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  • Facebook Unfriends Australia: The Triumph of Epistemic Chaos

    Creepy and ruthless Facebook has again impressed with its steely indifference to civic responsibility, as if a company established by a sociopath could ever be a model of human improvement. On February 18, Mark Zuckerberg’s antisocial company took aim at Australia by blocking those in that country from sharing local and international content.  As the company notice to those trying to share material went: “In response to Australian government legislation, Facebook generally restricts the posting of news links and all post from news Pages in Australia. Globally, the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted.”

    As with previous thugs of mercenary trade (the Dutch East India Company and its British equivalent come to mind), Facebook is keen to make the rules it likes, and ignore those of the commonweal.  It is a plundering pioneer in the world of surveillance capitalism, which has led to what Shoshana Zuboff calls an “epistemic coup” with “unprecedented computational concentrations of knowledge and power” gathered by extracting data elitists.  These elitists, in turn, trash such concepts as the rule of law and democracy in the name of profits.

    As she explained in her keynote speech at last year’s EU Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment panel, “These corporations are not publishers, they are not distributors, they are not merely adtech providers; they are indiscriminate, radically indifferent all-you-can-eat extractors of everything forever, all for the sake of prediction that become more lucrative as they approach certainty.”

    Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code is one such proposed imposition on these extractive qualities, though it does little to actually redress the central principles Facebook and Google operate under.  The Code, as it stands, is a compendium of defects sold as politics rather than sound structural change. In it, the Australian government hopes not to restrict surveillance capitalism so much as redirect it.

    According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission the Code would “address the fundamental bargaining power imbalance between Australian news media businesses and major digital platforms.”  It’s all a problem of revenue: the fourth estate is dying, having lost its classified advertising base; the Australian government, unenthused by ideas of creating funding schemes or taxing Big Tech, has come to the conclusion that these giants will subsidize and ultimately regenerate old media outlets.  To do so, it proposes making companies reach, through good will negotiations, bargains by which revenue can be distributed.

    While making wild presumptions of what platforms such as Facebook do with the news (referrals, shares and so forth), the government will also require these Silicon Valley hulks to notify media organisations of any change in their search algorithms and abide by an arbitration mechanism.  Disputes on the amount of revenue will then go to an arbitration body.  Such scenes promise to be messy: media moguls hunkering down to discussions with such amoral practitioners as Facebook.

    The blocking of news content on the Facebook platform precipitated a range of consequences, some of them possibly surprising to Zuckerberg and his crew.  The Facebook pages of news organisations were immediately emptied of content.  Australia’s ABC put it like this: “If you search for the Facebook pages of (for example) ABC News, the Sydney Morning Herald, the New York Times, and the BBC, you’ll see a blank feed saying ‘No posts yet.’”

    This was not all.  The draft Code has a definition of news content of some breadth, which purports to be any material that “reports, investigates, or explains issues that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate”.  When approached for comment on the issue, Facebook confirmed it has pushed its own reading to the limits, citing a lack of clarity.  “As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted.”  Not that the law has been implemented, but Facebook has been quick on the draw.  Snottily, the company promises to “reverse any Pages that are inadvertently impacted.”

    Government pages were also caught up in the dramatic scrub, including the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Queensland Health and an assortment of commercial and retail outlets.  The blocking of content on the bureau’s site was considered particularly galling, given cases of flooding in Queensland and fire danger in Western Australia.  “Warnings need to get to as wide an audience as possible as a matter of safety,” tweeted ABC weather presenter Nate Byrne.  “Shocking.”

    Smaller community news outlets, trade unions, homeless charities, and various local controlled health services were also enveloped in the information clean. Indigenous communities have been particularly bruised. According to the National Indigenous Times, “Indigenous health and media groups fear Facebook’s pushback will have a dangerous impact on regional and remote communities during [the] wet season and the COVID-19 epidemic, with concerns communities will not have access to vital updates on flood warnings or the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations.”

    The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services saw the issue of blocking content on its site as a matter of rights, restricting an invaluable means of connecting with the community.  “This is a human rights issue, silencing the voices of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people, our representative peak bodies.”

    In going for the Australian throat, Facebook has resorted to a different approach from that other giant of amoral propensities, Google.  Google has repeatedly threatened to withdraw its search engine from Australia for similar grievances against the draft Code. But the company has been aggressively negotiating and buttering up Australian media outlets for its News Showcase.  The Australian government sees this as a triumph, a strange interpretation given the positively pyrrhic nature of any such outcomes.  Google can well argue to have come out better in the deal, its business model left intact.

    The time has come to reconsider the very operating rationale of such companies in an effort to address their singular monopoly position.  Solutions are not merely to be found in government regulation and antitrust approaches.  The very allegiance shown to such platforms by their captive users will have to change.  The time has come to save the human project from surveillance capitalism.

    This article was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2021 at 5:54pm and is filed under Australia, Censorship, Facebook, Google, Media.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Kasun Ubayasiri: How will ruthless billionaire posturing by Rupert and Zuckerberg help robust journalism?

    COMMENT: By Kasun Ubayasiri in Brisbane

    It has indeed been a few strange days for Australian news media. Apparently, monopolies are bad if they are not NewsCorp.

    This week, Facebook came through on its threat to ban all news from its service, in retaliation against the Australian Federal government’s proposed new media code, that could see the tech giant paying news producers for content they willingly share on the Facebook platform.

    Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp rather predictably ran a story accusing Facebooks’ messenger platform of aiding and abetting paedophiles. A remarkable display of mutual chestbeating.

    But it is news media diversity and independent journalism routinely pillaged by Murdoch that will be the real victims of ScoMo trying to extort one billionaire at the behest of another.

    Queensland’s independent press, for example, is just beginning to lift its head after Rupert ruthlessly destroyed a whole swathe of rural and regional newspapers of record. I wonder how this posturing between two billionaires will affect those independent newspapers that are slowly beginning to show promise in that desolate landscape.

    Sure, there needs to be funding for good journalism, and the tech-giants should pitch in, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, of a rather long “to do list” to ensure a robust and independent news media that includes ensuring media diversity and the public’s access to fact-verified public interest journalism irrespective of petty party politics.

    In this respect it’s hard to see this whole fiasco as anything but a half-baked idea built on a NewsCorp orchestrated lie.

    Holding readers hostage
    News organisations could have easily blocked Google searches listing their content. They could also have stopped putting their content on Facebook pages, explored micro-payments or some such innovative solution, instead of holding readers hostage with archaic subscription models.

    Is Australian journalism suffering because of Google and Facebook? What of the media monopolies that have systematically destroyed diversity and independence of the press through concentration of ownership unparalleled in the Western world?

    What of the three-decade long devaluing of journalism, and training an entire generation to get free news on vanity websites while simultaneously selling the same content in printed papers, only to then retreat behind paywalls?

    What about forcing journalists to pimp their stories by linking KPIs to journalists’ capacity to secure subscriptions and assessing the value of stories on the basis of clicks?

    What of the ruthless stripping of journalists’ rights that has created a precariat work force?

    And what of the armies of media pundits who jumped on the Dan Gillmor bandwagon and vigorously claimed we didn’t need professional journalists because we were now all citizen journalists?

    What of the media educators who have conflated journalism with media, normalised native advertising and created a grey slurry of content where fact and fiction is indistinguishable and ethics non-existent?

    Championed social media
    And then there are the media theorists who have championed social media as a great equaliser.

    A “town square” where ideas flow freely, or as Mark Zuckerberg calls it a “digital living room” instead of seeing it for what it really is – a privately owned advertising platform hell bent on creating a global monopoly.

    Let’s say we manage to force Facebook to pay for content. I wonder exactly how the dollars Zuckerberg doles out to Newscorp will flow onto the journalists and the gutted newsrooms who everyone is suddenly concerned for.

    Shouldn’t the money be directly invested in public interest journalism instead of becoming just another version of that wonderfully Liberal idea of trickle-down economics filtered through Rupert’s pockets.

    Dr Kasun Ubayasiri is a senior lecturer and journalism programme director at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. An earlier version of this piece was originally a Facebook posting and this been revised and contributed to Asia Pacific Report as a column.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Kasun Ubayasiri: How will ruthless billionaire posturing by Rupert and Zuckerberg help robust journalism?

    It is news media diversity and independent journalism routinely pillaged by Murdoch that will be the real victims of ScoMo trying to extort one billionaire at the behest of another. Image: MediaNews4U

    COMMENT: By Kasun Ubayasiri in Brisbane

    It has indeed been a few strange days for Australian news media. Apparently, monopolies are bad if they are not NewsCorp.

    This week, Facebook came through on its threat to ban all news from its service, in retaliation against the Australian Federal government’s proposed new media code, that could see the tech giant paying news producers for content they willingly share on the Facebook platform.

    Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp rather predictably ran a story accusing Facebooks’ messenger platform of aiding and abetting paedophiles. A remarkable display of mutual chestbeating.

    But it is news media diversity and independent journalism routinely pillaged by Murdoch that will be the real victims of ScoMo trying to extort one billionaire at the behest of another.

    Queensland’s independent press, for example, is just beginning to lift its head after Rupert ruthlessly destroyed a whole swathe of rural and regional newspapers of record. I wonder how this posturing between two billionaires will affect those independent newspapers that are slowly beginning to show promise in that desolate landscape.

    Sure, there needs to be funding for good journalism, and the tech-giants should pitch in, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, of a rather long “to do list” to ensure a robust and independent news media that includes ensuring media diversity and the public’s access to fact-verified public interest journalism irrespective of petty party politics.

    In this respect it’s hard to see this whole fiasco as anything but a half-baked idea built on a NewsCorp orchestrated lie.

    Holding readers hostage
    News organisations could have easily blocked Google searches listing their content. They could also have stopped putting their content on Facebook pages, explored micro-payments or some such innovative solution, instead of holding readers hostage with archaic subscription models.

    Is Australian journalism suffering because of Google and Facebook? What of the media monopolies that have systematically destroyed diversity and independence of the press through concentration of ownership unparalleled in the Western world?

    What of the three-decade long devaluing of journalism, and training an entire generation to get free news on vanity websites while simultaneously selling the same content in printed papers, only to then retreat behind paywalls?

    What about forcing journalists to pimp their stories by linking KPIs to journalists’ capacity to secure subscriptions and assessing the value of stories on the basis of clicks?

    What of the ruthless stripping of journalists’ rights that has created a precariat work force?

    And what of the armies of media pundits who jumped on the Dan Gillmor bandwagon and vigorously claimed we didn’t need professional journalists because we were now all citizen journalists?

    What of the media educators who have conflated journalism with media, normalised native advertising and created a grey slurry of content where fact and fiction is indistinguishable and ethics non-existent?

    Championed social media
    And then there are the media theorists who have championed social media as a great equaliser.

    A “town square” where ideas flow freely, or as Mark Zuckerberg calls it a “digital living room” instead of seeing it for what it really is – a privately owned advertising platform hell bent on creating a global monopoly.

    Let’s say we manage to force Facebook to pay for content. I wonder exactly how the dollars Zuckerberg doles out to Newscorp will flow onto the journalists and the gutted newsrooms who everyone is suddenly concerned for.

    Shouldn’t the money be directly invested in public interest journalism instead of becoming just another version of that wonderfully Liberal idea of trickle-down economics filtered through Rupert’s pockets.

    Dr Kasun Ubayasiri is a senior lecturer and journalism programme director at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. An earlier version of this piece was originally a Facebook posting and this been revised and contributed to Asia Pacific Report as a column.

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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Facebook has pulled the trigger on news content — and possibly shot itself in the foot

    Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg … The social media giant claims news publishers derive more value from news sharing than Facebook does. Image: Michael Reynolds/AAP/The Conversation

    ANALYSIS: By Diana Bossio, Swinburne University of Technology

    Facebook this week made good on its threat to block Australians from accessing or posting news content. The ban includes blocking links to Australian and overseas news publishers.

    Facebook said the ban was a direct response to the federal government’s news media code legislation, which is expected to become law soon and would require digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay news media companies whose content they host.

    The move is either a last-ditch attempt to gain concessions in the legislation, or a simple cut-and-run by Facebook.

    The social media giant claims news publishers derive more value from news sharing than Facebook does. This is plausible, as news content makes up only 4 percent of sharing on the platform, whereas many news sites gain a large fraction of their traffic from Facebook referrals.

    But this is probably more about flexing some muscle. Facebook may be demonstrating to the Federal government that if it does not like the rules, it can damage national interests.

    Collateral damage
    Australians will feel some short-term negative impacts of Facebook’s flex.

