As you may know, news publishers are very mad at Facebook and Google. They blame the tech giants for the hollowing out of their industry. Aggregators like Google News, they say, steal content from journalists, by showing the headline and a blurb for free. They very much dislike what they see as Facebook’s stranglehold on content. Facebook was the driver behind everybody’s infamous “pivot to video”, which was based on Facebook’s lies. Facebook continues to lie about the number of people their ads can reach. The way news feeds work is encouraging publishers to focus on clickbait. Sorting algorithms are so opaque that people don’t know how to optimize their content from one day to the next. The list goes on.
In response, Australia, at the behest of Rupert Murdoch, has gone and done a silly thing. They are nearing passage of a law that would force these companies to come to an agreement with publishers for paying said publishers whenever an Australian clicks a link to an Australian news source. The law would prohibit ‘discrimination’ on the basis of whether such an agreement has been negotiated with a given outlet, or how much the payment is. The law would require these companies to notify said outlets fourteen days in advance before making any changes to newsfeed or search algorithms.
The law is very dumb. Let’s start with the dumbest part–the algorithm notifications. First of all, newsfeed algorithms change all the time, and we want them to be changeable quickly, for example in response to objectively harmful viral content like the Plandemic video. Second, these are digital algorithms–it’s not a person sitting there with a checklist, it’s an opaque and ineffable neural network. “In fourteen days, we will change hyperparameter X19z to a value of 0.3.” Does that sound like it helps anybody? This is a very strong signal that the drafters don’t know what they’re doing.
Next up: cui bono? News Corp. They wrote the bill and are getting their money’s worth.
[Google] struck deals in recent days with Australia’s major publishing companies, including on Wednesday with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, to pay for some of their news content. The deal came in exchange for avoiding the most stringent parts of a new law in Australia…Stories from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Sunday Times and other News Corp publications from the United Kingdom and Australia will show up in special panels on the Google News app, on the search home screen on mobile phones and on Google News on desktop computers.
Interestingly, Google took the opposite tack in responding to a somewhat similar Spanish law a few years ago: they shut down Google News in Spain. You would think that news publishers would have been overjoyed–finally, Google is going to stop stealing from them! But they weren’t overjoyed, because as it turns out Google does not steal from them. The study the publishers commissioned found that
[I]n the short-term, the study found, the law will cost publishers €10 million, or about $10.9 million, which would fall disproportionately on smaller publishers. Consumers would experience a smaller variety of content, and the law “impedes the ability of innovation to enter the market.”The study concludes that there’s no “theoretical or empirical justification” for the fee.
Facebook, however, has chosen to go this route this time around. They have now prohibited Australians from posting links to news, and everybody else from linking to Australian news sources. Yes, this is hardball, a capital strike–but it’s not quite as audacious as it sounds. More below the fold.
Under the terms of the proposed law, Google would have to pay for links in search engine results, and Facebook for links that users post–content that neither company has any control over. They would also be prohibited from linking to only the Australian companies they’ve negotiated favorable terms with–if you want to link to any Australian outlets, you have to link to all of them, no matter how much it costs. Facebook has decided this is a bridge too far, and they don’t want to do business with Australian media.
The legislation “seeks to penalize Facebook for content it didn’t take or ask for,” William Easton, Facebook’s Managing Director in Australia & New Zealand, said in a blog post. Unlike Google, which scrapes news sites and puts links to stories in search results, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook to win traffic, Easton said.
“We were prepared to launch Facebook News in Australia and significantly increase our investments with local publishers, however, we were only prepared to do this with the right rules in place,” Easton, the Facebook executive, said. “We will now prioritize investments to other countries.”
The reactions have been apoplectic and incoherent. Kevin Drum has a succinct rundown:
I have two thoughts:
In a nutshell, one party (news publishers) wants to charge another party (Facebook) higher rates. This kind of thing happens all the time. It’s practically the foundation of capitalism. If the buyer decides the price is too high, they don’t buy. That’s all Facebook did.
Second, aren’t we all up in arms about Facebook’s news feeds and how they’re destroying democracy? Shouldn’t we be delighted to see them cut off news altogether?
