A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech companies to provide selected news organisations with advance notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I believe it is the actually the most important part of the legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an enormous advantage over other companies not included and protect them from new competitors, basically entrenching the current media landscape for the foreseeable future.

Given the current Australian government's cosy relationship with a particular media company that currently dominates the media landscape here, I don't think it is coincidence.

I live in Australia and while I'm excited to see less Facebook use, I see a lot of comments saying things like, "good, Facebook monetized an addiction model and this curbs that". While true, the proposed law that has pushed them to do this is incredibly dangerous. The law doesn't just apply to Facebook, it applies to whoever the Treasurer of Australia[0] says it applies to - it isn't metrics/rules based: https://i.imgur.com/7RSqXDJ.png

This means you as a business owner may wake up one day to find that you are now classified as a designated digital platform corporation and are on the hook to now negotiate contracts with every registered news business corporation, AND provide each of them with the secret sauce behind your ranking algos. The only thing that needs to be done to do this is for the Treasurer to file a decision in the Federal Register of Legislation[1]. It's a shocking amount of overreach, lack of visibility to the process, and a single point of failure in the system.

Overall I'm very curious to see how this plays out. Facebook took the nuclear option here, and I highly suspect that news corporations will feel quite a sting from the loss of traffic / platform. I truly feel like Facebook "winning" here and having the law dropped is the lesser of two evils.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasurer_of_Australia

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Browse/Results/ByRegDate/Legi...

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I think I'm going to side with FB on this. The Australian government is once again showing absolute disregard when it comes to understanding technology, and its signature heavy handed approach to regulation.

I live in Australia, so have a dog in this fight.

I'm kinda excited to see how this pans out. I don't use FB for news, that's not what a "social network" is for. It's for keeping in touch with friends, sharing photos, etc etc.

Because I don't interact with news on FB, I already see very little of it, but I'm hoping this change makes FB the place for sharing our lives again, as opposed to just sharing links to media that I can find through other sources.

I somewhat wonder if FB is looking at this as a test subject of what happens if they were to block links to external content? What if FB only shared stuff from FB. Would that be so bad?

Facebook-specific threads on this from last year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337269 - "An Update About Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia", 2020-09-01, 158 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24347676 - "Facebook to block news on Australian sites after new law, riling lawmakers", 2020-09-01, 78 comments

The big threads about this issue include:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111783 - "Australia to introduce Google, Facebook legislation to parliament next week", 2021-02-12, 269 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26030135 - "Google News Showcase Launches in Australia", 2021-02-04, 54 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25999799 - "Australia’s PM suggests Bing adequate if Google blocks searches", 2021-02-02, 175 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25987671 - "Communications Minister touts the opportunities of a Google-less Australia", 2021-02-01, 49 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903511 - "Australia’s Proposed “Fox News Tax”", 2021-01-25, 29 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25873001 - "Could Google Really Leave Australia?", 2021-01-22, 51 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870571 - "The spat between Google and Australia, as reported on HN", 2021-01-22, 95 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867547 - "Google Threatens to Remove Search in Australia as Spat Escalates", 2021-01-22, 33 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867264 - "Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia", 2021-01-22, 135 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866493 - "Google threatens to disable search in Australia if media code becomes law", 2021-01-22, 18 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25789773 - "Google looks at pulling all or part of its search engine from Australia", 2021-01-15, 71 comments

Others?

As an Australian this morning my Facebook feed is a bit of a wasteland. None of my friends were really sharing anything so the only content in my feed is now ads and posts from groups I'm members of.

All of the "news" has been removed, with them the manufactured outrage, toxic comments and political rants. It actually feels far closer to the Facebook of 2008 that I actually enjoyed rather than the "engagement" machine of 2020.

Obviously the publishers will be hurt by this, particularly smaller ones without organic traffic. But it also feels like a lot of the "engagement" Facebook had been pursuing has been removed too. I wonder how this will affect usage as currently there's little in my feed that would encourage me to open the app every day.

This is a fairly important stand Facebook is taking - I'm glad they are doing it. The precedent set here is uncomfortably close to creating a liability simply for linking to content - something that would quite literally destroy the very fabric of the internet if it was applied generally. In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are. If internet services have to assume liability for not just actual content people post but content within things they link to it will create a situation that is simply untenable.

The fact that this law is applied only to two cherry picked companies selected at the pleasure of a government minister does not change the nature of the precedent created, and creates an enormous risk that this will now be lobbied to apply to numerous other industries and circumstances. I would fully expect that to follow in short order if Facebook folded on this - and it probably will happen anyway.

