are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or (iii) relate to community and local events.
Sounds to me like those COVID-19 websites would be included in that. There is no definition of "journalist" included.
I mean really, could the bill itself be any more vague?
[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...
I would be very happy to relegate news to daily chatter and the 7PM bulletin. I wonder if Facebook will let us keep filtering news once it goes back to normal ... (I kid - of course it won’t.)
The entire thing will make Google a propaganda machine for news corp and other media giants as Google can neither rank them low nor remove them from search results and be forced to pay to sustain them.
Why are people willing to protect ad ridden news industry when they hate big tech adware so much? What's the difference? Shouldn't you be against both? Have you seen how bad trackers on news site are? I would rather use Google than generic news site full of trackers from everywhere.
Everyone wants to stick it to big tech but big media is suddenly good?
Every newscorp owned site is a cess pool of nazi defender and propaganda.
Any legislation which targets specific companies so blatantly isn't good. Anything which sets a precedent for paying for linking to someone isn't a good idea.
Come up with better anti trust laws instead of whatever this is and target every big tech company.
This is the same fight that Uber had to fight with taxi cartells. You need to fight, you need to fight hard, and most importantly you need the public on your side. I'm not sure if FB's move is the right one and will get public support, but at least it opens people's eyes to the consequences of this.
Frankly a bit fed up at news orgs in general (Not just in Australia)
If theres one thing the COVID situation has really brought out its just how much they like to use ridiculously false headlines and bury the ledge to draw outrage and clicks.
I see no such declarations.
Fundamentally tech policy can be hard to convey in bite sized chunks.
That surely wouldn’t work in their favor?
Serious question, it seems an odd thing to say that's dangerous. If facebook is now part of the emergency services, I'd say that was dangerous anyway.
[1] https://twitter.com/Pollytics/status/1362279552160948225
The 'Facebook' pages were down for a few hours. Who cares.
People are so easy to control, that's what is concerning. It's good propaganda like this is off Facebook. As we can see the population is easily played.
Firstly — it shows value that Facebook was providing.
Secondly — that’s what the law says. Those sites include “content that reports, investigates or explains current issues or events of interest to Australians”, and so, as per the law, are news.
If the discussion were ‘Facebook stopped people from sharing Guardian articles on Facebook because they don’t want to pay for them’, there’s no obvious ‘villain’ in the discussion.
If it’s ‘Facebook isn’t allowed to let me link to the NSW government’s public health orders without agreeing to give News Corp money’ it’s a bit more obvious where the issue lies.
There’s no reason why Facebook would pretend the law is more reasonable than it is.
Also I think Facebook should register as a news agency in Australia and charge news publishers if they re-post content from FB. This way FB also makes money
I like this, I like this a lot.
This is not about "registering", there are specific guidelines that you must meet to be eligible to get paid by Google and Facebook as a part of this scheme.
A key part is that you must be focused on producing "core news" and make like $150k annually from it. A sports-news-only org would not be eligible, under my understanding.
Notably, the outcome of the petition by fmr. PM Rudd to have the government formally investigate this relationship is a Senate media diversity enquiry, which begins tomorrow 19.02.21 [2].
[0] - https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics... [1] - https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/11/26/coalition-news-corp-fun... [2] - https://twitter.com/AdamBandt/status/1362233278212661252
Let the people of Australia decide what they like more, it seems to me that each year there are always some problems in Australia. From GPU shortages, bad internet connection, overpriced games, crazy real estate prices to now something like this.
The calculus doesn’t add up. The tech company’s sticks are way bigger than Rupert’s (as Trump found out).
I am clearly naive and don’t understand something.
Facebook’s move seems poor to me. I wonder if the ban is across all Facebook properties.
A net win for the Australian people and a loss for News Corp and Facebook.
I couldn't have asked for a better outcome.
Lets all fight amongst ourselves about government versus FB while the real winners remain invisible.
But do they?
I would have thought the commoners would support this. Sticking it to the media.
The media is going to run a campaign of lies, so it's going to be tricky to tell. I guess after a while the public will actually believe they feel like the way the media tells them to.
Fingers crossed Facebook doesn't blink.