Wait. Three thoughts. Shouldn’t Australian publishers be ecstatic to no longer be under the Facebook lash? Now they can promote their work without having to worry about Facebook’s endless algorithm changes and paywall hacks. More generally, publishers need to make up their minds. Is Facebook good for their business because it sends lots of traffic their way? Or is it bad for business because it steals ad revenue from them?
The always-worthwhile Mike Masnick has a longer piece making a similar point.
And yet… it seemed to make tons of people freak out for all the wrong reasons. Almost everyone started blaming and attacking Facebook. And, look, I get it, Facebook is a terrible, terrible company and deserves lots of blame for lots of bad things that it does. But this ain’t it.
Tim Berners-Lee, widely considered the father of the World Wide Web, is also not a fan (you’ll have to hunt around to find the PDF).
Requiring a charge for a link on the web blocks an important aspect of the value of web content. To my knowledge, there is no current example of legally requiring payments for links to other content. The ability to link freely — meaning without limitations regarding the content of the linked site and without monetary fees — is fundamental to how the web operates, how it has flourished till present, and how it will continue to grow in decades to come.
Like many others, I support the right of publishers and content creators to be properly rewarded for their work. This is without doubt an issue that needs addressing, both in Australia and around the world. However, I firmly believe that constraints on the use of hypertext links are not the correct way to achieve this goal. It would undermine the fundamental principle of the ability to link freely on the web, and is inconsistent with how the web has been able to operate over the past three decades. If this precedent were followed elsewhere it could make the web unworkable around the world. I therefore respectfully urge the committee to remove this mechanism from the code.
I’ve thought about this for a couple days, and I’ve formed my opinion: Yes, Facebook is bad! But Australia is falling prey to the politician’s syllogism: Something must be done; A dumb bill written by News Corp is something; Therefore, we must do it.
What say you all?
Mary G
One of the worst thing about the politicians we elect is their abysmal ignorance of tech.
Winston
Like hell we must do it.
ReadWrite
Facebook versus News Corp. The Zuck versus Rupert. Smallpox versus Malaria. Do I have to pick a favorite?
Kent
Let Facebook and News Corp fight it out to the death and may they both die.
Good riddance.
jeffreyw
Fuck Murdoch and fuck Facebook, too.
MattF
My underlying opinion is that the effectiveness of on-line advertising is wildly overrated, which means that Facebook and Google are both pushing a long con. No one wants to admit this; everyone wants to claim that the news items they are linking are valuable. But if the true value is actually very small, then the question of who, if anyone, should pay for links to news items and how much they should pay is less important than any of the contending parties are ready to admit
ETA: And, yeah, I’d like to see Facebook driven out of business. But that’s a very long shot.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: did you see the thing about Uber trimming their online ad budget by like 70% and noticing no changes?
RSA
@Mary G:
The judges they appoint can be described the same way.
MattF
@Major Major Major Major: Not surprised. There’s a, um, strange lack of real data on these questions– given that such large amounts of money are involved.
Mathguy
@RSA: What worse is that the judges think they understand what they are adjudicating.
Low Key Swagger
Is the problem the link itself, or the blurb which accompanies it? Not sure how just a link would be a problem, since it obviously drives traffic to the publisher. So, I’m asking if eliminating the blurb would be a compromise?
Winston
The only reason I’m on facebook now is to see photos of my granddaughters and great granddaughters growing up. If facebook didn’t exist we could do that with email.
Brachiator
I saw fuck News Corp. Murdoch and his ilk love a walled garden approach to their media sites, but this has largely been a dismal failure.
FaceBook and Google are not stealing from Australian news sites. It has been clearly shown time and time again that if they don’t provide a least a small snippet for search purposes, the sites effectively cease to exist. That’s just the way the world works.
Google and FaceBook did not steal money from traditional news organizations. Their business models became irrelevant.
A very brief history. In the 1970s and 1980s some of the bigger newspapers in America began depending more on classified ads than display advertising for revenue. They had not depended on subscriptions since the 1800s. Then Craigslist came along and took away classified ads. The ability to search directly on the Web for products and services was another nail in the coffin.
Newspapers would also deliver flyers for supermarkets and retail stores. The Post Office does this now for less than the newspapers charged.