    Certain government Facebook pages, such as those belonging to the Bureau of Meterology and some health department sites, have been caught up in the ban. Facebook says this is due to the wording of the legislation, stating:

    As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted.

    While Facebook says it will restore non-news pages, the action will put pressure on the government to define more clearly what it means by news content.

    In the meantime, the move will affect Australians’ access to vital information related to emergencies and the covid pandemic. Without a concerted effort to ensure online behaviour change from users, this could be dangerous.

    Misinformation risk
    We can also expect to see a short-term proliferation of misinformation as Facebook’s news feed will have a vacuum of professionally sourced and fact-checked news.

    A significant number of Australians discuss news on Facebook, both via their newsfeed and in groups. Being able to source factual information from news sites is part of the everyday political and social participation that social media platforms facilitate.

    The democratic impact of Facebook’s ban will be felt – and is counter to Facebook’s stated principle of connecting people and its recent pledge to tackle misinformation.

    Will it hurt Facebook?
    The impact of this action against the legislation on Facebook itself is yet to be seen.

    The reputational damage from blocking important sites that serve Australia’s public interest overnight – and yet taking years to get on top of user privacy breaches and misinformation – undermines the legitimacy of the platform and its claimed civic intentions.

    Facebook’s actions may send a message to the government, but they will also send one to their Australian users.

    Readers are likely to find other ways to get their news. If we learn from the experience of Google’s news ban in Spain, we can see that after an initial dip in traffic, most major news organisations in Spain regained much of their web traffic after about a year.

    Surfing social waves
    Tools such as Facebook are only useful if people want to use them. And for some existing users, the lack of news might be a dealbreaker.

    Facebook already faces a long-term problem of an ageing user demographic, as under-25s turn to Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok for news and information.

    Young people may have Facebook profiles, but they are less likely to be active users.

    News organisations are already following their lead. For example, The Conversation Australia has 325,735 Facebook followers and will probably feel the impact of the loss of engagement there.

    But it also has more than 21,000 Instagram followers and counting. It is increasingly making visual news “tiles” to cater for the younger demographic of users who source news from other platforms. It has also been working to reach readers directly via regular email newsletters, which one in five US readers now say is their primary way of accessing news.

    News organisations have already learned how to pivot fast. When Facebook changed its algorithms in 2018 to deprioritise news publishers, many took action to reduce their reliance on Facebook’s traffic, analytics or digital advertising dollars.

    What now?
    Larger news organisations will be OK in the long run. But Australia’s smaller outlets, including local publishers and non-profits that produce public interest journalism, will need protection.

    The long-term task for news organisations and journalists is to convince the public – especially young people – that it’s worthwhile to actively seek out professional news and journalism as part of their daily online lives, rather than simply reading whatever comes across their feed.

    As for Facebook, going back to its original purpose of facilitating personal connection and social networking, rather than posing as a forum for public information, may not be a bad thing. But the reputational damage and publisher exodus will eventually damage its core business: digital advertising revenue.The Conversation

    Dr Diana Bossio is a lecturer in Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Facebook has pulled the trigger on news content — and possibly shot itself in the foot

    ANALYSIS: By Diana Bossio, Swinburne University of Technology

    Facebook this week made good on its threat to block Australians from accessing or posting news content. The ban includes blocking links to Australian and overseas news publishers.

    Facebook said the ban was a direct response to the federal government’s news media code legislation, which is expected to become law soon and would require digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay news media companies whose content they host.

    The move is either a last-ditch attempt to gain concessions in the legislation, or a simple cut-and-run by Facebook.

    The social media giant claims news publishers derive more value from news sharing than Facebook does. This is plausible, as news content makes up only 4 percent of sharing on the platform, whereas many news sites gain a large fraction of their traffic from Facebook referrals.

    But this is probably more about flexing some muscle. Facebook may be demonstrating to the Federal government that if it does not like the rules, it can damage national interests.

    Collateral damage
    Australians will feel some short-term negative impacts of Facebook’s flex.

    Certain government Facebook pages, such as those belonging to the Bureau of Meterology and some health department sites, have been caught up in the ban. Facebook says this is due to the wording of the legislation, stating:

    As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted.

    While Facebook says it will restore non-news pages, the action will put pressure on the government to define more clearly what it means by news content.

    In the meantime, the move will affect Australians’ access to vital information related to emergencies and the covid pandemic. Without a concerted effort to ensure online behaviour change from users, this could be dangerous.

    Misinformation risk
    We can also expect to see a short-term proliferation of misinformation as Facebook’s news feed will have a vacuum of professionally sourced and fact-checked news.

    A significant number of Australians discuss news on Facebook, both via their newsfeed and in groups. Being able to source factual information from news sites is part of the everyday political and social participation that social media platforms facilitate.

    The democratic impact of Facebook’s ban will be felt – and is counter to Facebook’s stated principle of connecting people and its recent pledge to tackle misinformation.

    Will it hurt Facebook?
    The impact of this action against the legislation on Facebook itself is yet to be seen.

    The reputational damage from blocking important sites that serve Australia’s public interest overnight – and yet taking years to get on top of user privacy breaches and misinformation – undermines the legitimacy of the platform and its claimed civic intentions.

    Facebook’s actions may send a message to the government, but they will also send one to their Australian users.

    Readers are likely to find other ways to get their news. If we learn from the experience of Google’s news ban in Spain, we can see that after an initial dip in traffic, most major news organisations in Spain regained much of their web traffic after about a year.

    Surfing social waves
    Tools such as Facebook are only useful if people want to use them. And for some existing users, the lack of news might be a dealbreaker.

    Facebook already faces a long-term problem of an ageing user demographic, as under-25s turn to Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok for news and information.

    Young people may have Facebook profiles, but they are less likely to be active users.

    News organisations are already following their lead. For example, The Conversation Australia has 325,735 Facebook followers and will probably feel the impact of the loss of engagement there.

    But it also has more than 21,000 Instagram followers and counting. It is increasingly making visual news “tiles” to cater for the younger demographic of users who source news from other platforms. It has also been working to reach readers directly via regular email newsletters, which one in five US readers now say is their primary way of accessing news.

    News organisations have already learned how to pivot fast. When Facebook changed its algorithms in 2018 to deprioritise news publishers, many took action to reduce their reliance on Facebook’s traffic, analytics or digital advertising dollars.

    What now?
    Larger news organisations will be OK in the long run. But Australia’s smaller outlets, including local publishers and non-profits that produce public interest journalism, will need protection.

    The long-term task for news organisations and journalists is to convince the public – especially young people – that it’s worthwhile to actively seek out professional news and journalism as part of their daily online lives, rather than simply reading whatever comes across their feed.

    As for Facebook, going back to its original purpose of facilitating personal connection and social networking, rather than posing as a forum for public information, may not be a bad thing. But the reputational damage and publisher exodus will eventually damage its core business: digital advertising revenue.The Conversation

    Dr Diana Bossio is a lecturer in Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Nothing burger media code is a dog’s breakfast

    With the amendments added in Parliament this week, the media bargaining code was a giant nothing burger. Facebook has taken that nothing burger and turned it into a global-scale dog’s breakfast.

    Facebook is an awful company with a high tolerance for its own awfulness. By blocking users from accessing Australian news services, and by blocking information from critical social service delivery organisations – including government health agencies and emergency services – the company has made the already unsafe aspects of its service even less safe.

    But Facebook is not a government service, and it is quite entitled to modify or change or remove entirely its product as it sees fit.

    And if the company feels the best way to serve its users is to remove news and information from health agencies one week before a vaccine roll-out in the middle of a pandemic, then it is within its rights to do so.

    digital people consultants
    Backlash: The media bargaining code is a nothing burger Facebook could not swallow

    It is also true that the social media giant has been allowed to grow as a largely unregulated way, while pushing back against any attempt by governments to make its service safer. The live-streamed Christchurch massacre shockingly comes to mind.

    Facebook has now made its product less safe in Australia and accelerated the need for regulation. The last 24 hours has massively changed the calculus.

    Facebook has revealed itself again, in all its awfulness. Its behaviour in Australia will galvanise the coordination of governments around the world to reign in not only Facebook, but to come to grips with what regulation looks like in the coming information age.

    In Australia, if nothing else, Facebook’s actions has started a more mainstream discussion about Big Tech, about platforms, about influence and algorithms, about AI and regulation. The Facebook issues are a forerunner to the giant regulatory and policy challenges that Australia and like-minded western democracies must come to grips with.

    The irony is that the media bargaining code, with the amendments that were passed this week, was a bit of a nothing burger. No company was designated under the scheme, no service was designated, no algorithms were to be handed over.

    The whole process was carried out in a very Australian way. A bunch of institutional power centres – legacy media, Big Tech and government – grinding away and carving up a market.

    Our Prime Minister’s transactional instincts took to parliament a ‘solution’ that was supposed to make everyone happy. Legacy media got a few bucks, Google wasn’t forced to “break the internet” and the government cleared the barnacles on this issue (and placated its power news media backer) ahead of an election later this year.

    This very Australian arrangement was effectively Google, News Corp and government coming up with a formula.

    Oh, the irony that Facebook is the company that drew a hard red line. It has dug its heels in on a matter of principle. It has blown the process up. No-one’s happy now.

    The media bargaining code with the amendments passed this week, makes a joke of the legislations’ intent. This had been portrayed by government as – *checks notes* – our last great hope to “save journalism”.

    Which is of course nonsense. The media bargaining code achieves precisely nothing in relation to journalism.

    On the upside, this is a mainstream public debate that we had to have. This debate is not about journalism or news, but how we manage our governing structures so that we can deal with this technologically-driven changes to our society.

    We get to decide what kind of country we want, and how we want it structured. Its not for the powerful interests of a few corporates.

    It is a little bit interesting that Australia now finds itself in this position, with the world watching.

    The post Nothing burger media code is a dog’s breakfast appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Facebook is right to call the government’s bluff

    As mentioned in previous analyses the way that the government has approached its battle with the digital giants has been flawed from the beginning.

    True its tough stand had made Google pay media companies well above what these companies would have been able to negotiate individually with Google, but the fundamentals of why these battles are taking place are still unchanged.

    Google was prepared to pay these ‘premiums’ to make sure that its business model would still survive. It is the company’s advertising business model that it was keen to protect and for that reason it was prepared to pay off the news companies.

    Parliament
    Face to face: In this stand-off Google is right to call government’s bluff

    So nothing fundamental has been solved by the Australian Government through its media code. It is now simply waiting for the next battle and the regulator (ACCC) has also already foreshadowed that it will concentrate on that advertising business model.

    This will be a much tougher battle that Australia will not be able to win on its own. Google will use its full legal power with gigantic financial resources to defend their business.

    It also shows that actions from individual governments are counterproductive. The French who took a different approach got only a fraction of the money for its media companies than that Google has paid to Australian media, so how will that make the French feel.

    Only united action against global digital moguls will lead to structural changes and I have mentioned some of such structural changes as proposed by the EU: Can we control the Digital Platforms.

    Now on to Facebook. I totally agree with Facebook that the Government’s action in relation to the way that Facebook distributes news is out of all proportions and as a matter of fact totally wrong.

    All news organisations around the world totally voluntary distribute their news to whoever wants to use it. Facebook is not involved in this at all. Unlike Google, it doesn’t abstract content; it doesn’t create news snippets and it does not distribute links.

    All of this is up to the news companies who are providing their services via Facebook. It is totally up to them if they provide full articles, snippets, links, send users to pay walls, etc.

    It is true that all the information that is now blocked by Facebook can be obtained elsewhere.

    However, Facebook is such a well-known, integrated platform, used by the majority of Australians that it will be the organisations who provide services on the platform and who are now blocked, who are the ones that suffer from this action.

    I would think that common sense here will prevail, and that the government will limit the media code to those digital companies that are actively making money from the content of others.

    Unlike Google the media code doesn’t really affect their business model, so there was no need for them to negotiate as there was, as a matter of fact nothing to negotiate.

    If the government wants to stick to its media code it will also have to make Twitter, LinkedIn and others pay for the same service that Facebook provides. You could even argue that telephone and postal service which are used to distribute news should fall under that code, of course totally ridiculous.

    It is also in the government’s own interest that it can continue to use the Facebook platform to distribute its own news. Once again there are other ways to do that, but the reach of Facebook is unsurpassed and as such very valuable for the distribution of such information.

    Do I let Facebook off the hook? Totally not, but if we want to get control over the digital media and avoid the damage that they are doing to our society, economy and democracy we need to be far more strategic and we globally will need to work together on those issues.

