> how respected an institution the ACCC is

Maybe we’ve been living in different Australias, but over the last decade the ACCC (like virtually every other public institution) has become yet another mouthpiece for the government.

From their attacks on solar, their constant support of “traditional media” (Murdoch), and their utter ineptitude to actually protect individual consumers, any respect left is there through inertia alone.

Mmm... Stereotype much? I see why you don’t mind the newscorp news.

Then ACCC is far from in the right here; this seems to be being driven by political motivations, not some motivation to do the best for Australia / Australians.

The ACCC has plenty of opportunity to explain why it’s better this way, and don’t seem to have clearly articulated it.

“Better for democracy” or “better for newscorp”? You tell me; why the ABC and SBS are excluded from this?

...because that’s what the government wants. The ACCC Looks increasingly like it’s just a mouthpiece.

>Mmm... Stereotype much? I see why you don’t mind the newscorp news.

I don't like the newscorp news actually. But it is revealing that you would think this. One might suspect we just have different views on who should be controlling things in this case. I am not as confident as I suspect you might be about who should be controlling media access. But I think google is being very disingenious in their letter, and the ACCC seems far less so.

I'm more suspicious of the fact that the tech community shat all over the EU Copyright Directive, calling the EUCD's news aggregation rights a "link tax", when the ACCC's proposed code goes further and stricter than EUCD Article 15.

Either techies suddenly think that the EU was right, their opinion of Google massively cratered in a year and a half's time, or they have an unreasonable love affair with Australian news companies.

> I think HN just has a large pro-google crowd

Really? Google seems to get torn to shreds here quite regularly.

So the ACCC gets a blank check to make any kind of rebuttal based on their reputation? That's the opposite of a rational argument.

Hacker News seems like an easy website to game, way easier than Reddit, and people game Reddit all the time. I assume it happens more than we realise.

I don't know that it's easier to game so much as people don't tend to spew toxic garbage when they suspect someone is gaming them. There's decorum.

I have no idea if there is pro-Google astroturfing happening on HN, but there is definitely pro-CCP astroturfing happening on HN in every thread with even a tangential connection to China. So it would not surprise me if huge corporations paid for services which may include astroturfing.

It's easier to game because it has minimal verification procedures and much less traffic, and the tech being used is way less advanced (and mods are less active).

I think it is just a lot of Google employees on HN, I used to be one of them.

The ACCC is there to enforce competition laws and if those laws are designed to benefit the government's mates then I expect that is what they will do without fear or favour.