But I also think that Tim Berners-Lee is being a bit too much the tech idealist.
It’s not just a matter of being “rewarded.” These are businesses and if they cannot charge for their services or find ways to make money, they cannot pay people. Newspapers have been dying for years and the Web versions are not thriving. Of course part of the problem is that people consider news to be entertainment and if possible they want entertainment to be free.
This is a conundrum. The Internet works best when people can freely link, but many businesses and some (especially authoritarian) countries don’t see this as anything that they want.
I used to think that some kind of royalty model, similar to the old ASCAP system for songs played on the radio, might provide some relief. Now I don’t know what a good answer might be.
Ken
Oh, if only. The announcement would be more like, “As a result of last night’s network retraining, the following 242,407 parameters have changed by more than 5%, and the remaining 806,169 by smaller amounts. And we have no idea why, and there is no human in the loop. But we’re pretty sure it’s not sentient yet.”
sab
Surprise, surprise. Rupert Murdoch barges in and breaks things. News at eleven.
glc
For those interested in such things, Cory Doctorow’s pluralistic.com is a good source.
His current take on this matter is at
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/21/paltrow-industrial-complex/#facecrook
lee
@MattF:
I agree with this. There have been articles over the years that have pointed out that the online advertising numbers do not add up.
I think part of it is the shear number of users that both FB and Google bring to the table. They see those billions of tracked users and stop thinking critically. Of course they have been predicting the demise of online advertising probably as long as there has been online advertising.
Popup blockers are slowly getting more popular. I’ve not surfed the web without one in decades. I’ve recently added Privacy Badger and some other add-ons.
If I were to pick a winner is this war of deplorables, I would pick FB and Google. Simply because they have many other revenue streams outside of Australia.
RSA
@Mathguy:
Here in the U.S.: “Let’s consider how the writing of well-educated men in the late 18th century bears on the near-instantaneous global dissemination of information…”
scav
@MattF: I somehow think tulips have nothing on advertising. Tulips macerated in bio-dynamic snake oil under a crystal pyramid on a solstice blue moon may have nothing on advertising.
Low Key Swagger
I think this answers my question.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
BBC had a roundtable last week of folks discussing “when did newspapers begin to fail?” and nobody mentioned Craigslist. Thought the lack of recognition was telling.
Old Man Shadow
My thoughts are that if people click through on Google and Facebook’s links, those are eyes that otherwise wouldn’t bother reading that medium’s news, so it sounds like the publishers are trying to use the State to get bonus money that doesn’t really belong to them too, so fuck ’em. Now they lose those eyes and whatever revenue they were getting from the ads those eyes also saw.
Also, fuck Facebook too. Just on general principle.
Yutsano
It’s Scott Morrison. He’s the leader of the Liberal Party, which in Aussie terms means conservative. He’s basically Drumpf down under. Expecting him to do any less than the bidding of Rupert and Lachlan (remember ol’ Rupes is basically retired now) is expecting the moon to feed the world with green cheese. Yet I get the feeling no one is going to come out looking good after all this. One would hope it might spike Morrison’s coalition but I doubt it.
lee
@Brachiator:
My ‘deep thought’ on this is the first step should be that users should own their data. I’m not sure exactly how it plays out after that, but I think that is an important first step.
A side note also is the ‘right to be forgotten’ for private citizens (which Google hates with the fire of a thousand suns).
Maybe the part of owning your data is you can ‘lease’ it to a website. For instance: I tell the Dallas Morning News that they can track me and use my data and I agree not to use a pop-up blocker/anonymizer on their website. They then can tell their advertisers the have X number of valid/tracked users.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Major Major Major Major:
I say: Well, in a battle between Facebook and News Corp., I’m rooting for injuries.
And in a battle between Mark Zuckerberg and Rupert & Lachlan Murdoch, I’m rooting for fatalities.
But also, to a large extent, I don’t have a bone to pick in that fight – I refuse to watch or read anything from Fox News, and I’ve got Facebook completely blocked, at max settings, through NoScript, Privacy Badger, et al.
A Ghost to Most
Kill your FaceBook. Do something real.