    The post Facebook is right to call the government’s bluff appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Media code changes makes law more ‘workable’

    The federal government will make a number of “technical” amendments to the media bargaining code to make it more “workable”, with the legislation set to sail through Parliament this week with the support of the Opposition.

    Legislation introducing a bargaining code between Google and Facebook and Australian media companies which would require them to enter into final offer arbitration to determine revenue sharing deals, will be debated in Parliament this week after it was given the green light by a senate committee last week.

    The legislation will have safe passage through Parliament with Labor confirming on Tuesday that it will support the bill, which the government will look to amend on Wednesday.

    The amendments focus on “streamlining” the requirement for Google and Facebook to provide notification of relevant changes to their algorithms and making clarifications to the arbitration process.

    The existing legislation will require Google and Facebook to provide media companies with 28 days’ notice of any relevant algorithmic changes made by human intervention. Both tech giants have railed against this clause, saying it is impractical, and the government has appeared to back down slightly on it.

    The government confirmed that it will move an amendment to “streamline” these requirements in order to “make them more workable”.

    The amendments also clarify the criteria for the final offer arbitration to require the costs of both the media firms and the digital platforms be considered, and to ensure that the decided remuneration is in the form of lump sum payments.

    The government will also clarify that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s role in the scheme is to provide “factual information to assist the arbitrator”. The amendments also adjust the effect of the code’s anti-avoidance provisions so that they will not take effect until the commencement of the code.

    The government will also ensure that the anti-avoidance provisions in the code don’t “interfere with existing contractual rights”, such as revenue-sharing deals between media companies and big tech firms outside of the code.

    The bargaining code will also be reviewed by Treasury after one year of its operation.

    The bargaining code legislation will now likely pass Parliament without any further amendments in this sitting fortnight.

    The real test however will be if and when Treasurer Josh Frydenberg moves to designate Facebook and Google under the code, which will actually bring it into action.

    It also depends on whether the government moves to designate Google and Facebook’s core services or just their specific news platforms, as the tech giants’ are still pushing for.

    The Coalition has given itself wiggle room to avoid imposing the code on Google and Facebook if the organisations sign deals with media companies over the sharing of news content. Seven West Media on Monday signed a deal reportedly worth at least $30 million to have its content featured on Google Showcase, with more deals expected in the coming weeks.

    The government can still opt to not designate one or both companies under the code, making its passage through Parliament meaningless.

    “If there are commercial deals in place, then that becomes a different equation,” Mr Frydenberg said on Monday.

    The post Media code changes makes law more ‘workable’ appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Showdown looms for media bargaining code

    The federal government is set to cave in to the demands of Google and Facebook, with preparations under way to water down its media bargaining code ahead of a parliamentary showdown this week.

    Legislation introducing a code, which would force Google and Facebook to enter into final offer arbitration to determine revenue sharing deals with media companies over the sharing of news content, is to be debated in parliament this week, after being given the green light by a government-led Senate committee on Friday.

    But negotiations are still taking place behind the scenes on the final shape of the legislation, and the government appears willing to make significant concessions to the Big Tech firms.

    parliament House cyber
    Time to reflect on the showdown with Big Tech

    The government confirmed that it will amend the legislation, which is scheduled for debate in Parliament on Wednesday.

    It comes as Seven West Media on Monday became the first major Australian media company to sign a deal with Google to have its news content featured on Google Showcase as part of a deal believed to be worth more than $30 million per year.

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg are pushing for Google and Facebook to sign more deals like this with other major media players outside of the bargaining code, and are understood to be willing to make major concessions if this takes place.

    The government is reportedly willing to alter the code to not designate Google’s search engine or Facebook’s news feed as subject to the revenue sharing deal. This amounts to a huge capitulation to the Big Tech demands.

    These are the firms’ most significant services, and the primary means through which users are presented with news content.

    The government is also set to delay making these designations in order to give Google and Facebook more time to finalise the deals with the media companies.

    The tech firms have been in discussions with media companies this year in an effort to secure these deals outside of the code, with negotiations including clauses that the deals can be scrapped if the bargaining code is passed into law.

    Seven West Media on Monday informed the market that it had agreed to a “long-term partnership” with Google to have its new content featured on Showcase, which was launched earlier this month in Australia.

    The company’s chair Kerry Stokes thanked Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg for being “instrumental” in securing the agreement.

    “Their outstanding leadership on the implementation of the proposed news media bargaining code has resulted in us being able to conclude negotiations that result in fair payment and ensure our digital future,” Mr Stokes said.

    Speaking on ABC radio on Monday morning, Mr Frydenberg said more deals are “very close”.

    “Both the media proprietors and the digital giants I think recognise that we have something that is workable here in Australia, something that we can take forward, something that can ensure a stable media landscape, and something that will see journalism continued and journalists rewarded for creating original content,” he said.

    Later in the day, Mr Frydenberg confirmed that amendments would be made to the legislation, which is to be debated in the party room on Tuesday before its presentation to Parliament on Wednesday.

    The inking of these deals will likely give the government the justification to significantly water down the bargaining code to satisfy the tech giants, ensuring that they do not withdraw their services in Australia.

    Despite recommending the legislation be passed, the Senate committee’s report late last week did allow room for amendments.

    “The committee accepts that there remains the possibility that not all risks have been taken into account, and that further refinements may be needed to the arbitration mechanisms and other parts of the code so that they work in an optimum manner,” the report said.

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  • Google’s bargaining code requests kept secret by government

    A crucial submission by Google to the media bargaining code inquiry is being kept secret by the government as it mulls potential amendments to the controversial scheme next week.

    The government-led Senate Economics Legislation Committee is currently scrutinising the government’s plan to introduce media bargaining code which would require Google and Facebook to enter into final offer arbitration with media companies to determine revenue sharing deals for the sharing of news content.

    The committee handed down its report on Friday, and has publicly released a number of submissions and answers to questions on notice it has received.

    During a public hearing last month, Google Australia managing director Mel Silva was asked for a list of amendments required for the company to support the legislation. This was taken on notice by Ms Silva and in its written response, Google said that it had attached a table of these amendments that it is calling for.

    But this attachment with the list of amendments demanded by Google was not included in the submission posted publicly by the senate committee. InnovationAus understands this was a decision by the government-led committee rather than a request from Google.

    A spokesperson for the committee confirmed to InnovationAus that this was done deliberately as the attachment is “still under consideration by the committee”. This is despite the committee handing down its final report just hours later on Friday afternoon.

    The changes are what Google said is required for it to support the code and not follow through on its threat to remove its search engine from Australia.

    “These amendments to the code would ensure a framework in which Google can reach commercial agreements to pay publishers, and is held accountable by a standard binding arbitration model based on comparables, without undermining the ability to link freely – a fundamental principle of Google Search, and of the web,” Google said.

    The Senate Economics Committee is chaired by Liberal Senator Slade Brockman. It handed down its report on the legislation on Friday, giving the green light for its passage through Parliament but leaving room for further amendments to be made.

    Google’s submission to the inquiry earlier this year does offer some insight into the legislative changes the tech giant is pushing for.

    The code should only be applied to Google’s Showcase service, rather than its search function in general, and the final offer arbitration should be replaced with standard commercial arbitration, the tech giant said.

    Google also pushed for the algorithm notification requirement to be altered to require only “reasonable notice about significant actionable changes to the algorithm”.

    These suggested amendments were likely what were included in the attachment, and it’s unclear why the committee has opted to not release it publicly.

    Microsoft has recently broken ranks with Silicon Valley and the US government in throwing its full support behind the code, saying it would happily be subject to it and that the US should replicate it.

    The bargaining code legislation will be debated in Parliament next week.

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  • Senate committee gives bargaining code the green light

    A senate committee has given the green light to the big tech media bargaining code, but has paved the way for further government amendments to the controversial legislation next week.

    The government-led Senate Economics Legislation Committee has been conducting an inquiry into the legislation, which will force Google and Facebook to enter into final offer arbitration with media companies to determine a revenue sharing deal for the use of news content, since late last year.

    It held two public hearings into the bill and received 55 submissions.

    The committee handed down its verdict on Friday afternoon, recommending only that the legislation be passed. The committee chair, Liberal Senator Slade Brockman, did however leave room for further revisions to be made to the code before it is passed by Parliament.

    “Despite the concerns raised by various submitters and witnesses, the committee is confident that the bill will deliver on its intended outcomes,” the committee’s report said.

    “Its provisions will provide the basis for a more equitable relationship between the media and Google / Facebook and, through this, help safeguard public interest journalism in Australia. Accordingly, the committee recommends that the bill be passed.”

    The report is the last step before the legislation is debated in Parliament, which is likely to begin next week. The government itself is expected to make amendments to the legislation, along with Labor and the Greens.

    Labor Senators in the committee also recommended the bill be passed, but said this is subject to the government addressing “key concerns”.

    The committee’s report acknowledged the polarised opinions of the bargaining code, with large media companies in full support and big tech firms railing against it. Google has threatened to withdraw its search engine from Australia if the code is implemented, while Facebook said it may block Australian news content from being shared on its platform.

    The report lists the range of concerns with the bargaining code, including that it is unworkable, will bring about unforeseen outcomes, may strengthen existing market players and may possibly violate international treaties and trade agreements.

    But the committee said that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission “effectively rebutted many of the assertions made by those critical of the bill”.

    “While the evidence received demonstrated some polarised views on the bill, there is significant support for the bill’s aims. Further, while some submitters have questioned the methods and recommended additional refinements, there is a strong view that large multinational technology companies should not remain outside sensible regulations that protect the public interest,” the report said.

    The committee also pointed out that even those in strong support of the legislation said that further amendments are required.

    “The committee accepts that there remains the possibility that not all risks have been taken into account, and that further refinements may be needed to the arbitration mechanisms and other parts of the code so that they work in an optimum manner,” it said in the report.

    In additional comments to the report, Labor senators said that while the Opposition will support the legislation in Parliament, the government must circulate its amendments to it “as a matter of urgency”.

    The Opposition said that the concerns about the bill were previously raised during public consultation but not addressed by the government.

    “Labor senators support the intention of the bill which is to address the dominance of digital platforms Google and Facebook for the benefit of the Australian news media. Labor senators note, however, that the corollary of addressing the dominance of digital platforms may involve potential impacts beyond the news media, the outcomes of which are unknown,” the Labor senators said.

    Greens senators also provided additional comments, calling for amendments to protect small and independent publishers and to require that funds raised through the code are invested into public interest journalism.

    The legislation is expected to be brought before Parliament next week.

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  • Google, Facebook actions a threat to democracy

    Microsoft has doubled down on its support for Australia’s media bargaining code, labelling Facebook and Google’s threats to withdraw services from the country as a “new vulnerability for the world’s democracies”.

    In a blog post on Friday morning, Microsoft president Brad Smith slammed the Big Tech firms’ opposition to the media bargaining code, which is set to be debated in Parliament as early as next week and urged the US government to pursue a similar policy.

    Microsoft’s posturing on the issue is a significant split from both Silicon Valley and the US government, which has called on the Australian government to ditch the proposal entirely.

    Brad Smith
    Microsoft president Brad Smith: Google and Facebook’s behaviour a threat to democracy

    It comes after Microsoft last week threw its support behind the bargaining code legislation, saying it would be investing in Bing to help fill the void if Google does leave Australia and would happily be subject to the code.

    The media bargaining code, which has been in the works for several years, will require Facebook and Google to enter into final offer, “baseball-style” arbitration to determine revenue sharing deals with media companies for the sharing of news content, and also provide advanced notice of algorithmic changes as the result of human intervention.

    Both companies have railed against this proposal, with Facebook quickly saying it might block all Australian news content as a result of it, and Google last month threatening to withdraw its search engine entirely if it is unamended.

    Mr Smith focused on Google in the blog post, labelling its reaction to the bargaining code as “dramatic”.

    “Unlike Google, if we can grow, we are prepared to sign up for the new law’s obligations, including sharing revenue as proposed with news organisations. The key would be to create a more competitive market, something the government can facilitate,” Mr Smith said in the blog post.

    “But, as we made clear, we are comfortable running a high-quality search service at lower economic margins than Google and with more economic returns for the press.”

    It was recently revealed that Google had sent private proposals to a number of Australian publishers offering to pay more money for news partnerships, but including clauses allowing for it to terminate the deals if the bargaining code is passed without revision.

    This was an “extraordinary manoeuvre”, Mr Smith said, and the actions of the Big Tech firms threaten democracy.

    “Google and Facebook have shown they are prepared to tamp down their services or pull out of a country entirely if legislatures force them to share more of their revenue with the press on terms they don’t like,” he said.

    “This creates a new vulnerability for the world’s democracies, and it underscores the need for new competition rules in regard to opening up digital markets, something more governments are now considering.”

