Who is deciding what laws are just? Hopefully not Google or Facebook, as they are amoral profit-motivated behemoths who will annex your home and life if they're allowed.
No, it's not. There is no "3rd party content", it's just links, the basis for the internet. Anyone can stop their site from being indexed with one line of code if they're not happy with the value proposition. Google offered to stop indexing all Australian news sites altogether but that was deemed illegal because this is nothing but a forcible cash grab by a dying media monopoly that has the Australian government by the balls.
This article [1] (which I found because someone else linked to it in this thread), explains the situation well. Google & FB do not just link.
> Part of the issue here is Google and Facebook don’t just collect a list of interesting links to news content. Rather the way they find, sort, curate and present news content adds value for their users.
> They don’t just link to news content, they reframe it. It is often in that reframing that advertisements appear, and this is where these platforms make money.
> For example, this link will take you to the original 1989 proposal for the World Wide Web. Right now, anyone can create such a link to any other page or object on the web, without having to pay anyone else.
> But what Facebook and Google do in curating news content is fundamentally different. They create compelling previews, usually by offering the headline of a news article, sometimes the first few lines, and often the first image extracted.
>Rather the way they find, sort, curate and present news content adds value for their users.
>They create compelling previews, usually by offering the headline of a news article, sometimes the first few lines, and often the first image extracted.
So not only do they link, but they make the links rich with media from the story to make them even more appealing to click on and drive more traffic to the news site than otherwise? Preposterous, I tell you!
If this had any semblance of credibility or logic, option #1 would be to remove snippets and images and option #2 would be to stop linking altogether. The fact that neither of those are acceptable options to the Australian government tells me everything I need to know about their intentions. And I gotta give credit where credit is due, they're good at being slimy bastards, because they have people like you fooled.
1) Your reply contains arrogance and a patronising sneer at myself. This is against this site's guidelines.
2) A quick perusal of your comment history shows more of the same attitude and also indications that you possibly work for Google.
3) You evidently didn't read the full article I linked to (only responded to the section I quoted) which is a very good analysis of this situation.
4) Preview links may drive some traffic to sites but most often ppl just respond to what's shown on FB (the headline, an image, and text snippet). So FB profits by mechanically condensing other parties' news stories on its site while posting ads against them, knowing that people most often won't go read the full story on the linked site and that they are driving an ever shallower take on the news.
I address only intellectual dishonesty. Misinformation and ignorance has gone on far too long and I'm going to do my part in making its distribution a little bit more annoying for its messengers.
P.S. How will you be paying The Conversation for the content you stole from them a few comments ago?
