‘Google and Facebook have as much in common as water polo and running shoes’: The fall out from Google’s open letter
Yesterday Google published an open letter to the Australian public, warning that the ACCC’s News Media Bargaining Code will significantly decrease the value of its Search and Youtube platforms for Australians. Parties from both sides have added their voices to the debate, here are their thoughts.
The open letter, composed by Google’s Australian MD Mel Silva, put forward to Australian consumers yesterday caused quite a stir across the industry. Silva warned that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) News Media Bargaining Code would ‘hurt’ the way consumers used the Search and Youtube functions of its business.
The ACCC was quick to clarify some of the issues Silva raised. Referring to ‘misinformation’ in the letter, the watchdog said it wouldn’t be necessary for Google to change the use of its free services, unless it chose to do so.
Silva claimed in the open letter that the code would force Google to provide news media platforms with data that it could then no longer protect.
If I was Facebook I’d stop people posting links to Aussie news sites.
Only a small loss but better for the platform with less click bait news stories and resulting BS arguments.
Many people moved to Instagram to get away from these already.
Oh, so rather than fact based articles, written by real journalists, who must adhere to strict codes, social media users should be presented with even more ‘fake news’ that is matched to their ‘sentiment’ (decided by an algorithm) and often from dubious sources. As you suggest, this is already happening (‘people moved to Instagram…’), and what a wonderful time we are currently living in.
Agree with anonymous. People use FB to connect with friends, family and groups. They’re not there to read BS articles from News Corp or Nine. If I’m seeing fake news or propaganda shared from a distant “friend” or organisation I tap the “unfollow” or “I don’t want to see this”. People should be in control of what they want to see on their own feeds – not Government or regulators.
FB Watch (their video platform) is a completely different proposition and revenue share commercial deals are already setup with news publishers.
Oh, so rather than fact based articles, written by real journalists, who must adhere to strict codes, social media users should be presented with even more ‘fake news’ that is matched to their ‘sentiment’ (decided by an algorithm) and often from dubious sources. As you suggest, this is already happening (‘people moved to Instagram…’), and what a wonderful time we are currently living in.
These traditional media business are yesterday’s monopolies. It took Google and Facebook to create new services which consumers flock to. Now there is true competition the ACCC suddenly ants to get rid of it – we assume to stop once big now small news ltd from failing – under the guise of ‘protecting journalism’. Unfortunately the type of news that this proposed code will encourage will be more of the offensive cartoon genre like the one last week on the home page of The Un-Australian. Seems the ACCC should be sanctioned themselves for promoting anticompetitive behaviour!
Google in their letter said there was more to come in the coming days. It would be interesting if they closed down their news product for a week and see who really benefits from that product. I suspect it is the news companies who get more out of the situation.