Bill Arnold
@glc:
Doctorow rants well, but he doesn’t address the details of the actual proposed legislation. Which is in flux, in particular due to complaints about the ridiculous notification clauses that Facebook was aggressively complaining about. He’s also saying it’s not a link tax; this is true only in the sense that the government is not collecting it, just requiring it. It is unclear to me from the proposed legislation (skimmed and a few days ago; 58 pages) whether it covers user-provide links on other social media like twitter or comments in blog comment sections
Frankly, from what I looked at a couple of days ago, I’d actively encourage any place with user-generated comments that allows links to simply cut off Australian IP addresses, at least until the scope is clarified and assuming that when clarified it is not too odious. If Australians want to access, they could use a VPN. (Assuming VPNs are legal in Australia; security laws there are empower The State to an appalling level.)
Ken
They can hate it as much as they want, as long as they implement it in accord with GDPR requirements. Or choose one of the alternatives, which are (1) never store personal data about any citizen of the EU, or (2) pay massive massive fines on a regular basis.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Years ago I worked for a great metropolitan newspaper in Southern California. I knew and worked with some of the heavies in the advertising departments. Nobody saw the Internet coming, but we saw the precursors that set up the eventual obliteration of the old news model.
Craigslist was free, but also was much easier to navigate than the online classified portal of most newspapers. The early efforts of the newspapers, which simply did not have the expertise, was pathetic.
The rest is history.
ETA: Years later, I had gained some tech skills and offered to help beta test the newspaper’s web product. I also offered some suggestions and advice to some of the people I still knew. Hand to the Deity, for a time, the paper deliberately hampered web development because some key executives did not want the Internet version competing with the physical newspaper.
Wyatt Salamanca
From a must read article about Mark Zuckerberg intervening to weaken Facebook’s ban of Alex Jones
h/t https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/mark-zuckerberg-joel-kaplan-facebook-alex-jones?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Fuck Mark Zuckerberg, Fuck Mark Zuckerberg, and Fuck Mark Zuckerberg!
lee
@Wyatt Salamanca: I’m not sure how much proof we need that Fuckerberg is a right wing asshole. Just add that one to the list of examples.
Yutsano
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Wot u said. Ad infinitum. Fucking white Harvard prick.
(Not you. Zuckerberg.)
Brachiator
@Mary G:
Very true. But this is compounded by the fact that some tech leaders view themselves as tech philosopher kings who have a higher duty to the idea of tech innovation than to humanity. And there are techno libertarians who appear to believe that there should not be any laws governing or regulating technology.
This manifests itself as a disdain that some tech people have for “normal” people and a refusal to offer any assistance when it comes to issues of technology and society.
I remember watching some panelists on a tech show discuss FaceBook and Google appearing before Congress. They noted that Zuckerberg and the Google people had their lawyers with them, but no tech people who could actually explain the matters under discussion. The tech panelists were all pleased with how FaceBook and Google had outfoxed the Congress, even though these hearings were not particularly adversarial.
Sloegin
Facebook delenda est. Honestly, the worst thing that happened to all of the techs is that they all scrambled to add a no-value newsfeed aggregate to all their services.
Why? They want to curate news with their own corporate spin. They want defacto editoral opinion – to influence the world by selecting what particular articles of the news aggregate they display and highlight.
trollhattan
@Wyatt Salamanca:
GameSociopathy recognize sociopathy.Kindred souls.
MattF
@Wyatt Salamanca: It’s awful. Even if Zuckerberg just watched snippets of Jones’ rants, he should have seen that something crazy and evil is going on. OTOH, I suppose that if your biggest driver is ‘engagement’ then ‘crazy and evil’ is just a bump on the road to success.
Baud
There are similar rumblings in the U.S., but on the progressive side it’s more about keeping local media viable rather than the big boys per se.
Brachiator
@lee:
I am not sure that your data belongs to you in any material way. There is profile information about you, who you are, where you live. This may belong to you.
But the trail that you create as you use the Internet is not something that you really own. It is simply a function of what you search to and link to. And in some ways aggregate information is just as valuable as anything that is specifically linked to you or which personally identifies you.
I have mixed feelings about this as well. Is the Web a public space? If there is a news story written about you, why should you be able to suppress it?
Are there neutral or even controversial items that you should have a right to suppress? Why?
