This is a long read from New York Times, but it's essential to understand how (a) "news media" and (b) Australian government are strongly influenced by (c) Rupert Murdoch: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/magazine/rupe...

If the proxy vote here is between Larry & Sergey v. Murdochs, guess who I'm voting for.

Someone brought that up the last time this came up on HN. In the explanatory materials, they clarified that (ii) is indeed meant to restrict this to posts on their own Facebook page:

> 1.89 In the case of a social media service such as Facebook, this rule deals with the situation where the news business has posted its covered news content on the news business’ own social media page. Comments on the news business’ articles posted by somebody else on another Facebook page are not covered by this law.

https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20EM%2...

That still carves them out a protected niche in what otherwise was an independent service, that in no other case provides that level of autonomy.

If I were in FAANG's place, I'd tell the AU government to get stuffed by turning every response page into a "Tell your government that this bill is ridiculous and we'll be back when it's repealed. So long and thanks for all the fish."

> that in no other case provides that level of autonomy.

I, like all FB users, can delete comments to my own FB posts.

Excellent, but why enshrine the ability to do this in law only for sufficiently wealthy media companies? Seems a bit ridiculous, doesn't it?

As opposed to only sufficiently wealthy American technology companies...

Well yes, Facebook has an obvious right to moderate their own platform. News Corp, on the other hand, does not own the Fox News Facebook page.

So can media organizations. They just can't pre-moderate the comments.

Where are you seeing a requirement to pre-moderate?

There is no such requirement. But that is the capability they want that they do not currently have. They already have the capability to delete comments, just like you can delete comments on your own posts.

If they want that, why wouldn't they put it in the law? And if they want it but it's not in the law, then why do we care?

Perhaps that's what the draft legislation means by "remove or filter comments"?

Given how badly Facebook and Twitter screwed up dealing with misinformation and hate speech, I would not in any way be unhappy if they did so.

What makes you think that the news companies will do a better job?

The content that they publish?

Not sure why you are being voted down. The news media, for all their faults, can be sued for defamation and in fact have been sued. They also have editorial policies and a clear method of publishing articles which have inbuilt checks and balances.

Sure, it’s not perfect but unlike Facebook, Google and Twitter, they do have processes in place to handle misinformation and prevent the worst excesses, and if these break down it is very clear who you can sue. Ergo, they can be held accountable.

I'm glad you're not FAANG then. When there's a dispute, you work through it rather than take your bat and ball home.

I hate to use the argument but how well did appeasement work out historically... that’s right it didn’t. When something is stupid and only happening because they have the power to force it. Sometimes the only way to fight it is to fuck off and say “sorry but no, I don’t wish to participate in this farce”

Wow legislating “your” Facebook page as though it’s property sounds like a slippery slope.

As opposed the the slippery slope that democracies are sliding down all over the world?

I agree that it is challenging, but frankly, given how much evidence there is of bad actors and misinformation on social media sites it has become clear that these corporations will only make choices that drive revenue or revenue related metrics.

I don't know what the right solution is, but it's not twiddling thumbs while foreign owned corporations continue to accumulate control over communications and media.

> In another section the draft legislation requires Facebook / Google to notify the news organisation of changes to their page rank / feed algorithm, and also provide advice on how to mitigate the effects of those changes.

Interesting.

On the one hand working in software the idea of having communicate changes to an algorithm like this to 3rd parties gives me nightmares, and opens the door to regulation of the algorithms design.

On the other hand, given Facebook and Google's monopoly positions, why not? They're able to make of break businesses overnight by changing the stream of traffic, and there's basically no real competitors. Perhaps a weak analogy but if your local government was building a motorway that would bypass your town high street, effectively wiping out 90%+ of customers to your local shop, they would inform you months or years ahead so you have at least a chance to change your business strategy or close shop.

> They're able to make of break businesses overnight by changing the stream of traffic

Maybe small businesses wake up to the fact that building the core of their livelihood on the foundation of a whimsical megacorp is a Bad Idea.

Google attracts businesses to work with them because they make visibility easy. But if they screw over those same businesses, then maybe the bait isn't worth taking in the first place? Maybe networking and building your customer base without Google, in some venue that you have better control over (or is at least more reliable/transparent) is preferable?

Start from the idea that small business owners aren't actually idiots and don't spend their time promoting their business on social media because it's fun.

Cost of customer acquisition isn't comparable without those platforms. Working harder and still not being price-competitive isn't preferable, even if it mitigates some future risk.

This suggestion is interesting in that you seem earnest but you appear to be fundamentally misunderstanding how the internet works:

Ppl use google to search for things, they use chrome to find things, they don’t like typing in addresses, they would much rather google give them the top result whatever that may be.

