Facebook Deliberately Caused Havoc in Australia To Influence New Law, Whistleblowers Say (wsj.com) 83
Last year when Facebook blocked news in Australia in response to potential legislation making platforms pay publishers for content, it also took down the pages of Australian hospitals, emergency services and charities. It publicly called the resulting chaos "inadvertent." Internally, the pre-emptive strike was hailed as a strategic masterstroke. From a report: Facebook documents and testimony filed to U.S. and Australian authorities by whistleblowers allege that the social-media giant deliberately created an overly broad and sloppy process to take down pages -- allowing swaths of the Australian government and health services to be caught in its web just as the country was launching Covid vaccinations. The goal, according to the whistleblowers and documents, was to exert maximum negotiating leverage over the Australian Parliament, which was voting on the first law in the world that would require platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for content.
Despite saying it was targeting only news outlets, the company deployed an algorithm for deciding what pages to take down that it knew was certain to affect more than publishers, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. It didn't notify affected pages in advance they would be blocked or provide a system for them to appeal once they were. The documents also show multiple Facebook employees tried to raise alarms about the impact and offer possible solutions, only to receive a minimal or delayed response from the leaders of the team in charge. After five days that caused disorder throughout the country, Australia's Parliament amended the proposed law to the degree that, a year after its passage, its most onerous provisions haven't been applied to Facebook or its parent company, Meta Platforms. "We landed exactly where we wanted to," wrote Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of partnerships, who pressed for the company's aggressive stance, in a congratulatory email to her team minutes after the Australian Senate voted to approve the watered-down bill at the end of February 2021.
Despite saying it was targeting only news outlets, the company deployed an algorithm for deciding what pages to take down that it knew was certain to affect more than publishers, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. It didn't notify affected pages in advance they would be blocked or provide a system for them to appeal once they were. The documents also show multiple Facebook employees tried to raise alarms about the impact and offer possible solutions, only to receive a minimal or delayed response from the leaders of the team in charge. After five days that caused disorder throughout the country, Australia's Parliament amended the proposed law to the degree that, a year after its passage, its most onerous provisions haven't been applied to Facebook or its parent company, Meta Platforms. "We landed exactly where we wanted to," wrote Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of partnerships, who pressed for the company's aggressive stance, in a congratulatory email to her team minutes after the Australian Senate voted to approve the watered-down bill at the end of February 2021.
Frosty Piss (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
But, yeah - Frosty Piss on FB/Meat!
Welcome, corporate overlords! (Score:3)
You got me to look, but it wasn't that funny to me. But I am considering whether it's a joke that could have justified the anonymity. Would I have wanted to FP such a joke with my handle on it had it occurred to me?
But the joke I was looking for was something about corporate overlords. Abusive corporate overlord in the Facebook case.
My personal solution to the Facebook problem works well enough, though I'm still interested in other solutions. I didn't want to delete Facebook because it is a way for old frie
Re: (Score:1)
Frothy is the word you are looking for
Re: (Score:1)
Re:This is what Ayn Rand wants (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it was crony capitalism in this instance. And it has very little to do with Facebook.
What actually triggered this is the rise of the internet is sending the newspapers broke. The newspapers try to spin this as happening because the online services are stealing "news". The reality is there were newspapers all over the place because the could service an area roughly 12 hours wide - that is 12 hours from printing to getting the paper into the hands of a reader. They sold ads to their readers, not news. The news was just bait to get readers to read their ads, and they literally copied the news from each other all the time. In fact they set up syndication networks to make copying easier. Electrons move much faster than paper, so rather than needing 1000's of mastheads across the country to spread the news, the internet meant you only need a few. The rest will go broke.
In Australia most of the newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdock. Murdock has been playing the game he plays with Fox News in the US much, much longer in Australia. The game is you sell favourable coverage to politicians in return for laws that favour you. As a consequence, Australia went from a plethora of competing news sources to one dominant one, called Newscorp and owned by Murdock, in my lifetime.
To counter the internet threat Murdock bought another favour. (It won't work in the long term, and I'm sure Murdock knows it - but what he really cares about is the money in back pocket, not news or newspapers.) The favour was a law stipulating designated online news providers must simply give money to poor floundering newspapers. It was crony capitalism on a scale I've never personally witnessed before. (And now we seen it rolled out, it's turned out that the biggies grabbed most of the gravy in the trough [theconversation.com] - in other words Murdock ended up being the primary beneficiary. What a surprise.)