The messaging on this tech vs news publishers in Australia is pretty intense. Any site that doesn't want google to index a page can add:

  <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>

If the above is true, what's really going on here is that content producers got together and said, "if you don't pay all of us, we'll stop you from linking to all of us," and it was worth it to Google to pay. Clearly it wasn't worth it to Facebook.

I'm going to side with FB on this. This law is so bizarre.

Oh no, not that, anything but that.

In all seriousness I hope this drives the less informed in Australia to seek out actual news sources and break out of the echo chamber that is Facebook. And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it. You can't have a robust democracy without a robust fourth estate.

I haven't read the bill, but this looks like a huge win.

FB has abused our brain chemistry with addictive content. Their platform makes discussions more impulsive, passionate and careless not unlike any other addictive substance. People crave "the goods" ie browsing their bite sized feeds, and neglect the responsibility of actually learning about the news. Not unlike how if you're addicted to sugar/unhealthy foods you don't want your veggies.

This affects not only customers but news organizations. News orgs are forced to twist the truth to make their content more addictive in order to survive.

FB's double think comes out in this article. They attribute people's interest in the news to their platform. When in reality they almost certainly would have reached the news independently, and FB is an addictive and unnecessary additive to people's life.

I draw two conclusions from this:

1. FB is scared. The Australian government has found a weak point that causes FB to take a major hit to the breadth of their platform.

2. FB can no longer weaponize headlines. People will still discuss news in their own words or using fake sources, instead of impulse sharing actual news headlines. Headline quality will improve, meanwhile FB will remain a challenging place to discuss. People will now have the time to recognize headline quality and may even read the news without having the impulsive and addictive sharing option.

This is a hit to FB's reality bending brand. FB offers addictive and impulsive options for communicating, but they want us to think FB is an essential part of communicating. By not being allowed to share on FB, the addictive option is removed, and we can better experience the reality of how great the healthier options are.

Maybe we can live without sugar/FB. Maybe life will be better that way.

Wow they've blocked the Bureau of Meteorology page, no more weather warnings on fb. All of ABC too (our BBC equivalent), though they were not required to pay for ABC content, so it seems pretty bitchy.

I think both sides are in the wrong here. One of them is Mark Zuckerberg and the other is the Morrison government, for a start. But not only because of that.

The Murdoch family's claim ... I mean, Australia's ... is ridiculous. Facebook are totally within their rights to stop using Australian content and not pay for it. If the law is so sloppily worded that it arguably defines the Health Department website as news, well, it wasn't Facebook who drafted it.

On the other hand, this does stuff around a lot of innocent bystanders, and Facebook could easily have given a month's notice that they were going to do it. Which is, ironically, one of the things that the law would require them to do. What ever else Facebook might have demonstrated by their irresponsible reaction, they have shown that this law isn't all wrong, rather some parts of it are urgently necessary.

Could someone summarize both positions? It seems pretty reasonable to me - my understanding is that Australia wants Google and Facebook to pay lump sums to have their content on their platforms (as opposed to per-click). Google and Facebook can basically say yes or no. How is this different than, say, The New York Times saying the same thing about their content?

Good on Facebook for actually calling the Government’s bluff, with a straightforward explanation of the economics, instead of pretending to and posting strange and confusing things like Google. I tend to believe them that the impact will be minimal, but will be huge to publishers (which is why the law was so ridiculous in the first place).

Text of the relevant Australian law: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

New error message being displayed on facebook: https://i.imgur.com/sxHaAUg.png

Can anybody explain to me what the problem is with Facebook et el driving traffic to news sites?

Most of the times I visit newspapers websites I was sent there from social media.

This is hilarious, because the impression to regular folks will simply be that "Facebook has implemented a news blackout on Australians, which is authoritarian and dangerous."

That is certainly a true sentiment, but in general as many other commenters have noted, it's better not to have "news" articles being force-fed to social media users via blackbox algorithms, emotional trigger-sharing, and over-enthusiastic ad buyers. This is a great first-step to help break the spell that accidental over-consumption of news media has on people's mental health.

Enjoy Australia, the rest of the world envies the peace and quiet in your news feed!

Will be interesting to see the social impact on this. I kind of wish sometimes there was a plug-in that could just block news postings on facebook, since I don't go to facebook to see what friends are saying about the news

Honestly wish Google did this as well instead of bowing down to unjust laws.

> Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.