On the other hand, I think that a lot of information about people younger than a certain age should not be maintained or should be forgettable. Yep, I may be inconsistent here, but hey, that’s life.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Bill Arnold:
VPN’s are legal in Australia. I know Private Internet Access (PIA), Torguard, and Mullvad all have network nodes there, because I’ve used those services and know their networks.
I assume ExpressVPN, NordVPN and the other global VPN providers work there too, but I haven’t used them, so I don’t know the extent of their networks. It’s easy enough to find out though – most VPN providers publicly list their network nodes at their web sites.
Yutsano
Everyone okay if I go OT the next couple of posts?
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Yutsano:
Fine by me.
Another Scott
@Mathguy: IANAL, but in a properly functioning legal system, it’s not the judges’ jobs to understand tech. Their job is to decide based on the evidence and the law which side is correct.
Ah, you say, how can they understand the evidence without understanding the tech?
They depend on the parties to make their case. They appoint “special masters” if necessary. They ask for “friend of the court” briefs. Etc.
Judges have enough on their plates without having to become independent experts on every topic that comes before them.
My $0.02. Corrections welcome.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who appreciates MM’s take and thinks he presented the case well. Anyone being forced by a government to give Murdoch money for clicks like this should fight it. FB being evil is a different battle.”)
mrmoshpotato
@MattF:
Doesn’t matter what garbage is put out, just as long as it’s getting people looking at it on FuckFace’s platform. (And it flies under the radar of companies who could sue for defamation)
Fuck Zuck!
MattF
@Yutsano: Sure. (Says ‘Mr. OT is my middle name’).
Fair Economist
There’s no more problem reporting trained changes to computer neural networks than to biological neural networks (people): you report the changes to training and limitations on conduct, and the reasons and goals for the changes. That’s the real programming, anyway; it’s not like programmers tweak weights in internal nodes. It’s not that hard because they already have to report that kind of info up to management. Mandatory reporting will put a HUGE damper on intentionally exploitative programming; the aggregators won’t want to admit they’re suckering in people with nonsense.
Requiring aggregators to pay for news content is a necessity if we want any news content to aggregate anymore.
This law for Australia is a great step forward. It’s not perfect in every way, of course, but something like this is going to be necessary everywhere.
Brachiator
@MattF:
The effectiveness of print advertising was often overrated as well. But increasingly online is the only game in town.
And of course, you have people who hate advertising and do everything they can to block it everywhere. And some people prefer a subscription model.
In the long run, this might make the Internet accessible only to the upper middle class and above.
Timurid
Let them fight.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Brachiator makes a good point, but print media has been like the coal industry in the US – on a long decline for a very long time. Big cities used to have morning and evening papers that duked it out (some, like NYC, had multiples of each). Then mergers became more common. Then USAToday started being available everywhere (With color pictures! For “free” with hotel rooms, etc.). And free apartment hunter and car want ad magazines (AutoTrader, etc.) were everywhere. All before Craigslist killed classifieds.
It’s a death of 1000 cuts thing.
Cheers,
Scott.
MattF
@Fair Economist: Well, I’d think that the way to modulate the connections in neural nets is to modulate the incoming data— since the behavior of the NN is trained on the incoming data. Which is also problematical on several fronts, considering, e.g., that NNs trained on internet data tend to turn into Nazis.
Fair Economist
Facebook’s panicky overreaction shows *they* think this will work. If it were really going to be a clusterfuck in action, Facebook would just sit back and go Nelson Muntz when it all fails. But it’s going to work, basically, and they know they need to stop it now if they want to have free reins.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Judges and juries have to able to be intelligent lay people. Judges may need a higher level of understanding.
Maybe you need specialized tech courts.
I remember during the OJ Simpson trial, the standards for use of DNA evidence were being developed in parallel.
I know that I had a hard time explaining to co-workers why the use of DNA to exclude a person was more slam dunk than the use of DNA to include a person as, for example, being at a crime scene.
I can’t say whether the jurors understood the DNA evidence, but I can say that many of the ordinary folks at work, etc, didn’t have a clue.
Anyway, this just underscored how difficult understanding tech and scientific issues can be.