    The Australian government’s bargaining code is an “innovative prescription” for current issues impacting the media, and the US government should introduce similar rules, Mr Smith said, with the Biden administration now facing “pressing questions”, especially following the Capitol Hill riots earlier this year.

    “Facebook and Google persuaded the Trump administration to object to Australia’s proposal. However, as the United States takes stock of the events on January 6, it’s time to widen the aperture,” Mr Smith said.

    “This is a defining issue of our time that goes to the heart of our democratic freedoms. The United States should not object to a creative Australian proposal that strengthens democracy by requiring tech companies to support a free press. It should copy it instead.”

    The bargaining code legislation is currently the subject of a senate committee inquiry, with the final report expected to be tabled on Friday. It will then be debated in Parliament as early as next week.

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  • On platforms and services: The great unwinding

    The main demands made by the government stay in place, but some of the details will be changed. This allows the Government to claim victory, while the damage to Google will be limited.

    Publishers will in one way or another be paid for news, either through a payment based on the value of the news and the value of the Google search facility. An arbiter in the middle will come up with fair arrangements.

    The other option will be for publishers to use Google’s News Showcase based on a partnership between Google and publishers and get paid that way. Several Australian publishers have already signed up to this service.

    Google platforms
    Google search will survive in Australia, but bigger problems await Photo: achinthamb / Shutterstock

    It was interesting to see the tactics that were used in this power play. Microsoft became involved at its highest levels, indicating to be more than willing and able to offer an alternative with its Bing search engine. If it had come to that, this obviously would be one of the few alternatives for Australia.

    But let’s be honest it is not for nothing that Bing only has a 4 per cent market share, while Google has a 90 per cent market share. Whatever way you look at it, Google is by far the more superior product. It would not have been a good outcome if Google would no longer be available to Australian users.

    Furthermore, it would be extremely destructive for tens of thousands of Australian businesses who to a large extent depend on Google for advertising.

    While all of this is positive, at the same time it is not taking away the broader issues of monopolies such as Facebook and Google. It has already become clear that it will not be enough to just regulate the existing giants. We need to look at the underlying elements, being their platforms.

    The competition regulator in Australia, the ACCC, has already flagged the dominance of Google in the advertising market and now we are getting more to the core of the problem. While most will look at Google as a search engine company, it is equally an advertising company. This is where it makes its money.

    As we have seen in recent years the advertising principle – that is, maximising clicks – are often in conflict with social values. The algorithms favour fake news, conspiracy theories and criminal intent as these increase exposure for their advertising.

    These algorithms also create echo chambers often used to only emphasise the fake news and conspiracies, in the meantime gathering more market exposure for Google and its advertisers.

    Using search, maps, YouTube and so on, they gather massive amounts of personal data from its users in order to make their advertising product more effective.

    The current business models of the digital companies are not only undermining competition but also eroding privacy and many of the core issues of our democratic institutions.

    The digital giants are predominantly American businesses. They are totally driven by profit and thus have been able to abuse their market position in relation to privacy and competition matters. By doing so, they now have market capitalisations that are totally out of any economic proportion. This might be a fleeting achievement but in the long-term, it is unsustainable.

    The power that they have gained allows them now also to dictate the supply line, allowing them to extract “rent” from their suppliers, as they have little choice than to adhere to the terms and conditions of these platforms.

    Amazon, Uber and Airbnb are all under investigation somewhere in the world for such practices.

    Obviously, these platforms are immensely useful for our societies and economies, so we don’t want to get rid of them. The importance of these platforms has become very clear during the pandemic, as they have become essential national and international infrastructure.

    As the Europeans argue, the platforms eventually will have to become neutral on which a range of business models can be built independently and in competition with one another. These neutral platforms can be used by the digital giants, other businesses, as well as by governments, communities and so on.

    Unravelling these complex issues and building new principles around platforms could easily take a decade or more, so we better get on with that job. We might need to look at a structural separation between the platforms and the services provided on top of them.

    The social media companies are very much aware of the political pressure that is building up around the world. This is a real threat to their business models. They are working on internal systems to address these issues. However, it is unlikely that they are prepared to go deep enough to keep the regulators away.

    Both in the US and in Europe, serious plans are underway to curb the power of these companies. The new U.S. Government is proposing changes to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996.

    It classifies internet companies as telecoms companies, therefore making them exempt from content laws. The proposal is now to make changes to section 230 and render digital platforms responsible for harmful and criminal content.

    Beyond that, to address the platform issues in America, this will require an overhaul of their anti-trust scheme as the current regulatory system is unfit for the current digital environment.

    The OECD is another organisation focusing on these companies in relation valuation of digital innovations and taxation.

    While Google in Australia might be off the hook for now, there are many more international actions planned to address these issues.

    As the Australian case shows, these digital giants are now big enough to challenge and even threaten sovereign governments. The longer we wait with reigning in these powers, the more governments can be intimidated by these companies and the more difficult it will become for governments to come up with decisive action.

    On the other side, all these actions by governments and regulators should be a warning sign for those digital moguls. They are accountable to their shareholders. Those shareholders could lose significant amounts of money if these companies are put under stringent regulations.

    Perhaps a better outcome for them would be to accept the social and economic responsibilities of their businesses and support them to change their business model to better reflect their role in our society and our economy.

    Paul Budde is a columnist for Independent Australia and managing director of Paul Budde Consulting, an independent telecommunications research and consultancy organisation. You can follow him on Twitter @PaulBudde. This article was originally published on Independent Australia.

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  • It’s not about the news: It’s techno politics

    I am forced to live in two parallel worlds. One world is served by an expensive and unreliable NBN where on the weekend in Canberra the speed was 18Mbps down / 23Mbps up. The other world is AI, where for free, I have access to Google’s AI services and compete globally and largely unhindered during the pandemic.

    So I don’t believe that the ACCC digital platforms inquiry and the Senate Committee hearings into the proposed News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code is actually about the news.

    The debacle unfolding is in reality a dangerous episode of a government and bureaucracy blind-sided by legacy industries and unprepared for the digital era that is upon us.

    Canberra Parliament
    Power play – the Media Bargaining Code is now about the news
    Credit: DavidWebb/Shutterstock

    In years to come, students of history will discover the treasure trove of submissions to the Senate Committee and wonder who actually read them. They will wonder why the submissions of Sir Tim Berners-Lee (“in my capacity as the inventor of the World Wide Web”) and Vint Cerf (“I am one of the original co-designers of the Internet”) appear to have been ignored.

    Fermenting in this miasma are three fundamentally specious assumptions / positions with the proposed Code and related digital advertising inquiry.

    Firstly, the analogy of platforms is an industrial age concept and its use as an analogy in these inquiries to shape analysis of digital economy concepts, is flawed. Radically, the economy and our lives are shaped by ecosystems of domains – such as the Apple ecosystem and the Google ecosystem – directly servicing and informing individual consumers.

    Recent research by MIT Centre for Information Systems Research (CISR) “Hello Domains, Goodbye Industries”, examines a fundamental economic shift to domains brought about by digital technologies and ecosystem business models.

    In the flawed ‘platforms’ analogy, the comparison to utilities and industrial age concepts of ‘supply chains’ has created a pyramid of false and incomplete analysis upon which the ‘power imbalance’ theory rests, and the policy and draft legislation is built.

    ACCC industrial era references to the Google supply chain and its ‘opacity’, reveals a defective understanding of the dynamics of new emerging domains and ecosystems of services.

    This defective understanding is also evidenced by the flawed methodology of the Digital and Advertising Services Inquiry, which was based on an analysis of websites frequently visited by consumers in Australia.

    Curiously, this would appear to put out of scope, the economically massive online games industry expected to reach $300 billion by 2025 with over 3 billion gamers. This is a sector that the Australian Government has consistently ignored for more than a decade.

    The eGames and online gaming innovations and technologies are radically reshaping entire economies and servicing industries. This is why Apple and Fortnite are locked in battle.

    Two in three Australians use video games. People are in their apps throughout the day: while commuting; relaxing; engaging in health, education, entertainment and news. The roll out of 5G is enabling a superior gaming experience. These behaviours are fundamentally different to the website visit modelling assumptions of the inquiry.

    According to Venturebeat, “…by the end of 2019, 120 billion apps were downloaded worldwide, 29.6 billion of which were games…and in-game ad revenue is predicted to grow faster than direct spending in the next few years with spend estimated to be $35 billion by 2024.”

    So if we’re looking to the future to understand the dynamics of advertising and news, an inquiry that excludes gaming – but for some reason is transfixed by the industrial age paradigm of websites, platforms and supply chains – is utterly flawed.

    Secondly, the apparent lack of ethics in the proposal, is a concerning indication that what is at stake is not understood. That the creators of the Internet and World Wide Web have both written to the Committee explaining how search and links work, detailing the threat the draft legislation poses for an open web, is extraordinary.

    Amongst the ethical issues not explored are the consequences of the recommendations (even if these are implementable) regarding notification of algorithmic changes and data silos.

    The bureaucracy simply has neither the capability nor capacity to evaluate and safeguard such complex and economically significant algorithms. Robodebt is an horrific example.

    This is not just my view: public sector capability reviews over a decade or more have described consistently and in detail the technology capability deficit in government, notwithstanding the billions invested in systems.

    Similarly, the mandatory data silo recommendation in the Code is vacuous. It is incongruous that the government would seek to impose a data architecture (data silo) strategy on commercial organisations, when the government itself is trying to do the opposite in its DTA-led digital transformation strategy to break down the silos.

    ‘Data silos’ do not inherently protect privacy or mitigate risk. The rearchitecting of businesses into silos may very well cause additional handling of personal information. But it is also not necessarily the case that silo busting leads to a better customer experience.

    What has to be clearly articulated, is purpose, strategy and governance: not a knee-jerk imposition of a poorly understood solution that has neither been examined in detail nor tested.

    Indeed, in describing the fundamental economic change that is occurring as the emergence of the domains, the MIT CSIR research talks about a mind-shift and breaking down the silos to make it easier for the customer to create their own value.

    And with the advice of Sir Tim Berners-Lee in hand, the government should look further into the future of the web that he is leading. Berners-Lee takes a different view of silos: and that is not for the big tech companies themselves to construct further data silos as proposed by the government, but to give individuals more power.

    He is doing this via his new open-source initiative called Inrupt and the development of technology standards to enable individuals to control their own data.

    As with the emergence of domains and ecosystems, Berners-Lee’s work on the future of the web is a fundamental paradigm shift. But two decades of policy failure has left Australia ill-equipped to face this digital future: ranking 44 (out of 63 nations) on digital/technological skills and 54 in communications technology in the 2020 IMD World Digital Competitiveness Rankings.

    Thirdly, in targeting Google and Facebook, the Australian government sleepwalks into trade war territory. The submissions from the US Government (Executive Office of the President) and the US Chamber of Commerce raise concerns about the explicit and exclusive targeting of US companies without first having established a violation.

    According to the US, “…the proposal violates the non-discrimination obligations to which Australia has undertaken in the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organisation’s General Agreement on Trade in Services.”

    Back in 2005, I was awarded an O-Visa (Individuals with Extraordinary Ability) by the US Government to take up my worldwide government role with Microsoft in Seattle, so I personally understand the fierce competition for talent, and appreciate the high stakes of market protection by the US government.

    The stakes are unfathomably higher in the digital era: for global citizens and global companies alike.

    Trade concerns were also raised by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) regarding “the discriminatory treatment of US firms because it effectively targets two U.S. companies”.

    The SIIA is the leading organisation representing financial information, education technology, specialised content and publishing companies (that in many cases make their content available behind a paywall), and health technology companies and associations.

    Similarly, the Business Council of Australia noted that if the Code were implemented, it would create “substantial sovereign risk” for companies looking to operate or invest in Australia.

    What would a digital trade war look like? Under the proposed Code, the Australian government can add any other company. The Internet Association emphasises this point: “The Code grants unfettered discretionary powers to the Treasurer without proscribing clear standards or principles for designating which companies the Code will apply to.”

    My business, like many others in Australia, use the Google, Apple and Microsoft ecosystems of domains for different purposes. And with geo-blocking, the features and services we rely on could be stopped, delayed or limited either in retaliation or because of the increased legal and commercial risk to these overseas companies.

    In the Google ecosystem, we use Gmail, Chrome, YouTube, Google Search. We use the free Google Dialogue Flow AI conversational system. Geo-blocking of any of these would significantly impact our ability to undertake R&D and compete globally in AI.