This is technically not correct. Publishers can opt out from Google Search if they want to, so one may also argue that they willingly choose to be on Google as well.

FB took the right decision. I wish Google and others will do the same. Like many others have said, I don't like some things that Google and Facebook does, but for this, I believe FB took the right decision. The bill is so vague, and it can be interpreted to say anything that the Government wants it to say. This isn't to protect journalism, it's a backdoor to funnel money to Newscorp.

That is good. And Facebook just shoot it's leg. No news sharing on FB will make people go out from this closed garden to look for news. And this is good, because a lot of people treat FB like the whole internet (they just don't understand what is a blog, home page, vortal)

It would solve a lot of the problems I have with Facebook if they applied this policy internationally.

"Digital Platforms must provide moderation tools to news media companies to enable the removal or filtering of user comments;"

This was another big one. User links a news article, the newspaper would get to moderate comments on Facebook, in the user's page

News adds little value to Facebook. I wonder how much of Facebook's engagement is actually from news versus user-generated content.

A bold statement from a company that essentially seemed to gain from news and websites, until it seemed to reach a conclusion a user that reads trustworthy news outside Facebook, is a user that spends less time on Facebook. The very approach that seemed to conclude in lowering trustworthy news pages reach on the platform, and seem to boosted fake news.

Now the company tells it will not pay trustworthy publishers for the content. As far as it seems absurd, it just shows that any news in Australia on Facebook can be considered a fake news as default. The clarity is a benefit.

It's not just news they blocked today.

The DFES (Department of Fire and Emergency Services) page is down - i.e. no bushfire or flood alerts showing up. Their entire page is gutted.

There's some government run domestic violence and community service pages that are wiped.

Though hilariously, the local LNP candidate's page is gone, which in the midst of a state election campaign is probably pretty hard for them.

I get that facebook have a bone to pick with the government, but does a) blocking crucial emergency service pages have a benefit, and b) does wiping a campaign page have some worrying connotations?

The Bureau of Meteorology, a government department that provides forecasts has just tweeted that their Facebook page has been impacted by this change which is odd as this is not a media company and provides arguably vitally important information to mariners and other transport modes.

It looks like the blast radius from this decision is impacting organizations that is out of scope of this legislation.

https://twitter.com/BOM_au/status/1362175695389155330

I would love to see FB ban any news from their platform, especially politics. Globally.

How is this for an idea - companies that provide links to a website that also can generate a preview, charge the linked site for the privilege of having a preview of the content shown. This shows that such things are valuable for the recipient. If Google had done that, then this proposed law wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Perhaps they should do this for other news sites now, that way it protects them from future laws like this being proposed in other countries. Being linked like this is clearly worth it to the publishers, as the law they support prohibits the delisting of the sites that the law applies to.

Second, how about having a way to add meta-information to web pages/articles saying what is okay to use as preview and what is not. This looks to me like the long term solution to all sites and services on the current web. As long as there is a single, non-specialized way for browsers to ignore attributes/tags/other info they do not use then it does not add complexity to browsers.

Sigh - another HN post/thread bashing the government and claiming they're basically puppets for Murdoch media.

The whole 'good on facebook for standing up to the government' is quite a funny stance, given how most people view facebook as a not-so-good entity on the web.

Fake news is a worse problem than Murdoch media and its sensationalist journalism.

Interesting experiment. I wonder if this will decrease or increase the amount of misinformation Australian people consume.

This also blocks substacks and blogs btw. Hopefully, this just leads to more sources getting classified as "news media" and eventually stops any meaningful linking and thereby making Facebook useless in Australia at least. One can dream, but they'll probably capitulate before then.

Personally, I think it might actually make facebook enjoyable again in Australia. I don't want to go to facebook to see people sharing news. I 0% want to see anything news related on social media.

TBD what qualifies as 'news,' though.

This unfortunately does nothing to stop disinformation actors with armies of bots and sockpuppet accounts. So the information content on fb has plunged even lower.

If might be a good thing overall though, because it might become clear that anything you see on fb isn't professionally developed news, whereas previously Breitbart/SkyNews/Pete fucking Evans got greater access to eyeballs than serious media like SMH/Guardian/ABC.

Normally I am against Facebook, but they are in the right here. This is totally Murdoch monopoly playing his political puppets to get this through.

I don’t know whether Australia will reverse this, but I really hope other countries don’t jump on the bandwagon. The reason why the Internet is the internet is because of free information sharing. Having laws that target specific companies for extortion is just dumb.