Only two providers were so designated from memory - Google and Facebook. The both reacted with outrage, as you might expect. You've read about Facebook's reaction here, but Google also threatened to shut down all of its services to Australia [arstechnica.com]. So no search, no gmail, no docs, and ad words. To put this outrage into context - the draft legislation said the newspapers could edit posts you and I put on Facebook and Google. Not just have taken down - actually editorialise. It's so over the top I doubt it could have come from a professional law drafter in the government beauracy - I'm betting the pollies let Murdock write the first draft.
Such is the power of Murdock's Newscorp over the pollies that every single fucking party supported the law. The only thing that forced it into become some semblance of sanity was Facebook's and Google's actions - the ones being spun here as "the big guys stomp on the little guys again". Well, they were sure where stomping as hard as they could - but I wouldn't call Murdock little, and who is the less evil out of Facebook and Fox News is a hard call - but I think I'd take Facebook. They at least don't openly promote Putin over USA politicians.
As it happens - the USA is just now looking at copying Australia's laws [smh.com.au]. And in an amazing coincidence, were now have hit pieces against the digital media like this one being rolled out from Murdock controlled mastheads such as the WSJ. And it's worked a treat. Most of the posts here are cheering them on. Hey, useful idiots, is it too much to ask for that you grow a brain?
Re: (Score:2)
Your description of the newspaper business as "selling ads" to readers is wrong. The readers were sold the news. The advertisers were sold the reader's eyeballs. But there was a net public good that fell out - decent journalism.
Google and Facebook sell eyeballs to advertisers. They provide some services of their own, but are also happy to repackage others work to get those eyeballs and pay nothing for it. Syndication, in contrast is an arrangement where outlets either agree to share stories (quid quo pro)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, it was crony capitalism in this instance. And it has very little to do with Facebook.
What actually triggered this is the rise of the internet is sending the newspapers broke. The newspapers try to spin this as happening because the online services are stealing "news". The reality is there were newspapers all over the place because the could service an area roughly 12 hours wide - that is 12 hours from printing to getting the paper into the hands of a reader. They sold ads to their readers, not news. The news was just bait to get readers to read their ads, and they literally copied the news from each other all the time. In fact they set up syndication networks to make copying easier. Electrons move much faster than paper, so rather than needing 1000's of mastheads across the country to spread the news, the internet meant you only need a few. The rest will go broke.
In Australia most of the newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdock. Murdock has been playing the game he plays with Fox News in the US much, much longer in Australia. The game is you sell favourable coverage to politicians in return for laws that favour you. As a consequence, Australia went from a plethora of competing news sources to one dominant one, called Newscorp and owned by Murdock, in my lifetime.
Sorry to be a pedant, but it's spelled Murdoch (Scottish/northern phonetics make it sound like murdock).
But you're dead right. What happened in Australia is Murdoch essentially forced this into law by owning all the media in Australia and threating the conservative LNP with negative stories. It's what we call "rent seeking" in Australia.
So Murdoch wants search engines to both bring users to his sites... and pay him for the privilege of doing so.
You're right that his traditional media enterprises ar
Re: (Score:1)
And yet . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
there will be no accountability, no repercussions, no nothing. Business as usual for the elites.
Re: And yet . . . (Score:2)
Australia should boot Facebook out of the country.
Re: (Score:1)
Australia should boot Facebook out of the country.
Just Australia? Why stop there?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: And yet . . . (Score:2)
Re:And yet . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
What was the cost to others, or other downside, resulting from what Facebook did?
The article is paywalled so I can't tell if it says anything about that, but judging from the summary, it sounds like it merely means "swaths of the Australian government and health services" couldn't post links to their sites on Facebook. Thus, the negative consequences would have been primarily felt by Facebook themselves, since users would have to go directly to those services' sites instead of letting Facebook be their gateway, where they see Facebook's ads.
So (again, just going by the summary) it seems like there's no one to be accountable to except perhaps "rival"(?) divisions within Facebook itself.
It's probably better that Facebook erred on the side of having too little information on their own website, rather than having too much and thereby violating the law. If someone can't share links on Facebook, the consequences are nothing except a loss of referrals from Facebook (and these government sites probably aren't ad-supported anyway, so why would they even care about referral traffic?). OTOH if a news story got shared inadvertently, then (according to the law, at least; remember the absurdity of the premise!) damage would have been done by linking to the competing website.
Doing No Harm is generally a basically good idea, though I realize there are occasional exceptions. But in this story? Probably not an exception.
Re: (Score:2)
What was the cost to others, or other downside, resulting from what Facebook did?