    We are also and for different purposes, deeply integrated into the Apple ecosystem devices, wearables and apps – including Apple Health. And Apple News, for which we do pay a subscription, part of which flows to the media outlets creating the content.

    We confidently and continuously share our health data with Apple and this has literally been a life saver for heart patient husband Allan Johnson. We have never had this level of confidence nor benefit from the My Health Record.

    A digital trade war might see the Australian government continue its wait-and-see approach to the approval of the Apple Watch ECG and other critical heart health functions, even though these have been approved for use in the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and 60 other countries. The health of many Australians is at risk from this argy-bargy.

    And Microsoft’s statement this week that it has thrown its full support behind the government’s media bargaining Code is hardly the result of an afternoon discussion between the Prime Minister and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella.

    Way back in 2009, The Guardian reported that News Corp was considering a tie-up with Microsoft against Google. Looks like Australia has been played as mugs in a power play of techno politics disguised as news.

    The shrill responses from the government and the Senate committee that Australia will not be bullied and that “we decide” are a dog whistle to the doctrine of vested interests. Doctrine that over twenty years has seen the NBN debacle; the gutting of public sector capability through widespread outsourcing; leaving Australia languishing near the bottom of global digital competitiveness.

    The world is watching, not just because of the potential threat to Google’s business model, but to see how apparently easily the fundamentals of the open web and the digital economy can be compromised by a democratic government appealing to rusted on vested interests and a bureaucracy struggling in the digital era.

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  • YouTube Financially Deplatforms Swath Of Indie Media Accounts

    The Google-owned video sharing platform YouTube has demonetized numerous independent media accounts, a jarring escalation in the steadily intensifying campaign against alternative news outlets online.

    Progressive commentators Graham Elwood, The Progressive Soapbox, The Convo Couch, and Franc Analysis have all received notifications from YouTube that their videos are no longer permitted to earn money through the platform’s various monetization features, as has Ford Fisher, a respected freelancer who films US political demonstrations. No explanation has been offered for this decision beyond the vague claim that “your channel is not in line with our YouTube Partner Program policies” due to “harmful content”.

    Like all large online platforms, YouTube’s appeals process is notoriously opaque and unaccountable. These accounts could remain demonetized for months, or forever, without any clear explanation at all. Ford Fisher, who has been in this situation before, said on Twitter that his account was left demonetized for seven months before YouTube reversed its decision.

    “Last time you demonetized my channel, I spoke out for seven months. I didn’t delete a single piece of content. You admitted you were wrong. I forgive you. Please don’t do this again,” Fisher tweeted.

    “No superchats, no ad revenue, no YouTube premium money,” tweeted Elwood, who also said “I have a call with my lawyers later today.”

    “You guys have destroyed my channel without legit explanation as to why,” tweeted Jamarl Thomas of Progressive Soapbox. “No videos are given – and frankly there is literally zero ‘harmful’ content on my channel. This is a radically bad error that needs to be corrected.”

    The Convo Couch’s Jonathan Mayorca tweeted the notification he received from YouTube which gave the reason as “Harmful content: Content that focuses on controversial issues and that is harmful to viewers,” saying no specific video or subject was named. Nobody receiving these notifications appears to have any idea what is meant by “harmful” or “controversial” or why YouTube is mentioning them in the same breath as though these two things are connected or synonymous in some way.

    Speaking for myself, I can say with absolute certainty that I would not be able to create content at anywhere near the pace I do were I not making enough money from it to do it full time. Life is far too demanding with far too much else going on for me to be able to maintain anything like daily output; being financially deplatformed and having to get another job would force me down to an essay a week in my spare time, if that. Anyone who works in independent media full time knows this, and so do the powerful people who are steadily ratcheting up the campaign to silence anyone who hasn’t passed through the gatekeepers of the plutocratic media.

    Financial deplatforming is censorship. People were given an opportunity to devote themselves to the vocation of creating media outside the gatekeeping apparatus of billionaire news institutions, which is arguably the single most important vocation anyone can give themselves to in our world right now, and they built their lives around their ability to do this. Now it’s being ripped away from them; their literal jobs are being taken away. They were offered a reason to think they’d be able to make a living doing very important work, and then they were sucker punched with what amounts to political censorship.

    This has been a continually escalating trend for years. The general population is herded onto huge monopolistic social media platforms offering democratization of information where your voice can be heard, and then those platforms proceed to censor an increasing amount of political speech in increasing coordination with the US government.

    If the democratization of information online is successfully reversed and the mass media gatekeepers are again the sole authorities on what’s real and true, people will be locked into forming their ideas on how to think, act and vote based on what they are told by the same plutocratic media institutions which have been deceiving them into every war and manipulating them into accepting the status quo for generations.

    If the door is locked to the possibility of a grassroots information rebellion against the narrative hegemony of our rulers, we will remain doomed to continue along the same ecocidal, omnicidal trajectory these bastards have us on until it reaches its inevitable conclusion. This must be resisted.

    __________________________

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  • Digital agencies: Govt is going to trash your business

    The government and the ACCC have been working for a long time on a News Media Bargaining code. The government says it is about ensuring the future of a robust and diverse media landscape. You might think this is about who pays for news, but it is about so much more.

    In late January, Josh Frydenberg was quoted in the Nine owned SMH saying,

    “My view is that it is inevitable that the digital giants will be paying for original content… we are now in a position to implement a world leading code – one that is fair, taking into account mutual value exchange … and we think it is a fair outcome.”

    Sounds reasonable right? But the legislation currently on the table has nothing to do with fairness. It’s really complex and, it appears, designed to confuse.

    Google Dara
    Digital agencies warned: The media code will ruin your business – Sundry Photography / Shutterstock

    This legislation is not about creating a diverse media landscape. It’s about the government doing News Ltd’s dirty work and it could adversely impact your business, advertiser or agency.

    How did we get here

    To understand where we are you have to go back a couple of decades.

    In 2000 Google invented AdWords, possibly the greatest business model ever invented. Until that time news and TV organisations were extremely profitable. The print media had classifieds – called rivers of gold for a reason, while TV broadcasters had semi-exclusive licenses and huge audiences, so they also earned huge profits.

    Newspapers clearly valued the revenue the classifieds brought into their business. But they didn’t want to know about the juggernaut of the Internet that was coming. Hubris told them they were bigger than that. They were newsmakers.

    It wasn’t enough. Over the next 10 years, the lucrative classified ads business in real estate, cars and jobs, and more, migrated seamlessly to new players. The newspapers engaged consultants to work on new strategies, but it was too little, too late. The horse had well and truly bolted.

    While this was happening, Facebook arrived and quickly established itself. Despite initial doubts about them ever earning an income they found their river of gold in advertising and data. They built a model that allows advertisers to find and target ads to 40-year-old yoga teachers in Dubbo, to dog groomers in Gawler. It’s been a game changer for the digital industry because it is such a powerful marketing tool for targeting customers.

    Even smarter, Google and Facebook built advertising tools that were self service. They created a huge industry of new businesses delivering SEM and social advertising. These businesses were able to compete with the big media agencies and big Adtech vendors like Adobe. They helped their clients diversify their marketing budgets away from the big media powerhouses of the day. Google and Facebook levelled the playing field.

    In fact, their advertising and data tools are so good they attract most of the media dollars now – for every $100 spent on online advertising, $53 goes to Google, $28 to Facebook and the rest elsewhere.

    And that is where the problem starts. For all the noise, this is only about one thing. It’s about the money. And the people who are no longer seeing the rivers of gold flow into their backyards are trying with all their might to reverse the river’s course. They are trying to engineer an environment that makes them more competitive – at your expense.

    No one is suggesting Google and Facebook are wonderful organisations, seeking to change the world for the better. They’re not. They have too much power, they don’t pay nearly enough tax. And on and on. But those issues are not addressed by the proposal currently before the government.

    So what’s being proposed

    Google allows people to find things, and they monetised some of that search. Look for a pair of shoes, many small businesses will bid for your attention and Google will get paid. But say you look for “How did Craig Kelly go from furniture salesman to medical expert.” What then? You will be directed to a news site that did not pay for a link on Google. It’s free to them, and to you. That traffic then generates revenue for the news organisation based on the advertising they run on the news page.

    Under the guise of supporting a free and diverse media environment it’s proposed Google and Facebook will pay a fee to News and Nine. The code has revenue requirements that would remove most others from participating. If it was about journalism you’d expect many other small and medium-sized news gathering and publishing organisations to be included. You might wonder if this applies to the ABC, SBS. The ABC and SBS were excluded then included and it appears they are currently included but there is a lot of internal tension in the Liberal party over that. Watch this space.

    Under the proposal, Google and Facebook have to share their customer data algorithm with the publishers. The mechanism is not clear. This is because they want to augment their own data tools with data they don’t deserve to access.

    I’ve read the commentary of many digital agency people who say “I’ll work with Bing and Yahoo etc”. The government says they have talked to Bing and surprise, surprise, they are happy to step in. But in reality it’s not that simple.

    The digital advertising industry is huge, with an estimated $4.3 billion at stake. And it’s an industry that has become very reliant on the hyper-targeted inventory that Google and Facebook provide. Bing and Duckduckgo, which has also been touted as a substitute for Google in search, simply do not provide anywhere near the same platform benefits.

    Many of us have competed with News. They buy Google and Facebook inventory like everyone else, but then bundle their own un-targeted inventory into the deal as well. If this proposal goes ahead, you will have a competitor gifted with a significant advantage you won’t have access to.

    It’s not clear what happens to Adwords, Google Shopping display and other products. It could mean your clients, such as hairdressers, car dealers and travel providers will be disadvantaged. And News will be best positioned to pick them up.

    Over 500,000 people signed a petition to investigate the power of News Limited. This proposal hands more power straight to that organisation.

    There is nothing in the proposal that ads to media independence. If there were it might be a different story. It’s about doing a favour to News and no one in the government is is really telling the truth on this.

    If you have been part of the digital industry in this country for a long time, you appreciate that you had the opportunity to build a business. You were able to do this on a level playing field where News and Nine did not have all the advantages. You should be really concerned about this initiative.

    So what can you do. Talk to your local member. I phoned mine and they have had lots of support for the legislation. Talk to the Business Council of Australia. They are not in support of the legislation but more perspectives would help. Phone the office of Michelle Rowland. She is the Shadow Minister for Communications.

    Simon van Wyk is the Founder of Blue Road Group.   Simon has been part of the digital transformation of most major brands in Australia.   Blue Road deliver digital innovation and leadership transformation services. This article first appeared on LinkedIn.

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  • Bing! Microsoft ‘fully supports’ Big Tech-media code

    Microsoft has thrown its full support behind the federal government’s media bargaining code, positioning its own search service as able to fill the void left by Google’s proposed withdrawal and publicly rebuking its tech rival for its threat to leave Australia.

    In a significant public statement on Wednesday afternoon, Microsoft president Brad Smith confirmed he had spoken with Prime Minister Scott Morrison along with Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, and that the company supported the media bargaining code and is actively preparing to improve its service if Google does leave Australia.

    Legislation introducing a bargaining code between Facebook and Google and Australian media companies which would require final offer arbitration to determine revenue-sharing deals between the two sides is currently the subject of a Senate inquiry and is likely to be debated in Parliament later this month.

    Brad Smith
    Bada Bing! Microsoft president Brad Smith says the company fully supports the governments media bargaining code

    Google recently threatened to withdraw its search services from Australia if the code is implemented, while Facebook earlier said it may block all Australian news content from its platform in response.

    But Mr Smith said Microsoft would happily abide by the code if it were to be designated by the government, and that the company is readying to invest further in Bing to bring it up to Google’s standard, and plans to allow small businesses to transfer advertising to the service for free.

    “Microsoft fully supports the news media bargaining code. The code reasonably attempts to address the bargaining power imbalance between digital platforms and Australian news businesses,” Mr Smith said in the statement sent to the media.

    “While Microsoft is not subject to the legislation currently pending, we’d be willing to live by the rules if the government designates us. Microsoft will ensure that small businesses who wish to transfer their advertising to Bing can do so simply and with no transfer costs. We will invest further to ensure Bing is comparable to our competitors.”

    The tech giant also took a swipe at Google for its threat to leave Australia in response to the code.

    “While other tech companies may sometimes threaten to leave Australia, Microsoft will never make such a threat. We appreciate what Australia has long meant for Microsoft’s growth as a company, and we are committed to supporting the country’s national security and economic success,” Mr Smith said.

    It comes as the federal government and department officials are actively preparing for Google to pull its search engine from Australia in response to the code, with Mr Morrison and a series of ministers already trying to sing the virtues of Bing as a potential replacement.

