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.

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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.

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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.