I'm glad that Facebook is standing its ground compared to Google, who ended up capitulating to Murdoch's sock-puppet government.

For those who are outside Australia, it bears mentioning that Murdoch-owned media in Australia by far and away dominates the media landscape, and has a blatant bias towards the current sitting government (the conservative liberal party), and the liberals have for decades now returned the favour by consistently legislating in favour of News Corp.

The only way that the government will back down is when they are confronted with a much bigger fish than News Corp, in which case, chances are better than none that the government will go scurrying back into their little holes.

The real deal is what happens if Google blocks traffic to all Australian news site. That would be huge.

It’s pretty scary that a few people in parliament can sign a law that only serves a few rich and powerful people at the expense of its citizens.

What is the future of governance? Because 2021, it feels still like a drunken king doing what “feels good”

There's a lot of misinformation from the tech giants floating around.

ACCC has addressed some of them here: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/response-to-google-ope...

In contrast, Google has been making deals with Australian media companies:

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/google-nine-agree-...

If you get your news from Facebook, you aren’t getting good news. This is a win for the world - less manufactured outrage getting pumped into the brains of the people. Maybe news publishers in Australia can go back to quality journalism and selling subscriptions.

I feel like this has the potential to damage the NewsCorp media here in Australia far more than it might damage FB. It would be fascinating to see what happens to their web traffic before & after this change.

News Corp & Google made a deal: https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/google-news-corp-dist...

Why would anyone want to use a filtered platform? Are there people who really want to restrict themselves from being exposed to ideas they would be challenged by? Or is this purely about restricting access to unauthorized ideas?

Facebook just blocked a bunch of government information pages (specifically health and fire departments), saying they are “news”. Stinks of retaliation.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/facebook-ban-hits-he...

If FB and Google are the only two on the naughty list, does this give opportunity for smaller startups to take advantage, or have they made it clear that startups can easily be added to the list as well?

FTA:

Intro:

> to restrict the availability of news

Outro:

> I hope in the future, we can include news for people in Australia once again

bit.ly links (and I'm going to assume other shorteners) seem to work, just so long as you remove the preview before you post it. Is that a bug, or a feature?

Traditional media companies vs big tech oligarchs.

Not sure which I dislike more. Liars and thieves the lot of them. Can they both lose for our sakes?

I can only assume propaganda and fake news don't count. Any one have thoughts about that?

Does it take effect today?

news media need to see more than ever how important it will be for them to publish directly to the ActivityPub ecosystem, and to cut out the gatekeepers in the way.

Good guy Facebook for the first time in perhaps...forever?

Does this law hit Reddit as well? I’m kind of curious what they’d do if they couldn’t link to news in some parts of the world. Especially because a lot of the time the comments will include full article text if there’s a paywall.

is restricting news on social media a bad thing? i think it’s a good thing.

In my country media has learned a lesson: poor people are not your audience.

You can make low quality simple crap, put a bunch of ads on it and give it to the the masses. The soap operas and quiz shows of journalism.

And you can make longread investigative journalism and put it behind a paywall. Undoing the damage the internet has done takes time but it can be down.

Why does it say "recognizes" but then "penalise" in the same paragraph?

Well this will go great.

This is... acceptable.

Aussie. Aussie. Aussie.

Begun, the social media government wars have.

Facebook won't take any action when its product is used to facilitate genocide, but they absolutely will take drastic action when you threaten to regulate them or threaten their profits in any way:

https://twitter.com/max_fisher/status/1362116659977281538

i don't understand. FB claims that this law will hurt australian news outlets more than FB... Why not just let these companies protest themselves?? We saw something similar in facebooks campaign against apples new privacy law. There, too, they pretended to be representing the "small business". I find it pathetic that they are using this same tactic of casting themselves as the protector of smaller, weaker, companies again. It's like a toddler covering his eyes with his hands and hoping that no one can see him.

The gall of FB mentioning the importance of news in a democratic society. They have arguably done irreversible net bad for democracies. Let em bow out.

I use FB as an easy way to garner news from several locations at once. Of course FB uses that to litter my 'news feed' with junk (eg suggestions of all kinds). So I'm two minds about this being a problem for me (an Aussie).

However, when I read this sob story by FB :

> publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.

...I know that's not the truth. A lot of the news I read is the same as the free-to-air news that I get across all tv channels (sbs, abc*), so this notion that they'll be losing money anyway is a bit of a misnomer.

*abc is the same as the US's pbs