The article is paywalled so I can't tell if it says anything about that, but judging from the summary, it sounds like it merely means "swaths of the Australian government and health services" couldn't post links to their sites on Facebook.
here you go: https://www.wsj.com/articles/f... [wsj.com]
Re: (Score:2)
the negative consequences would have been primarily felt by Facebook themselves, since users would have to go directly to those services' sites instead of letting Facebook be their gateway
These were cases where the information wasn't on the services' sites, often because they didn't even have a web site; their primary or only online presence was Facebook.
It's probably better that Facebook erred on the side of having too little information on their own website, rather than having too much and thereby violating the law.
There was no law. Facebook was pulling content to show what might happen if the proposed law passed. A law relating only to content from commercial media organisations.
Re: And yet . . . (Score:2)
It's their platform. Accountable for what?
Facebook is under no legal obligation to allow hospitals or anyone else to post anything.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me guess - you disagree. You think the government should get involved and tell social media who they may or may not ban, what they may or may not choose to publish, all in the name of opposing censorship.
Go think about it for a while. Come back when you've figured it out.
Re: (Score:2)
They never do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Aren't you late for a Bunde meeting somewhere?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't know how deeply you hated free enterprise. Perhaps you and others with an undying admiration for Soviet-era policies and public figures should consider emigrating to Russia, or perhaps China. You'll be right at home there.
Re: (Score:1)
About 1/3 of the world lives there, so obviously you must think that if you're not a hypocritical moron.
Re: Welcome to free speech.. (Score:1)
Now we get "articles" like this one, which are trying to say that FB is somehow responsible for interfering with government operations or pandemic response. Give me a break, it's a freaking facebook page, it's literally social media not a s
Re: (Score:2)
...bullshit non-issues like "hate speech" or "misinformation".
I'm having difficulty understanding if this is parody or sincere.
Re: (Score:1)
And "misinformation" more often comes from mainstream media and the government than social media; If you've been paying attention to the covid situation they constantly flip flop between condemning something as "misinformation" and then accepting it a
Re: (Score:2)
hate speech /het spit/ UK /het spit/
noun [ U ]
US
public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation (= the fact of being gay, etc.):
Citing a law prohibiting hate speech against a minority, a district court sentenced him to a month in prison. Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.o... [cambridge.org]
Many countries have hate speech laws, which typically fall under the category of human rights law, i.e. protecting people's civil liberties. Are you against that?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The difference between your given definition and the one he has put forward is the difference between how it's defined and how it's sometimes used.
As soon as you have laws on the books saying that classifying something as x gets people power over someone, there will always be those that try to abuse it.
There are plenty of factual things people can say especially statistically about specific demographics (even with a goal of "what are the contributory causes? how do we help fix this"), that others could inte
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's little room for ambiguity.
No room for ambuigity for something that is entirely up to the beholder as to whether it's hateful?
Take the example of someone who believes gender is an innate spiritual state of being which can be 'pizza' and someone who just doesn't believe in any of that. The former may consider the latter to 'hate' them because they don't believe in their religion, when in reality the latter could just be 'you do you, but don't force your shit on others'.
No hate involved, yet someone considers someone else as hating the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, you seem to be forgetting that speech exists in a legal context whether online or otherwise. As such there are a lot of questions that end up in the lap of the government one way or another.
Like if somebody organizes a crime over social media, or conducts harassment over social media, or engages in speech that is not protected (i.e. hate speech, threats), engages in legal libel or slander, or simply discloses secrets (business or otherwise) that they are not entitled to have, or in the case of TFA want
Re: (Score:2)
I would rather have Mark Zukerberg controlling things than Rupert Murdoch...
Can you really call it free speech (Score:2)
Really? (Score:1)
No one is really surprised to read this.
Pages on facebook? (Score:3)
Re: Pages on facebook? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's becoming a common thematic pattern. Someone accuses a company of "censorship" and then later you find out that the "censorship" happened on the perpetrator's own website. So the perp and the victim are the exact same party.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Always surprised crap like this doesn't backfir (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary is incredibly biased. You can say it's relatively easy to enforce, but given that no company has ever had to enforce it in the form that was proposed at that point there's no evidence to support that claim. We're talking about a government that was intending to pass a law that puts considerable financial risk on companies if their users post links to "news". I'm not going to argue for or against the law or what Facebook did, but Australia has bigger issues around news than whether a few incredibly wealthy media barons can extort money out of internet companies for having links to their content.
Re: (Score:2)
Suppose it's your job to implement the law. Are you using a blacklist to avoid sharing news-media links, or are you using a whitelist to allow sharing non-news-media links?
You know I'm setting you up, right? No matter how you answer, it's going to be wrong. Please go on about how easy this is. Maybe I'll learn something!