Fair Economist
Also, whatever happened to once-sexy microtransactions? At least once a day I click on a link to a local newspaper article and it’s paywalled. I’d be happy to pay 10 cents or whatever to read it but I have no use for a subscription to a paper in another state.
Obdurodon
FWIW, even the Hacker News crowd has mostly come out on the side of saying that Australia is the bigger offender there, and those folks hate Facebook almost as much as you all do. The one thing I’ve found particularly interesting is reports from people in Australia saying that their feeds are almost empty now. Some have compared it to a much older version of Facebook. Some have said they quite like it. This wasn’t intended as an experiment, but it’s turning out to be an interesting one.
waratah
I generally google Sydney Morning Herald if I need to see what is going on so I just googled and did not have problems getting on. I do not think they are one of Murdocks.
marduk
Facebook is a terrible company that should be destroyed and yet they’re 100% right on this issue. The proposed law is completely absurd and indefensible.
Google recognizes that getting this law passed will further cement their monopoly power as it will lock out any potential future competitor, so they’re being smarter about their (terrible) best interests, but it’s to the detriment of anyone who relies on the internet to be informed.
MattF
@Brachiator: But… technically competent members of a specialized court will also have their own political opinions. I don’t see a clear way to draw a ‘black letter’ line between technical and political opinions. And consequences will fall on everyone, regardless of their expertise. Decision-making has to be as broadly based as possible, because all the alternatives to broadly-based judgement are worse.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
The expansion of afternoon TV news from 15 minutes to a big block of time, and expansion of the work week helped kill afternoon papers.
The old wise men used to tell stories about how in the early 1960s, the Los Angeles Times and the Hearst Corp held a secret meeting to cease competing in both the morning and afternoon. The Hearst people thought the afternoon was more valuable. People would get off work around 3:30 pm, get a paper or have one delivered and sit down to read the news of the day.
The LA Times people were happy to give Hearst the “victory” of having the Herald Examiner keep the afternoon market.
Demographics and change in reading habits saw the Herald Examiner die while the Times prospered with their morning paper. A long strike beginning around 1967 also helped kill the Hearst paper.
Yeah, other publishers didn’t think that USA Today would become popular and disdained the market that this paper soon dominated.
Yep. Also, there was a publication for horse racing fans that was quite popular during the era.
Also, too, the coal industry has been in decline since 1947. Newspapers didn’t take a huge hit until the 1980s. They even survived the onslaught of radio in the 1930s and of course television. But the Internet was too big a paradigm shift for newspapers and magazines. This was more like the impact of the printing press on Europe.
lee
@Brachiator:
One that readily comes to mind in the US is arrest records. You might be arrested for something that is eventually dismissed, but online that arrest record will never go away*.
The other is not limited to the US, but I’ll use an example: Remember the Boston Marathon bombing and how reddit misidentified who it was? That will follow them around for the rest of their lives whenever someone searches for their name.
The top result might be that reddit was wrong or it might not.
Another example is the idea that I could write something libelous (e.g. John Cole is a clumsy forgetful hermit that has a weird attachment to birds). Once it gets picked up by a search engine, that statement will then spread over the internet.
If I really wanted to ruin his reputation, I could pay an SEO company to bring that search result to the top of the search results for his name.
If you really want to get freaked out, wait a couple hours or so and google that phrase. Usually it takes about 2 hours for comments here to appear in search results.
*what happens is websites take the public arrest records and then publishes them online. After it has disappeared from the arresting agency, the website will charge the person an exorbitant amount of money to remove it. There is no guarantee that they will not come back for more money in the future.
PaulB
I can see both sides of this problem and have experienced it in a tiny way myself. I post a free daily Coronavirus Update on Substack, somewhat akin to the wonderful posts that Anne Laurie provides here. On average, I think I include 35 to 40 links in each day’s post, each with a quote from the article or text from me.
Substack tracks how many readers click a link and which links they click. On average, only about 15% of my readers take the time to click a link, any link, and read the linked information or article. So I’m including a significant amount of content every day that those news providers aren’t getting the clicks or visits for, other than my own visit. And since I block Javascript, ads, trackers, cookies, etc., they aren’t getting anything from me, either.
