> "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?

Those seem less good, I agree.

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.

There's something to be said for this, but it also necessarily privileges the current power structure.