| ▲ | bko 7 hours ago |
| Didn't Canada try this in 2023? > Online News Act (Bill C-18) in June 2023. The law was designed to make large digital platforms compensate Canadian news organizations when news content was made available through their services. It created a bargaining/arbitration framework rather than literally setting a per-link tax. > So beginning in August 2023, Meta blocked news on both Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Canadians could no longer view or share links/content from Canadian or foreign news organizations on those platforms... As of 2026, the Canadian government still describes Meta as blocking news sharing on Facebook and Instagram Pretty much the worst result for everyone. Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to. Inconvenience to users. Meta mostly unaffected, maybe some marginal loss in time spent on the platform. These kinds of things eventually just face reality. Meta and Google know very well how much these things are worth to them in terms of marginal revenue or network value. And the answer is not what publishers want to hear. |
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| ▲ | dmix 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Correct, I remember my dad complaining he can't share Toronto Star articles on Facebook because they block you from posting them. Same with Instagram. https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/05/the-behind-the-scenes-bi... |
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| ▲ | antiloper 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The article doesn't link to the text of the law, but from what the article says the law will make it mandatory for Facebook to enter into agreements with news outlets, whether they want to or not (otherwise they'll be ""fined"" millions of AUD) |
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| ▲ | graeme 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That is what the Canadian law said. This was "if Meta is showing news content". Contrary to the law's assumption, news is worth hardly anything to Meta, so they just stopped showing it. Does the Australian law really say: 1. You must show news, even if you don't want to 2. You must pay to do so 3. The rate will be determined by negotiation with the people you are paying 4. You cannot say no to them in aggregate I have my doubts, but if it does I still doubt it will get the results the govt wants. The problem is news is not valuable to Meta. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Australian government has probably learned from the Canadians and set the law up so the tax is more successful. Recall that the government has the power to levy unfair taxes and handouts in principle, so it doesn't matter all that much that their claimed reasoning is silly. This looks to be equivalent to a social media tax and an Australian news handout, just bundled together for rhetorical purposes (and with a bizarre negotiating element in a welfare transfer that really just looks like beating around the bush to me). | |
| ▲ | lokar 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Seems like a recipe for massive US tariffs . We will see exactly what all the bribes and sucking up gets big tech. | | |
| ▲ | bko 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion on this platform but I think the US should protect companies domiciled in the US from what amount to a shakedown by foreign governments. Legal protection and representation play a big role in where a company chooses to domicile. That's partly what the taxes are for. It's mostly US stockholders that own these companies. So they're really just screwing over people w Meta in their 401k and pension funds (many of which are public). | | |
| ▲ | cadamsdotcom an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Agreed in principle although I'd say screwing over is strong as this will end up as just a cost of doing business in Australia rather than lead to losses. Every economy should get value for its resources - no country is obligated to sell things unreasonably cheaply - people's time & attention included. | |
| ▲ | lokar an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Meta pays an effective federal tax rate of like 3.5% We owe them nothing |
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| ▲ | rpdillon 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah, the way it's being discussed, it does seem like the law is trying to impose those four restrictions. But that seems like compelled speech...I know too little about Australian law, but that seems like a bad precedent, in the sense that government is now forcing private entities to publish news from sites they specify and pay for the privilege. It's not quite state media, but it adjacent to it. | | |
| ▲ | 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | consensus1 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The incentives are horrible. Piss off the government and you won't be included in the pool of sites that are eligible for shakedown money. Piss off Google / Meta and they will throw you out in the cold and make a deal with another site in the pool. |
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| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If it's mandatory to enter into agreements, those aren't agreements, they're mandates. | |
| ▲ | consensus1 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Hard to call it an "agreement" at that point. I thought one of the fundamental rules of contract law is that it can't be signed under duress. | | |
| ▲ | Arnt 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A sovereign nation is just that, sovereign. What it decides isn't an agreement. You may not want to obey the posted speed limits or pay something the law demands, but that's not about a contract you sign or don't, it's a decision made by a sovereign nation. Meta will have the option of not posting links to Australian media. But if it does post that, the law applies, and "agreement" is irrelevant. | |