Now maybe the links aren’t getting clicked because I’m posting content that people just aren’t that interested in but I think the more likely scenario here is that I’m providing enough text to give people the context and a bit of the basic info and that’s all they’re really interested in. A typical example of my content aggregation:
Would the content providers be getting the visits if I weren’t posting that daily update? Certainly not every reader would be visiting every link. I have no way of knowing how many would but I do confess to feeling a bit guilty that so few people are clicking the links and that the providers are giving me all of this enormously valuable information that I’m not paying a penny for and that I’m passing on to my own small reader list for their education.
I wish I had an answer for this, as I think this is not sustainable. Good content requires money to provide and survive.
Anonymous At Work
I think a situation like this calls for a duel to the death between Murdoch and Zuckerberg. Poisoned knives, too.
Alternatively, Murdoch sets the terms, can’t speak understandable human language and both perish in the duel.
Brachiator
@MattF:
Totally agree. Just thinking out loud with the idea of a specialized court. Your observations are very good.
I can’t point to it right now, but I think I read a Supreme Court opinion where I thought that the justices were clearly out of their depth with respect to a tech issue. On the other hand, I think that the primary judge in one of the Apple patent cases had a clear understanding of all the issues being dealt with.
debbie
@Another Scott:
I wonder if Rupert had gamed out FB’s response.
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
Is there Craigslist in the UK? A quick google search was not productive, much… maybe in London, didn’t click forward, didn’t look like a nationwide operation at all.
I used to find lots of resources on Craigslist both here in in AZ, but not so much lately. Wonder if other newer sites are cutting into their volume of participation?
debbie
Guess he forgot…
Doug R
@ReadWrite: There’s been some success with diseases like Measles killing off Cancer. The problem is some people die from the Measles.
Although the success of mRNA vaccines on Covid may offer a less deadly but effective way to fight Cancer.
Just One More Canuck
@ReadWrite: GO INJURIES!!
Doug R
@MattF: Judging by the bottom feeding nature of most internet advertising (you don’t have to go any farther than the taboola block to see this FFS) I think you’re right.
Yutsano
OT #1: it’s very difficult to be the first agent of change in your country. Especially a country so rigid against change. Once again, da yootz might save us.
RSA
@Brachiator: I commented about judges earlier based on long-past decisions about software copyright (I think that was the issue, though it may have been patents). More recently I think the courts are trying to shoehorn technology into boxes that don’t quite fit with their distinction between passwords and biometrics for unlocking a phone.
Yutsano
OT #2: Dear British folks: please come collect your Prime Minister. He’s gone total bollocks.
Another Scott
@Fair Economist: People are still trying to make it work. E.g. AndroidPolice uses Scroll. I’ve signed up on one of my PCs to use it, but only one. It seems fine.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Baud:
This is not possible. I know progressives who had dreams of non-profit organizations or wealthy liberals buying local media properties.
The Los Angeles Times was bought by billionaire biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong in 2018. The paper also unionized, for the first time in its existence. The paper, which used to have more than 600,000 home delivery subscribers, now has about 30,000 digital subscribers. I think it will cease operations within the next 5 years.
Subsole
@lee: That is deeply fucked up. I mean how is that not a form of blackmail, or some prosecutable offense??
Subsole
@Anonymous At Work:
I vote chainsaws at two paces.
Yutsano
@Subsole: Rusty. With smelly gas engines. No masks.
Subsole
@Yutsano: I believe the proper expression is
“U wot m8?”
Edit: gods, this is like Trump’s fucking wall isn’t it. A massive boondoggle for the PM’s construction buddies to bid on…
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
When my family ran a small town newspaper business, the highest paid person was Louise T, an elegant Lebanese lady who was head of the classified ad dept, and also sold a ton of classified ads on commission. After my folks/uncles etc decided to sell out to a much larger paper, management said “Why is Louise T making more money than anyone else?” and quit paying commissions.
Suddenly Louise was running a high-end jewelry store in downtown Los Angeles where she had family. Making a ton of money even compared to being the highest paid individual at a small town news organization. Plus, the newspaper wasn’t making any money on their classified department any more.
