As legalists in Australia continue to insist on Facebook moving forward with legislation to force publishers to pay for the right to link to their stories, the social network has allowed users in the country to share news articles on its platform Or decided to stop watching.
On Wednesday, Facebook reported in a blog post that, Australia’s proposed legislation “misunderstood the relationship between our platform and the publishers who use it to share news content.” The root of misunderstanding? Australian lawmakers feel that Facebook does not reveal anything about the news on its platform.
According to the statement, the news accounts for “less than 4% of the content” people see on their Facebook feeds and the law requires publishers to pay “Facebook tries to punish it for content it didn’t take or Don’t have to ask. ” In Facebook’s view, it should be grateful to publishers for the “approximately 5.1 billion free referrals” that Facebook has directed their route in the past year – a service that the social network has estimated to be “estimated at AU $ 407 million.”
The proposed legislation is still in the process of being ironed to some extent, as Facebook and Google have been in direct discussion with the government for the past few weeks. Lawmakers’ view has been that both of these tech behemoths have increased advertising revenues that have gone to news organizations in the past years, while the public has come to rely on platforms as news portals. Google’s resistance to the law has attracted the most attention as it has threatened to pull out of Australia altogether and leave its citizens with a binge.
But Google seems to be coming around. This morning, it was announced that the search giant had signed a deal with its longtime nominee Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post publisher, and others for the right to share their stories ” Significant payment “guarantees. Earlier this month, Google struck deals with at least seven of Australia’s top publishers to include its content in its news showcase feature.
It is impossible to say whether Facebook bans the exchange of news content in Australia. As with everything related to Mark Zuckerberg’s company, unintended consequences are inevitable. It is possible that the loss of Facebook as a news resource will encourage users to break out of their bubble and watch the news. Facebook claims that newsfeed links benefit news publishers, ignoring the fact that the company has worked to train users to see their social network as a destination for news. The company has also worked directly with publishers to tailor content for the stage, with the most notorious example being the “axis of the video”.
But the real-world consequences that have followed the widespread divestiture on Facebook have made news content less desirable for company executives. And now we’re going to have a chance to see clearly what a Facebook-free Facebook is.
Australia has a population of just 26 million people, while Facebook has approximately 1.85 billion daily active users globally. I am sorry that my Australian readers should be guinea pigs in this experiment, but it seems like a good sample size to find out what effect the news has on the stage after its death.
Australia’s government said on Tuesday that it would amend draft laws that would make it clear for Google and Facebook to pay for news that publishers would be paid lump sums instead of clicking on news article links.
The legislative changes described in the government’s statement discuss Australian ministers’ weekends as “clarifications and technical amendments” with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, Alphabet Inc. chief executive and its subsidiary Google.
The conservative government hopes to implement the so-called “news media bargaining code” before the current session of Parliament ends on 25 February.
Treasurer Josh Friedenberg and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said in a joint statement, “the purpose of being introduced in Parliament on Wednesday” is to improve the code’s workability while maintaining its overall impact.
The opposition Center-Left Labor Party agreed to support the bill at a meeting of MPs on Tuesday, guaranteeing its passage through the Senate, where the government does not hold a majority. But the government may have to deal with further Senate amendments.
Google and Facebook, which took 81 percent of online advertising in Australia, have condemned the bill.
Google has threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia when the code is introduced.
Facebook has threatened to stop Australians from sharing the news if the platform was forced to pay for the news.
The Code aims to overcome the major bargaining position of digital giants by creating an arbitration panel with legally binding decision-making power over value.