    In a statement to InnovationAus, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher pointed to alternative search engines and that Google’s withdrawal would be an “attractive commercial opportunity for those players to expand their presence here”.

    “We have made it clear that we would prefer them to remain in Australia. What we have been doing is following a structured public policy process, based upon the digital platforms inquiry conducted by the ACCC over about 18 months,” Mr Fletcher said.

    “We’ll make a public policy decision on the merits, particularly on the basis of the market power of the digital players in the news market, and the competition policy issues that follow from that.”

    Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that Microsoft is “watching this very closely” and “no doubt see opportunities here in Australia to expand”.

    At a public hearing for the senate inquiry, Treasury officials confirmed they have been tasked with conducting modelling and analysis on the prospect of the big tech companies taking these drastic actions.

    “It’s not entirely clear what the breadth of actions they may consider are – there is a range of actions they may take. We’ve looked at the possibility of the actions, what the implications might be in a general sense, but exactly what they will do and when will need more analysis,” a Treasury official told the inquiry.

    “The implications are very different, they’re very different services and different parts of the sector would be affected.”

    The Greens have put forward a very different proposal for if Google does leave the country, suggesting that there should be a publicly-owned and funded search engine in Australia.

    “The government needs a plan for how Australians will continue to be able to access essential information online if Google Search were to be taken offline. We need an independent search engine that is run in the public interest not for the profit of a corporate giant,” Greens media spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young said.

    “A publicly-owned search engine that is accountable to the public and not shareholders would be able to be set up with global best practice data privacy standards to ensure users own their own data and have control over what data is collected on them and how it is used.

    “Like the ABC, a public search engine should be independent of the government of the day and be there to provide access to information for all Australians.”

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  • Big Tech clashes with digital rights groups over data

    Big tech and business are warring with digital and civil rights groups over the need to introduce a right of direct action for data breaches as part of the sweeping review of Australia’s privacy laws.

    The Attorney-General’s Department is conducting a sweeping review of the Privacy Act on the back of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) digital platforms inquiry, which recommended a number of legislative changes.

    A key issue the inquiry is looking at is whether a direct right for individuals to bring actions or class actions before the courts to seek compensation for breaches under the Privacy Act should be introduced.

    data
    It’s a jungle: The right to take direct court action over data breaches has spurred a fight

    Presently there is a very limited ability for Australians to seek redress for a privacy breach by a company subject to the Privacy Act, through an injunction or a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

    In its final report, the ACCC called on the government to introduce a right of action in the Federal Court or Federal Circuit Court to seek compensatory damages and aggravated and exemplary damages for financial and non-financial harm as a result of an infringement of the Privacy Act.

    “This would give consumers greater control over their personal information by providing an avenue of redress in court without having to rely on the OAIC alone to take representative action,” the ACCC said in its digital platforms report.

    “This ability will not only empower consumers but may also provide an additional incentive for Australian Privacy Principles entities to ensure they comply with their obligations under the Privacy Act and the APPs.”

    Instead of accepting this recommendation, the federal government opted to consult further on the direct right of action as part of the wider review of the Privacy Act.

    A number of civil and digital rights groups and legal organisations offered strong support for this policy in submissions to the inquiry, while big tech firms and other large businesses unsurprisingly railed against it, instead arguing that the OAIC should be handed a more prominent role in enforcing the Privacy Act.

    But the opposing side argued that the right of action would complement the OAIC’s enforcement role and is critical to ensuring the privacy of Australians is upheld.

    In its submission, Australian tech giant Atlassian said a direct right of action is unnecessary and may “magnify rather than mitigate any concerns about the costs and time for individuals seeking resolutions through the complaints process”.

    “It is difficult to see why the introduction of a direct right of action for individuals to seek compensation for breaches of the Privacy Act is necessary or, indeed, is the most appropriate way to meet these objectives,” the Atlassian submission said.

    “We strongly believe that efforts are better redirected towards improving the efficiency and effectiveness of existing enforcement mechanisms, including by supporting the OAIC to increase its complaint-handling workload and considering other mechanisms to facilitate certainty and consistency of entities’ compliance obligations.”

    US tech firm Adobe also argued against a direct right of action in its submission to the Australian inquiry, saying it would only benefit those who could afford to take legal action.

    “The cost of undertaking litigation is very high, which means that providing a direct right of action will generally benefit only a very few Australians who have sufficient resources to take such action,” the Adobe submission said.

    “Adobe submits that providing greater powers to the OAIC to assist in the resolution of privacy-related complaints is a more effective means by which to empower individuals to exercise control over their personal information.

    “If the OAIC had enhanced powers and the necessary resources to conduct investigations, and provide adequate remedies, this would truly empower individuals who would be able to easily and quickly take action to address privacy harms.”

    Tech titan Google also said that the OAIC’s dispute resolution is “preferable to creating a direct right of action”.

    “If the government is considering introducing a direct right of action, we suggest that a precondition to any direct action is an attempt to resolve a dispute through conciliation by the OAIC or some other administrative body,” Google said in its submission.

    Media giant Nine also argued against the ACCC’s recommendation.

    “The main beneficiaries of having those claims in the courts instead of the OAIC will be lawyers, as many people will choose to be represented. Lawyers will have incentives to increase the quantum and frequency of claims,” the Nine submission said.

    “Those individuals will fare better, and the system will fare better, if their concerns continue to be handled by the professional team which has done so effectively for nearly 20 years at the OAIC. That team should be well funded. It is much better for the current system to be supported than to disrupt it in the way proposed.”

    While also strongly supportive of the OAIC receiving additional funding and resources, several other submissions argued that the direct right of action could work in tandem with the privacy office to uphold the rights of Australians.

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  • Google aren’t ‘stealing’ news content, publisher Eric Beecher tells Senate


    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Nine Entertainment and News Corporation are wrong to say Google and Facebook have destroyed their business models by stealing content, according to news publisher Eric Beecher, reports The New Daily.

    Giving evidence before the Australian Senate hearing on the government’s proposed media bargaining code on Monday, Beecher said representatives from Nine, News Corp and The Guardian had wrongly accused Facebook and Google during previous hearings of “stealing both their content and their advertising revenue”.

    Beecher, the chairman of Solstice Media and owner of Private Media, publisher of the independent Crikey!, said the multibillion-dollar organisations clearly gained more than they lost from sharing their journalism on Facebook and Google, writes Euan Black in his New Daily report.

    Eric Beecher
    Publisher Eric Beecher … internet giants should pay a “social licence” fee to support public interest journalism. Image: GXpress

    “Those media companies actively provide snippets or their full journalism to the platforms for one blindingly obvious reason: They gain huge benefit from the exposure – and clicks – their content attracts on Google and Facebook,” he told the senate committee.

    “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t allow it to be ‘stolen’.”

    Beecher, who also chairs Motion Publishing, publisher of The New Daily, disputed claims that the internet giants had siphoned off advertising revenue from the news organisations.

    He said that before Google and Facebook most of this revenue came from newspaper classifieds that have since moved online.

    Money ‘ended up in pockets’
    Beecher said this money had “ended up in the pockets” of realestate.com.au (owned by News Corp), Domain (owned by Nine) and other classified advertising websites like Seek and Carsales.

    “As has been meticulously researched, the vast bulk of Google and Facebook’s advertising revenue has not come from news publishers,” he told the hearing.

    Private Media and Solstice media chair Eric Beecher said Facebook and Google are not “stealing” from media organisations, but also said the internet giants were “almost certainly too powerful”.

    Posted by The New Daily on Monday, February 1, 2021

    In an earlier submission to the senate inquiry, Facebook said it had generated 4.7 billion referrals to Australian media publishers and shared A$5.4 million in revenue with them between January and November.

    It also claimed “the commercial value we derive from news content in Australia is virtually zero”, while Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia if the current version of the code is passed into law.

    Despite disagreeing with key arguments used to defend the media bargaining code, Beecher said the internet giants were “almost certainly too powerful” and should be legally required to “pay full Australian tax on all their Australian profits that stem from all their Australian revenue”.

    “I’m not here to defend Google and Facebook,” he said.

    ‘Their behaviour is scary’
    “Their market dominance and the information they collect about their users’ online behaviour is scary.”

    Beecher said the huge market share and tax minimisation strategies of the internet giants provided enough justification to ask them to pay a “social licence” fee to support public interest journalism.

    “For those reasons — not because of spurious arguments about stealing content and advertising revenue — I believe they should pay what is, in effect, a social licence to support the public interest journalism that has been severely affected by the invention of the commercial internet, which Google and Facebook dominate,” he said.

    Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who is the Greens’ media spokesperson and sits on the committee tasked with interrogating the proposed new laws, also called for the code to explicitly support public interest journalism.

    She said in a statement that the Greens would seek amendments to the bill that:

    • “Require news organisations to spend the revenue from the Code on resourcing public interest journalism, and
    • “Require the 12-month review of the Code to report on the impact that the Code is having on small, independent and start up publications.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Govt won’t budge on Big Tech bargaining code

    The federal government will not budge on its controversial Big Tech news media bargaining code, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison staring down significant threats from Facebook and Google ahead of a showdown in Parliament later this month.

    The media bargaining code, which will compel Facebook and Google to enter forced arbitration with media companies to determine revenue sharing deals for the use of news content, is set to be debated in Parliament later this month after a Senate committee hands down its report on the legislation.

    Google recently threatened to withdraw its search service from Australia if the code is implemented, while Facebook had earlier said it may block Australian news content as a result of the code.

    Scott Morrison
    Scott Morrison: Digital adoption not digital creation.

    Big business and other tech firms also railed against the code, which unsurprisingly has the backing of numerous media companies and most federal politicians.

    Addressing the National Press Club on Monday, Mr Morrison stood by the code despite the brinkmanship from the Big Tech players.

    “These are big technology companies, and what’s important to Australia is that we set the rules that are right for our people,” Mr Morrison said. “And having a news environment in this country that is one that is sustainable and is supported commercially, then this is vital to how democracies function.”

    “Even when I was Treasurer, when I would go to G20, I’d be talking not just about if they were paying tax, but I began conversations about antitrust and competition issues. Australia is being true to our word again.”

    It came after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg revealed that Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had personally discussed the code with him.

    “Last week, the minister Paul Fletcher and I had a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook who reached out to talk about the code and the impact on Facebook,” Mr Frydenberg told ABC Insiders on Sunday.

    “They do [take it seriously], it was a very constructive discussion. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t convince me to back down.”

    Mr Morrison said the bargaining code is just the federal government trying to apply the rules of the physical world to the digital world, and that other countries should follow Australia’s lead.

    “I’d like to see more alignment between the world’s economies on these sorts of things. Our simple rule around digital is that we just want the digital world to be the same that exists in the physical world,” he said.

    “The world has changed, digital technologies have affected that and we’re trying to ensure our regulatory system keeps pace with that change to ensure journalists can do their jobs, not just in taxpayer-funded organisations but commercial ones.”

    “When it comes to antitrust practices, Australia has taken a very consistent and principled stand. We want to work through with the companies on these sorts of things, we don’t want these things sitting in the courts.”

    Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims, one the key architects of the code, has also stood by the policy, saying the forced final offer arbitration is vital and cannot be taken out of the code, as the big tech firms have called for.

    The senate committee scrutinising the Big Tech bargaining code legislation is due to hand down its report in mid-February, before the bill is expected to be debated in Parliament in the sitting fortnight at the end of the month.

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  • ACCC spotlight turns to Google’s ad dominance

    The competition watchdog is set to propose a range of legislative changes aimed at curbing Google’s display advertising dominance after handing down an interim report into advertising technology services.

    The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released its interim report from its Digital Advertising Services Inquiry, launched in February last year following its digital platforms inquiry.

    The 222-page report details a number of possible policy and regulation changes that the ACCC may recommend to government, including the introduction of Consumer Data Right-style open data scheme around ad tech services and user data.

    It also highlights mandatory data siloes and limits to the use of data from user-facing services for targeted advertising, as well as new rules to manage conflicts of interest and self-preferencing.

    Rod Sims
    Rod Sims: A burning spotlight on the digital advertising market

    It found that Google likely engages in anti-competitive behaviour in the ad tech services sector, facilitated by its “unparalleled” access to user data, and often favours its own products.

    The ACCC said that Google enjoys about 70 per cent of the total revenue from ad tech services in Australia and has 70 per cent of impressions across users and businesses.

    “The ACCC considers that, due to Google’s presence across the ad tech supply chain, its strong position in the supply of certain services, and the opacity of the supply chain, Google is likely to have the ability and incentive to favour its own related business interests,” the report said.