Critical services on Facebook (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How stupid does a company or government have to be to host critical services in a platform it has no control
There are plenty of companies that depend on Facebook to reach their customers. And the customers must have Facebook accounts to even interact. Which means I do not interact with such companies or services.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are many companies that depend on Google services like office application and mail. And are screwed when Google changes those services.
Absolutely yes, they can be.
And Google is very well known for discontinuing services.
Government Communications (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are Government communications reliant on Facebook? Facebook should not have leverage over the Government at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Why are Government communications reliant on Facebook? Facebook should not have leverage over the Government at all.
Option1: government should meet the people where they're at, so it can serve the most people most effectively.
Option2: government should pick its own ways of doing things, and people should do the legwork to come to it.
Both views are principled and self-consistent. I think many governments chose option 1 (e.g. we see official mailings in multiple languages to serve people who aren't strong in the national language). I think you're imagining option 2, which also seems reasonable.
Re: (Score:2)
Option 3: Both Options 1 and 2
Re: (Score:2)
Option 3: Both Options 1 and 2
I kind of assume that's what Australia did (can't be bothered to check). I assumed that if say 30% of their population looked for information via Facebook and didn't know how or care to look for the official communication vehicle, and if the Facebook page was removed, then that 30% would now be unserved. And I assumed that when Australia said that their communication was in chaos, they were talking about those 30% now being unserved.
Caveat: I didn't read up on the details and the time, and can't be bothered
Re: (Score:2)
Some of us are old enough to have lived a long time before the Internet and certainly before Facebook. What did Australia do prior to Facebook? Its not like everything that Government does is new since Facebook. Maybe encouraging your citizens to stay tied to a foreign service isn't the best option?
Re: (Score:3)
I agree with the sentiment, but there's a significant fraction of the population that only reads Facebook and nothing else. It's a matter of going to where your customers are, so to speak, which is important for successful outreach.
Re: Government Communications (Score:1)
So then put a link on Facebook back to the official pages. The majority of a population doesnâ(TM)t have or want Facebook accounts, Facebook accounts arenâ(TM)t free, so a government service should not require you to have one.
As a result, this article is bullshit. Australia wanted to censor Facebook so they did, then they realized this isnâ(TM)t a good idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
The Australian government does not and has never required people to have Facebook accounts. All the information you could need is already available elsewhere. However, there's a subset of society that won't bother to leave Facebook, so if the government wants to reach them as well, it has to go to them on Facebook. It's the government's responsibility to try and reach all its citizens, so it's insufficient for them to say "but it's available elsewhere" if they know people w
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
For the same reason many places and services in the US are: Because access / cost / knowledge.
Many smaller locales and services don't have the budget to run their own site. Let alone competently and securely. Many also lack the budget for advertising, and proper census building. I.e. Getting the word out about it, figuring out who is using it, for what, and why. Many also lack the talent needed to research this stuff, and run it. Best they can hope for is that one employee "who knows computers". As such, th
Facebook is presently trash (Score:3)
But then I really have NO sympathy for the likes of hospitals that make themself dependent of something like Facebook.
I regularly find companies and institutions doing similar stupid things but most of the time they have a, for them secondary, and for me primary way of being in contact with their potential customers.
For the rest; Fuck Them!
Re: (Score:1)
-- Benjamin Franklin
That's what you get relying on Facebook (Score:2)
Why would a government be reliant on a locked-in platform like FB for essential government services? Australia put themselves over the barrel. The good news is that they can now see the danger of relying on such platforms. It's like a business that relies on their Google search ranking and Google changes the algorithm. It's a huge business risk.
BBQ (Score:2)
Timing is critical... (Score:3)
The Internet (Score:2)
Providers should be grateful to Facebook (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
They should be grateful to Facebook
And pay [businessinsider.com] for the service.
Australian essential services do rely on Facebook (Score:2)
One of these days... (Score:2)
A body republic is going to declare war on a global non-state actor over shit like this, and I just hope I'm here to see the first gov vs corp war with open combat.
Okay, actually, I just want to see manbunned techbros in birkenstocks running screaming from an armor platoon driving through the front of the swanky corp campus.
Fine. Shadowrun. I want Shadowrun. There. I said it.
A media hitjob on Facebook. (Score:2)
Facebook sucks, but this isn't an article about how Facebook sucks. It's about something totally different.
Every single "Facebook is evil" article is founded on a well understood hatred of Facebook by the media. There are tons of academic papers about the dangers of Facebook to the media. Hence, the media hitjob.
https://www.theguardian.com/me... [theguardian.com]