Google, taxes, journalism, and fair play

[David]

[pietillidie]

^An unelectable and embarrassingly backward left; a country that hasn't read or understood the legislation; fist-waving nationalists; hopelessly tech-ignorant government ministers; news media websites that look like they were made by a bloke on Upwork for 400 bucks one night; and News Corp., which pays as much tax as Google and has cheated the nation at every point and turn in its history. Where's the mischaracterisation?

Have you ever read a Reuters article and thought, well, that's something I couldn't have got from the original source? The entire thing is media releases and press conferences. Anything decent like Bloomberg and the FT was walled ages ago.

Can anyone even define 'news' and 'platform businesses'? Do people even understand search and the role of linking and the incentives involved? Next, you'll want machine learning banned for writing better articles than News Corp.

[David]

PTID, I feel like you could describe anyone as anything. Who are the "fist-waving nationalists" here? I don't see Blair Cottrell or Pauline Hanson leading the charge. Last time I checked, anything that doesn't end up making life miserable for Muslims didn't interest that lot very much either way (and much of the support for Brexit was, of course, essentially xenophobic). I'm telling you that the direct opposite people to those who supported Brexit are backing this – Murdoch excepted, but I've already criticised the focus on him by opponents of the legislation – and you're trying to make it sound like they're all basically one and the same!

As far as I can see, outlets like Reuters and AP do an unglamorous and essential job of conveying basic news in the most efficient manner, even if there's a lot of filler. Believe me, no-one is more critical than me of modern journalistic practices, and I roll my eyes as much as you at the dependence of many outlets on press releases and "someone said something on Twitter" stories, but they do also do the work of being first on the scene for court cases, laws being passed, natural disasters, elections and the like. Otherwise, I agree that something like FT is the gold standard for actual quality journalism, but do you know for a fact that they don't stand to benefit from these kinds of bargaining codes? I'm probably missing your point here, but I'm just not sure what it is. I presume you agree that revolutionising the current media landscape by letting all these established outlets die is not necessarily going to lead to an improvement in journalistic quality or public access to information.

Again, if I could click my fingers and wish the Murdoch empire and all its titles out of existence in an instant, I would, but when I see circulation losses and job cuts at The Herald Sun and The Australian, I see it as just an unfortunate sign of the overall struggles of the industry. I'm not sure we can really engineer a situation where you don't get the bathwater with the baby, whether both are in the bath or out the window, and for me the survival of journalism as a functional business is a higher priority than the destruction of News Corp.

[Tannin]

PTID's problem is that he thinks anything supported by Murdoch and Scummo must obviously be a bad thing.

Well sure, it's not a bad heuristic and you'd be unlucky not to score 97 correct answers out of 100 following it with your eyes shut, but on this one he's drawn the short straw.

Scummo and Murdoch happen to be correct.

(Probably your best response to this extraordinary thing is to race out and buy a lottery ticket, or put your house on #17 at Crown Casino. If there is a Crown Casino anymore, that is.)

[pietillidie]

Well, fair enough. I will stand advised by you two fine gents.

For the record: I wouldn't do it this way because to me it seems like an arbitrary intervention that signals proper law and tax collection don't work; it is a moral hazard that reinforces sentiment-based punishment (populism) and avoidance of sustainable governance; it is clearly poorly understood by everyone; it has both market and technical unpredictability written all over it such it could even achieve the opposite of its stated aims; it has no hope of saving traditional journalism, which is now effectively a public service; and it risks triggering a chain of international events that wrecks the internet (especially in light of protectionist threats, cyber warfare, espionage, the drive for political operatives to control information, and the drive for opportunists to control infrastructure).

To give you an example of how quickly people adapt to signals, I have just used the risk associated with this in a commercial presentation.

[stui magpie]

^

Right , wrong or indifferent, it's very much going to form the basis of the EU, UK and others following suit.

[pietillidie]

^Certainly a possibility given current sentiment. I've even used insight gleaned from this very thread in business conversation, so I do take it seriously enough, despite my reservations (proof that Nick's does have earthly value ).

[Tannin]

Meanwhile, the hapless Facebook has

(a) blocked news sites, including factcheckers, and

(b) not blocked hundreds of anti-vaxers posting disgusting misinformation.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-26/coronacheck-scott-morrison-pfizer-vaccine-facebook/13190970

[stui magpie]

Yet funny that while news sites were blocked, traffic to those sites reduced by between 13 and 21%.

That's a fair bit of traffic Facebook was pushing to them for free.

[Tannin]

But how much actual value in that traffic? My guess, practically none. They are not subscribers, and because Facebook is deep-linking, they don't see much dvertising either.

[stui magpie]

The value they get is dependent on their advertising strategy. Most traditional print media are seriously clumsy, they rely on paywalls because browser ad blockers ruin them.

I really hope that they don't just take the cash they don't deserve from Fscebook and Google and kick back in the rocker/recliner cos if they do they'll die, they need to completely re-think their digital strategy.

Yeah they might be fighting for scraps considering the dominance of the big players but those scraps still have big relative $ value.

Does anyone know if the ABC is able to sign up with Facebook and/or Google?

[Tannin]

Facebook and Google will have to negotiate a deal with the ABC, the same as they do with any other major news publisher.

The current state of play is that the government has passed legislation but the Minister doesn't have to do anything at all if he is satisfied that Foogle and Gasbook have made good faith deals with the publishers they take content from. The legislated power is there and ready to use if needed. So long as the Minister is satisfied that the market giants are playing fair, nothing will happen.

[stui magpie]

Sorry, where I was aiming is that the ABC isn't allowed to get revenue from Ad's, so Facebook etc can't be depriving them of revenue.


I have no problems if they can join in the feast, but are they allowed to?

[Tannin]

Of course they are.

The ABC produces news, which Facebook uses to make money from. Up to now,. the taxpayer has been subsidising Facebook by providing it with free news content. Now Facebook has to pay. Not before time.

PS: Facebook should also have to pay a $0.00001 cent fee every time a Facebook user is frustrated or delayed by entirely avoidable bad quality program code on the Facebook site. OK, that adds up to approximately $874,533,770,000,000 for the year to date, but they could pay it off in installments. Blimey their code is awful! I used to think that Microsoft and Google did some sloppy stuff until I had to start using Facebook recently. By Facebook programmers' standards, Microsoft code is excellent and Google code is mega-wonderful-beautiful!