You are suggesting that the news orgs change human behavior. Good luck with that.

What digital platform is open and neutral? Everything is either controlled by Google, Facebook or Apple, and optimised for engagement and their ability to earn revenue.

Imagine if a company controlled not just the main street in your town, but also in every town in the world. The analogue would be to tell shopkeepers to build their own city and convince people to live their so they can run their shop.

If you don’t use Google to drive traffic and your competitor does, you lose. It doesn’t matter that your competitor gets screwed over by Google a few years down the road. You will already be gone.

This is part of why capitalism is said to have boom/bust cycles. Stable equilibriums are less favourable than unstable ones. Taking advantage of every available opportunity is the only way to compete.

Lowering rank of a sleazy news organization that was previously gaming the ranking... is exactly what they should do if they are keeping the end user in mind.

I buy that AMP is bad and they should share revenue.

It is not entirely Google’s fault that their survival requires click-bait articles instead of having original content

Does Google really steal revenue with AMP? Honest question, since I've read otherwise blog.amp.dev/2018/08/28/are-you-leaving-revenue-on-the-table-with-amp/

> On the other hand... why not?

You must be unfamiliar with NewsCorp. This is the cesspool that spawned Fox News, Sky News, and The Sun. That hacked the phones of journalists, celebrities, and royalty just to get a scoop. That routinely and as a core function of business interferes in democratic process. That effectively pioneered fake news, and has singlehandedly destroyed the credibility of the entire media industry.

Why not? Hopefully because you give a single fuck about the rule of law.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm well aware of NewsCorp, having grown up in the UK and seen them basically decide every election since perhaps Thatcher.

Despite that, this particular point in the draft legislation in an interesting idea, at least to discuss. "Why Not?" was short for "Why not require Google and Facebook to inform affected businesses when they're making changes to their ranking algorithms?" ... that's a discussion that can be had independently from NewsCorp

Because the ranking algorithms are likely changed regularly, in opaque ways. Because many of the changes will be things like "reran the training algorithm on a new data set". Because it's a foot in the door to making them justify such changes. Because the purpose of a good search algorithm is to serve the people searching and not the people writing sites. Because it's an inherently adversarial process between search engines and bad "SEO". Because no good can possibly come from sites having more insight into how to affect their ranking, other than "make content people want". And those are just the reasons off the top of my head.

I agree with all the points you raise. But...

These have are all fundamental assumptions anyone working on the web makes and we’re established as fundamental at the point Google beat out its competitors, in the early 2000’s

At that time Google was a different company and didn’t have a monopoly, and the web was a different place. Now Google does have a monopoly and users browsing habits have narrowed to a few sites like Facebook and Reddit where they get “everything” content wise

So perhaps it’s time to question those assumptions and ask if they’re really still true in today’s context, or whether other things matter more now?

This whole comment is a red herring that turns into a straw man. No one was talking about News Corp, and most of what you said about them is false besides.

And then you try to divert attention away from the real discussion by making it seem like the argument is about “the rule of law” which really comes out of left field, but is a great boogeyman to pull up if you wanna quiet dissent.

This whole thing is about NewsCorp, if you don’t see that, read more. If you think what I had to say is false, please refute it, if I’m wrong I want to know it.

And evidently my ploy to quiet dissent didn’t work, as here you are.

NewsCorp does genuinely violate the rule of law, a different set of standards apply to them and their conduct.

To me that sounds like it's intended to cover comments made on posts on the news business's own Facebook page, rather than comments made on other pages or personal profiles, etc.

Agreed, that’s what the clause (ii) restriction is for.

When you consider the wider legal context, this also makes sense* .

This is because Facebook requires page owners to assume all liability for comments.

This has resulted in publishers losing defamation cases based on third-party comments made on their posts [1].

* (regardless of whether you feel, as I do, that the proposed legislation is a politically-motivated protection racket for a favoured media mogul)

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/01/australian-med...

1. That case isn't finished with appeals and there are already multiple laws in the pipeline to override it.

2. Facebook didn't require publishers to be liable. The court did.

1. Yes we haven't heard yet whether they will appeal, but the law as it currently stands creates a legal context where you can understand publishers wanting more information about Facebook users who comment on their posts. There are some perverse shakedown incentives created by the current situation.

2. Thanks - poor wording on my part. I meant to communicate that Facebook avoids liability in their terms, and of course the court determined the actual liability falls on publishers posting content.

A recent case established that Australian news organisations are legally liable and may sued for defamatory comments posted against their stories on social media platforms

No, it’s to address “oh well we CAN’T moderate our platform we didn’t build those tools and we couldn’t find any engineers so I guess we’re just stuck then eh??”