| ▲ | aleph_minus_one 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Did you seriously believe that governments play fair? :-) |
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| ▲ | jmclnx 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to Newspapers want to sell subscriptions for their local area, on paper or on their WEB site. I would say getting clicks from non-subscribers has no value for them. |
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| ▲ | pj_mukh 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | What’s the top of the funnel for getting subscriptions? | | |
| ▲ | Arnt 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Finding the right people. A small subset of the general audience. Trying to get your word in front of all eyeballs in the hope of hitting the right ones at the right time is a hopeful strategy, not a well-considered one. |
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| ▲ | bell-cot 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I would say getting clicks from non-subscribers has no value for them. So the newspaper gets no revenue when non-subscribers view (and perhaps click) ads on the newspaper's web site? TIL, I guess... |
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| ▲ | roryirvine 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| So the reality they must face is that the social media giants will try to circumvent regulation. Fine. And the most reasonable response to that is therefore to implement some form of general anti-avoidance rule, of the sort that's used in, for example, tax, company, and employment law. For instance, you could say that if a social media company were to change its behaviour to avoid a law of this sort then they should incur a charge equivalent to, say, 10% of its global revenue. That ought to make compliance with the law the more attractive option. There's no reason to be defeatist about this - social media companies are not and should not be above the law. |
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| ▲ | rpdillon 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The law says that they have to compensate the news organizations when links to those news articles are shared on their platform. They are completely in compliance with the law because they're preventing those links from being shared on the platform. This is in no way circumventing regulation. It's following it, the same way Anthropic is following copyright law by shredding books after they scan them. They're just doing what the courts said. What I don't get is when people make rules with a particular outcome in mind, but don't reason through the incentives the rule creates. For what it's worth, I'm thrilled that you can't post news links on Facebook and Instagram in Canada. The fewer people that visit those platforms, the better! | | |
| ▲ | lokar 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You could imagine another approach: A tax on any advertising appearing alongside text information (so not video or audio). And then a public service subsidy for local reporting. Both could be totally technologically neutral. |
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| ▲ | devilbunny 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > 10% of its global revenue Yeah, there’s no chance that the response to such a law would be for them to immediately shut down all Australian operations, block all connections from Australia, immediately lay off every Australian citizen working for them, and essentially evacuate the country. | | |
| ▲ | DanHulton 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Damn, can you imagine a world where it would be so easy to convince one of these companies to stop poisoning the minds of an entire country like that? Like, I kinda jest, but also kinda don’t. Would that really be so bad of an outcome? The net positives don’t really seem to bear up under all the negatives just… going away. | | |
| ▲ | devilbunny 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, but social media won’t be the only companies that notice. If Australia’s government will do it to them to prop up their local dying industry, they will do it to you, too. If the EU or US tries that, well, those are huge markets and maybe you bend (maybe you don’t!). But Australia is 27 million people, less than 10% the size of those. If they want to get heavy-handed, well, it’s their country, but as recent US actions have shown, other countries’ companies may pick up their ball and go home rather than play with you. | |
| ▲ | brainwad 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As an Aussie expat who uses Facebook to keep in contact with my friends and family: yes, it would be bad. Social networking tools have real positive effects on the world, let us not forget that. |
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| ▲ | roenxi 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is similar to saying someone who refrains from murdering random strangers is circumventing the law that would send them to prison if they did. Not triggering this sort of law is a totally acceptable response and there is no reason for anti-avoidance measures. The basic deal here is is if social media propagates the news then they must pay the news companies. Banning the news companies is reasonable. If they don't want to pay then they can disassociate from the news sites. Frankly it would be a win for everyone. I don't know why anyone is reading Australian news media in the first place, the information density is low. | |
| ▲ | realusername 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is not "circumventing regulation" here but nullifying the argument the newspapers had for bringing the law in the first place. They argued that Meta needs them for exposure and that's why they should pay, apparently it's not true and they don't need them. |
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