    “The ACCC is concerned that the presence of conflicts of interest can result in poor outcomes for advertisers and publishers. Google’s leading position across the entire ad tech supply chain means it has attracted conflict of interest concerns of this kind.”

    This lack of competition in the ad tech sector is hurting consumers, publishers and advertisers, ACCC chair Rod Sims said.

    “There is a real lack of competition, choice and transparency in this industry. These issues add to the cost of advertising for businesses, which will ultimately impact the prices paid by consumers,” Mr Sims said.

    “Google’s significant presence across the whole ad tech supply chain, combined with its significant data advantage, means Google is likely to have the ability and the incentive to preference its own ad tech businesses in ways that affect competition.”

    The ACCC is now seeking feedback on the number of proposals to address these issues that are included in the report.

    These include new regulations making it easier for users to access the data that companies such as Google hold on them, and to transfer this to smaller ad tech competitors in an effort to improve competition. But the report said such a policy comes with risks.

    “Any measures to increase data mobility should be carefully designed to ensure that there are effective mechanisms to manage the risks that de-identified data may become re-identified and to ensure that consumers have effective controls over the sharing of their personal data,” the report said.

    The competition watchdog is also looking at a number of potential policies to address the wealth of data that Google holds that gives it a huge advantage in the ad tech services industry.

    These include the introduction of data silos or purpose limitation requirements that could level the playing field.

    “In order to promote competition by levelling the playing field in relation to the data advantage of large digital platforms, the ACCC is considering measures directed at mandating data separation within companies in limited circumstances,” the ACCC report said.

    “This would prevent data gathered in the context of supplying one service from being used in the supply of a different service.”

    A similar policy was recently recommended by the UK competition watchdog and initially supported by the government.

    This could be done through directly regulating the internal sharing of data within Google, the ACCC said, such as preventing the use of datasets from being used for advertising or giving consumers the ability to control whether data collected on them from user-facing services can be used for targeted ads.

    While the ACCC is yet to decide whether Google has breached the Competition and Consumer Act with its conduct around ad tech services, it is seeking feedback on whether rules should be introduced to prevent the competition issues such as self-preferencing and conflicts of interest.

    These could include rules requiring equal access to ad tech services and to increase transparency.

    The ACCC may also recommend the introduction of a voluntary industry code to verify ad tech services and increase the availability of data, and the implementation of common transaction IDs and common user IDs to help with tracing across the supply chain.

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  • On the brink: Big Tech fight escalates

    Google’s incendiary threat to shut its internet search services in Australia is simply the latest expression – albeit the nuclear option – of a campaign against a proposed law that the company simply does not like.

    The appearance of Google Australia managing director Mel Silva before a public hearing of the Senate economics committee on Friday was extraordinary for its velvet glove demonstration of awesome market power.

    In threatening to pull search services from Australia, a move that would lead to unknowable but likely dramatic short-term damage to businesses, to the economy and to the government, Google has put a spotlight on the concentrated power its own market dominance.

    Even more extraordinary has been the way the threat galvanised senators. On how many issues would South Australian independent Rex Patrick and Liberal firebrand Andrew Bragg be so tightly aligned? Not many I would think.

    Parliament House
    Digging in: The federal government showing no sign of moving

    It has been clear for some time that the political class in Australia is increasingly frustrated with the market power of the Big Tech platforms, and with growing anger at the way that power is exercised.

    Mel Silva’s threats to withdraw Google search services has brought that frustration out into the open.

    Scott Morrison’s “we don’t respond to threats” entry into the discussion late on Friday was as ironic as it was dramatic. Certainly, it is an escalation. It is not every day that a company can provoke so instant and an angry a response from a Prime Minister as Google managed on Friday.

    The Prime Minister is quite right. Australians get to decide how Australia is run.

    “That’s done by our parliament, that’s done by our government, and that’s how things work in Australia,” Mr Morrison said. “And people who want to work with that in Australia are very welcome. But we don’t respond to threats.”

    No arguments there.

    As a private company, Google is equally within its rights to withdraw services from a jurisdiction where it can’t make a business case to successfully operate within the laws of the land. It would leave behind many billions of dollars in revenue on which is pays only a razor thin level of tax, but it can exercise that right if it cannot find a way to make it work.

    It is quite a stand-off. The relationship between Big Tech and the federal government is on the brink.

    The release on Thursday of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Advertising Services Inquiry will test the relationship further.

    What is happening in Australia, and the process that culminated in last week’s dramatic testimony has been underway for several years, is being closely watched around the world.

    Scott Morrison is not exactly the Lone Ranger when it comes to world leaders who are concerned about the threat that Big Tech’s concentrated market power poses.

    But the media bargaining code just seems an odd issue for the government to have dug in so deep.

    Of all the things that are objectionable about the vertically and horizontally integrated systems of data collection and exploitation, is this the best way to confront that market power?

    If the problem is competition and Google and Facebook’s monopoly-like power, how does the forced extraction of revenue derived from that broken system to be handed to traditional media companies help?

    If the problem is the impact on journalism, is handing new revenue streams to the concentrated interests of Australia’s big media companies the best way to enable a flourishing public interest journalism sector in Australia?

    In the system of the world created by Google and others, it has never been easier or cheaper to launch a publishing company and reach audiences. Deep niche publishing has proliferated, but sustainable commercial models are elusive.

    The simple proposition that mainstream Australia will have to bear the aggravation and considerable damage of Google closing search in order that money can be stripped from Google and given to News Corp and Nine does not pass the pub test.

    While Australians are supportive of greater regulation of Big Tech – and there is widespread concern about the negative impact of the platforms companies on our institutions – it is far from clear that media and aspect of journalism this Big Tech issue captures the imagination of a wide enough spectrum of the public.

    This is especially the case when it’s held up against the concentrated ownership and market power of Australia’s media giants. Are there any Australians outside of the political class who want to die in a ditch in a fight to guarantee revenue for News Corp and Nine? Hmm?

    The findings of the ACCC’s Digital Advertising Services Inquiry will likely shine a brighter light the structural integration in the supply chain that is hindering the operation of the market and potentially hindering innovation and ultimately hurting the consumer. This would provide a more explainable route to confronting concentrated market power.

    Google has built a system of the world over the past couple of decades that is fundamentally integrated into the way our economy works.

    The removal of Google search would be a hammer blow for many businesses. It would spark an unprecedented reorganisation of the digital economy in this country, with winners and losers emerging from the system that replaces it.

    There is no denying that many thousands of businesses are extremely concerned – to an existential degree – about the impact.

    The unknowable level of drama and damage such a withdrawal of Google search would prompt would be devastating for government. It is a supreme communications challenge to sell the benefits of holding the line.

    But if Google were to make good on its threat and withdraw search services from Australia, the supply chains would quickly reorganise. For all the difficulty, it would be replaced with something else.

    This government has shown itself capable of maintaining a policy line in the face of extreme pressure from commercial partners. It seems committed to its current course in relation to the media bargaining code.

    This is what the brink looks like. Strap in.

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  • RSF condemns Google for dropping Australian media searches in ‘tests’

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the arbitrary and opaque experiments that Google is conducting with its search engine in Australia, with the consequence that many national news websites are no longer appearing in the search results seen by some users.

    The Australian, ABC, Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Guardian Australia and The Sydney Morning Herald are among the media outlets that have not appeared in the search results of around 1 percent of Australian users since January 13, the date on which Google admits that it began its “experiments”.

    The experiments are supposedly intended to measure the correlation between media and Google search and are due to end at the start of February.

    Neither the media outlets nor Google search users were notified in advance of the consequences of the experiments, namely that they would be deprived of their usual access to many news sources.

    “The platforms must stop playing sorcerer’s apprentice in a completely opaque manner,” said Iris de Villars, the head of RSF’s Tech Desk.

    “Most Australians use Google to find and access online news, and these experiments confirm the scale of the power that platforms like Google exercise over access to online journalistic content, and their ability to abuse this power to the detriment of the public’s access to information.

    “They have a duty to be transparent and to inform their users, a duty that is all the greater in the light of the impact that the current and future experiments can have on journalistic pluralism.”

    Thousands of tests every year
    Google conducts tens of thousands of tests on its search engine every year.

    The experiments that Google and other platforms carry out usually test design changes, algorithmic modifications or new functionalities on some of their users in order to study how they behave and to guide future changes.

    This is not the first time one of these experiments has impacted on journalistic pluralism.

    Facebook, for example, tested a new functionality called “Explore” in six countries – Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka – from October 2017 to March 2018.

    This experiment, in which independent news content was quarantined in a not-very-accessible secondary location, had a disastrous impact on journalistic pluralism in these countries, with traffic to local media outlets falling dramatically.

    In Cambodia, many citizen-journalists lost a large chunk of their readers, with the result they had to pay to restore traffic to their sites.

    Google’s experiments in Australia have come at a time of tension between the platforms and the Australian government, which has a proposed new law, called the News Media Bargaining Code, under which platforms such as Google and Facebook would have to share advertising money with media companies.

    The two tech giants have reacted to the proposal with hostility. Facebook has said it would prevent Australian media outlets and users from sharing journalistic content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, while Google has added a pop-up message to its search results warning Australian users that “your search experience will be hurt by new regulation”.

    When asked about the details of these experiments, their purpose and about transparency towards media outlets and users, Google just referred RSF to an existing, general press release.

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RSF condemns Google for dropping Australian media searches in ‘tests’

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the arbitrary and opaque experiments that Google is conducting with its search engine in Australia, with the consequence that many national news websites are no longer appearing in the search results seen by some users.

    The Australian, ABC, Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Guardian Australia and The Sydney Morning Herald are among the media outlets that have not appeared in the search results of around 1 percent of Australian users since January 13, the date on which Google admits that it began its “experiments”.

    The experiments are supposedly intended to measure the correlation between media and Google search and are due to end at the start of February.

    Neither the media outlets nor Google search users were notified in advance of the consequences of the experiments, namely that they would be deprived of their usual access to many news sources.

    “The platforms must stop playing sorcerer’s apprentice in a completely opaque manner,” said Iris de Villars, the head of RSF’s Tech Desk.

    “Most Australians use Google to find and access online news, and these experiments confirm the scale of the power that platforms like Google exercise over access to online journalistic content, and their ability to abuse this power to the detriment of the public’s access to information.

    “They have a duty to be transparent and to inform their users, a duty that is all the greater in the light of the impact that the current and future experiments can have on journalistic pluralism.”

    Thousands of tests every year
    Google conducts tens of thousands of tests on its search engine every year.

    The experiments that Google and other platforms carry out usually test design changes, algorithmic modifications or new functionalities on some of their users in order to study how they behave and to guide future changes.

    This is not the first time one of these experiments has impacted on journalistic pluralism.

    Facebook, for example, tested a new functionality called “Explore” in six countries – Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka – from October 2017 to March 2018.

    This experiment, in which independent news content was quarantined in a not-very-accessible secondary location, had a disastrous impact on journalistic pluralism in these countries, with traffic to local media outlets falling dramatically.

    In Cambodia, many citizen-journalists lost a large chunk of their readers, with the result they had to pay to restore traffic to their sites.

    Google’s experiments in Australia have come at a time of tension between the platforms and the Australian government, which has a proposed new law, called the News Media Bargaining Code, under which platforms such as Google and Facebook would have to share advertising money with media companies.

    The two tech giants have reacted to the proposal with hostility. Facebook has said it would prevent Australian media outlets and users from sharing journalistic content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, while Google has added a pop-up message to its search results warning Australian users that “your search experience will be hurt by new regulation”.

    When asked about the details of these experiments, their purpose and about transparency towards media outlets and users, Google just referred RSF to an existing, general press release.

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rod Sims rejects tech giants’ code ‘suggestions’

    Competition watchdog boss Rod Sims has knocked back Facebook and Google’s suggested “fixes” for the media bargaining code and accused the tech giants of “brinkmanship” in threatening to withdraw services from Australia in retaliation.

    Appearing at a public hearing held by the Senate committee investigating the legislation introducing a bargaining code between Google and Facebook and Australian media companies, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims rejected the changes that these tech giants had called for earlier in the day.

    The legislation was introduced to Parliament in December, and if passed will implement a bargaining code requiring Facebook and Google to enter into final offer arbitration to determine a revenue sharing deal with local media companies for the use of their content.

    Parliament Canberra
    Big tech, big decisions: Rod Sims rejects Big Tech claims Credit: travellight / Shutterstock.com

    It will also require these tech firms to give 14 days’ notice of any relevant algorithmic changes as the result of human intervention.

    The code was a key recommendation of the ACCC’s 18-month inquiry into digital platforms and was introduced to Parliament by the government with some slight tweaks.

    Representatives from Facebook and Google appeared before the inquiry on Friday morning, with both highly critical of the code.

    Google Australia managing director Mel Silva said the company will likely withdraw its search service from the country if the code is implemented, while Facebook had threatened last year to block the sharing of Australian news content if it goes ahead.

    Both tech giants have pushed for a series of changes to the code if they are to support it and not withdraw their services. These include the removal of the forced arbitration in favour of standard commercial negotiations, and changes to the algorithm notice requirement.

    But Mr Sims said the forced arbitration model is crucial to address the power imbalance between media companies and Facebook and Google and cannot be removed from the code.

    “This is a code they don’t want. Google and Facebook like to do things on their terms. I think the code does what it is intended to do – it is workable, it allows for a process of negotiation and I have every belief that both parties will want to do commercial deals and then you’ve got arbitration there, which is what really gives strength to the bargaining for the news media businesses,” Mr Sims said.

    “I think it’s workable, this is just something that Google and Facebook don’t want. This deal will allow proper commercial deals to be done. You can only have that when you’ve got reasonably even bargaining power,” he said.

    “You can’t do a deal with a monopoly unless you have something on your side. This code gives the possibility of arbitration, which I suspect won’t be used very often, but that evens up the bargaining.

    “If you don’t have arbitration, you don’t have any evening up of the bargaining power. If they don’t want arbitration I don’t see how you accommodate that. If there are suggestions that could help this be a better code that’s fine, but suggestions to make the code unworkable are not fine.”

    The tech giants are engaged in brinkmanship by threatening to withdraw services from Australia in response to the code, Mr Sims said.

    “Given this is a code they don’t want, I think it’s understandable they’re going to be saying a range of things to prevent the code coming into force. There was never going to be a code where they say, ‘this is terrific’,” he said.

    “I think where we are is not unexpected in the sense that they have many concerns with it. That is what you’d expect them to say. There’s always brinkmanship in serious negotiations, but I don’t know exactly what they’re going to do here.

    “I’m not surprised at being where we are, we’ll just have to see what they’ll do.”

    The post Rod Sims rejects tech giants’ code ‘suggestions’ appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Google will pull out of Aus if code is passed

    Google has joined Facebook in threatening to withdraw its services from Australia if legislation introducing a media bargaining code is passed by Parliament.

    In a sometimes fiery Senate inquiry public hearing, the local bosses of Google and Facebook faced senators to push back heavily against the proposed code, which would force them to enter into final offer, baseball-style arbitration with media companies to determine revenue-sharing deals.

    The final code was unveiled and introduced to Parliament late last year. It will require Google and Facebook to enter into final offer arbitration if they cannot reach a revenue sharing deal with an Australian publisher for the use of its content within three months.

    Mel Silva
    Mel Silva: Google will withdraw search operations from Australia is the media bargaining code is passed in its current for

    The code will also require the tech companies to provide 14 days’ notice of any relevant changes to the presentation of news on their platforms as a result of human intervention.

    Google and Facebook have railed against the code since it was first proposed by the competition watchdog more than a year ago, with Facebook already having threatened to block the sharing of Australian news content on its platform.

    Google has now backed this threat, with its Australian managing director Mel Silva telling a public hearing for the Senate inquiry into the legislation that Australians would be blocked from using its search engine if it is passed as is.

    Under this scenario, which Google is actively preparing for, any Australian trying to make a search on Google would be presented with a screen telling them the company is “unable” to offer the service in the country, Ms Silva said.

    “If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia,” Ms Silva said.

    “Withdrawing services from Australia is the last thing that I or Google want to happen, especially when there is a way forward.”

    The threat from Google came on the same day that the tech giant signed an agreement with a number of French publishers to pay for the use of their content on Google search results.

    Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology director Peter Lewis quickly hit back at Google’s threat and urged the government to stick to its guns on the code.

    “Google’s testimony today is part of a pattern of threatening behaviour that is chilling for anyone who values our democracy,” Mr Lewis said in a statement.

    “Our elected representatives must stand firm against this bullying and support a viable media to act as a counterweight to the power of big tech: the eyes of the world are watching.”

    Ms Silva also told the public hearing that the proposed code is “unworkable” and incompatible with how the search engine, and internet in general, functions. She labelled the arbitration process laid out in the code “very vague and one-sided”, before laying out three proposed changes to make the legislation more palatable for Google.

    These include a focus on its News Showcase feature, replacing the final offer arbitration with standard commercial arbitration, and the removal of the algorithm notice requirement.

    Independent Senator Rex Patrick hit back at Ms Silva’s argument that the code would break the way the internet works, saying this is a distraction and “technically not correct”.

    “That’s like saying that the government is introducing speed limits and that will affect the way a car works at a technical level. Your argument is distracting, and the way it is distracting it is misleading,” Senator Patrick said.

    “This whole code is not about in any way breaking the internet, it’s about breaking your revenue streams, it’s about breaking your bank account. It does not touch the internet and the way in which it works.”

    Senator Patrick also compared Google’s threat to those made by the Chinese government as part of ongoing trade disputes with Australia.

    Nearly all of the senators at the public hearing seemed in close alignment in their support of the bargaining code and the criticisms of the big tech companies.

    The emphasis on News Showcase, which is yet to be launched in Australia, was also labelled a “pillar of smoke” by Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, who pointed towards Google’s recent tax bill of $59 million on gross revenue of $4.8 billion in Australia.

    Facebook vice-president of public policy in APAC Simon Milner also appeared at the Senate inquiry, standing by the company’s previous claim that it may block all Australia news content from the platform if the code is implemented.

    “We have explained in order to inform the policy-making process, that that is a potential worst-case scenario of the law as it stands. We clearly have been doing some work to figure out what that would actually look like,” Mr Milner said.

    “This would not mean that Facebook would no longer be available. That is not what we want to do, but it is something we have to seriously consider given the nature of this unworkable law.”

    Mr Milner labelled the legislation as “highly prescriptive micro-regulation” that “fundamentally fails” to acknowledge how publishers use Facebook.

    The representatives from Google and Facebook both claimed that their respective news services have not yet launched in Australia due to the planned laws, despite earlier plans to do so.

    The Senate committee will hold another public hearing on 1 February and is expected to table its report on 12 February. It has received 55 submissions as part of its inquiry.

    The post Google will pull out of Aus if code is passed appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Jessica Martinez on Gutting Worker Protections, Mitch Stoltz on Breaking Up Big Tech

    (photo: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)

    This week on CounterSpin: More than 308,000 US women, men and children have died of Covid-19. That devastating toll has been borne disproportionately by Black and brown people in dangerous occupations and at the short end of an unequal healthcare system. Workers in fields, factories and hospitals, endangered by the pandemic, are now held up as pawns, as some lawmakers look to make workers’ health and safety a “tradeoff” for Covid relief. We talk about efforts to gut worker protections under the guise of economic support with Jessica Martinez, co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.

    Blocks representing tech companiesAlso on the show: Congressional hearings supposedly aimed at addressing concerns around the power of Big Tech have not been the best venue for those concerns (the fact that many congresspeople couldn’t be bothered to learn how to say Google CEO’s Sundar Pichai’s name being the merest indication). The wheels of accountability are slowly turning in tech companies’ direction: An antitrust lawsuit against Google, our guest says, won’t address every important concern, but could usher in some scrutiny on companies that have been given a pass for too long. We’ll talk with Mitch Stoltz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Jessica Martinez on Gutting Worker Protections, Mitch Stoltz on Breaking Up Big Tech

    Amazon worker protesting lack of protection

    (photo: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)

    This week on CounterSpin: More than 308,000 US women, men and children have died of Covid-19. That devastating toll has been borne disproportionately by Black and brown people in dangerous occupations and at the short end of an unequal healthcare system. Workers in fields, factories and hospitals, endangered by the pandemic, are now held up as pawns, as some lawmakers look to make workers’ health and safety a “tradeoff” for Covid relief. We talk about efforts to gut worker protections under the guise of economic support with Jessica Martinez, co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.

    Blocks representing tech companiesAlso on the show: Congressional hearings supposedly aimed at addressing concerns around the power of Big Tech have not been the best venue for those concerns (the fact that many congresspeople couldn’t be bothered to learn how to say Google CEO’s Sundar Pichai’s name being the merest indication). The wheels of accountability are slowly turning in tech companies’ direction: An antitrust lawsuit against Google, our guest says, won’t address every important concern, but could usher in some scrutiny on companies that have been given a pass for too long. We’ll talk with Mitch Stoltz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Media bargaining code is ‘still unworkable’

    Google is still not happy with the federal government’s media bargaining code and has indicated it may not accept the final version if it remains unchanged.

    Legislation implementing a news media bargaining code, which will force Google and Facebook to enter into revenue-sharing deals with Australian media companies, was introduced to Parliament last week and referred to a senate committee for inquiry.

    The federal government made a number of concessions to the tech giants with the final version of the code, but this has not appeased Google, with its Australian general manager Mel Silva labelling the code still unworkable and saying that it would “fundamentally break” its search engine.

    Mel Silva
    Google’s Mel Silva: The media bargaining code will “fundamentally break” search

    “While the government has made some changes, the legislation still falls far short of a workable code. As the legislation goes to a Senate committee for inquiry, it has serious problems that need to be worked through,” Ms Silva said in a blog post on Friday.

    “This sets the groundwork to unravel the key principles of the open internet people use every day – something neither a search engine nor anyone who enjoys the benefits of the free and open web should accept.”

    Ms Silva raised particular concern with the final offer-style arbitration that Google would be forced to enter in to, and for a requirement to provide notice of relevant algorithmic changes.

    Google is attempting to argue that the bargaining code amounts to requiring the tech giant to pay for links included in search results, something it said would create “huge uncertainty and risks”, ones that “no rational business would accept”, hinting that it may refuse to comply with the code if it is passed into law as is.

    “This is an unprecedented intervention that misunderstands how the web works and has huge implications not just for search engines but the internet as a whole. You don’t have to pay when you share a link to something with a friend, and no website or search engine pays to connect people to other sites through links,” Ms Silva said.

    “We’ve identified these issues repeatedly during the consultation process because they would do serious damage to the fundamentals of our services – the reasons Australians choose to use Google in the first place. They would replace a search engine model that’s built to serve everyone with one skewed to the interests of one type of business only.”

    The code will require Facebook and Google to enter into forced “final offer” arbitration if they cannot reach a revenue-sharing deal with a media company within three months. An independent arbitrator will then pick from one of the final offers from each party.

    In a significant change, the final legislation now requires the two-way value to be considered, including the value that the tech giants provide to media businesses in referral traffic.

    But Google has still railed against this “baseball” arbitration, arguing for a standard commercial arbitration model related only to its News Showcase product instead.

    “The current model still isn’t based in commercial reality. Ultimately, by imposing final-offer arbitration with biased criteria, it encourages publishers to go to arbitration rather than reaching an agreement,” Ms Silva said.

    “While the code professes to recognise the value Google Search provides to publishers, in fact it encourages publishers to argue that arbitrators should disregard that value,” she said.

    “It does this by allowing the arbitrator to consider a hypothetical scenario in which there is no Google Search and yet publishers receive the same amount of traffic, just from other sources. This scenario – laid out in the explanatory materials – invites unfair outcomes based on speculation rather than evidence.”

    Ms Silva said Google has estimated the value of its referrals to news websites to have been $218 million in 2018.

    The final code also requires Google and Facebook to provide 14 days’ notice of any relevant algorithmic changes made by humans impacting the presentation of news content.

    This proved to be another sore point with Google, and despite the government halving the notice period time, Ms Silva said it should be limited to actionable changes such as if a media company should make its website more mobile friendly.

    “Even if we could comply, that would delay important updates, drive up operating costs, and mandate special treatment to news publishers in a way that would disadvantage everyone else,” she said.

    Ms Silva said Google is still open to working with the government on the legislation through the senate inquiry.

    “Those high stakes are why we’ll continue to stand firm where the code threatens the fundamentals of our service. But we strongly believe that with the practical changes we’ve outlined, there is a path forward,” she said.

    “As we enter this new stage of the process, we’ll keep engaging constructively with the government, members of parliament, the news industry and the ACCC, so we can get to a final code that works for everyone: publishers, platforms and all Australians.”

    Facebook has remained largely silent on the code since it threatened to ban all Australian news content from its platform upon its initial release.

    The Senate committee is expected to table its report on the legislation in February.

    The post Media bargaining code is ‘still unworkable’ appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Working Through the Pain at Tesla

    After being called out for hiding worker injuries at its factory, Tesla decides to double down. Plus, a report card on diversity in Silicon Valley.

    Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.