Good management, Republican owners. They couldn’t stand that the Lebanese lady was making a lot of money helping them make money~!!~
Their big newspaper is gone now for years, the small town paper still manages to turn a profit, I guess, they still publish. Now the largest paper in WV has 1/2 a page of classified, nothing from big car dealers for example. Sad.
I learned to code well and retired on that right here in WV…
Lavocat
It’s Godzilla versus Mothra redux. Let them battle it out, inflicting maximal damage, until someone else comes along to kill them BOTH off. Have we learned nothing from Japanese kaiju films? Also, I’m running out of fucks to give and the weekend isn’t over yet!
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
OT #2: Dear British folks: please come collect your Prime Minister. He’s gone total bollocks.
This is indeed insane, but Johnson has floated this stupid idea before.
ETA: It is interesting that the Sunday Times has a Twitter stream, but the paper itself is behind a pay wall.
lee
@Subsole: The only answer to that is I live in Texas so companies acting poorly is pretty much the standard.
gwangung
@Brachiator: I recall the Supreme Court opinions on various evolution vs. creationism cases, and the conservative justices were clearly clueless about science and were judging purely on their religious biases.
BruceFromOhio
Anything that Rupert Murdoch is in favor of is automatically suspect in my world. I’m not on FB, nor shall I ever be, so no dog in this hunt.
trollhattan
Sportsball programming note: US 1 Brazil 0 at the half, She Believes Cup match between two of the Hemisphere’s top three teams. FS1 has the broadcast. If the Olympics happen, both clubs will go deep into the tournament.
Ken
@Yutsano: One of the many complications of coronavirus is brain damage. Just saying.
Annoyed-Aussie
I have to say, as a long-time Australian reader, the Big Tech apologists here are depressing.
Yes, Australia’s law benefits News Corp. Also, Facebook and Google are turning the business of news gathering into a charitable exercise (funded by donations from Google and Facebook). Which is worse in terms of detriment to society? I don’t think the answer is so obvious.
Further, Facebook’s action isn’t just “blocking news”, they have also blocked government informational websites, including about COVID prevention and vaccination. The ability of a private organization to arbitrarily block the flow of important information should be worrying to anyone who wants to live in a society where power resides in the people or the people’s representatives.
In summary, if the law is “dumb”, make an argument to elected officials about it. Don’t cheerlead Facebook taking a major channel of Australia’s access to information offline.
lee
@trollhattan: Did you watch the US v Canada yesterday?
I didn’t pay close attention (I was working in the kitchen as it played) but I couldn’t tell if the US was just not meshing or Canada was disrupting the US. Today the US seem to be clicking a lot more (even with a similar low score).
WhatsMyNym
@Brachiator:
wizened_guy
First of all, Mike Masnick is a tendentious, Google-funded hack who doesn’t really understand most of the industries he writes about. Reading him is almost never “worthwhile.” His website exists because Google pays him for his content.
Second, most critics of the Australian law elide the fact that Google and Facebook are monopolists that control both the buy-side and sell-side of the online advertising market. The notion that publishers or other ad-dependent content creators could reach some satisfactory accommodation with them through ordinary market mechanisms is simply fanciful. The online advertising market is not an ordinary market. It is a duopoly.
Third, from the publishers’ perspective, Google and Facebook’s monopoly on the ad side of the business is exacerbated by the fact that they are also effectively competitors on the content side of the business. Google and Facebook may link to their content and drive traffic to publishers’ sites, but they also host huge volumes of other content — good, bad and ugly — that can often substitute for (i.e. displace) professionally produced news content. Thus, publishers are dependent for ad revenue, readership and data about their readership on their competitors.
Finally, we’re not talking about widgets here. We’re talking about an institution — good-faith journalism — that plays an important role in democratic systems (that obviously doesn’t apply were Murdoch-owned properties are concerned). There is no question that corruption, skullduggery and counter-majoritarian power have grown more entrenched, particularly at the local level, as newsrooms have been emptied of journalists.
The Australian law, alas, is a clumsy, Murdoch-rigged mess that likely will not solve the problems it ostensibly aims to solve. That won’t happen until the Facebook and Google monopolies are effectively addressed. But it’s not enough to simply dismiss the effort as a Murdoch power play and leave it at that.
prostratedragon
@Subsole: I think the probable impossibility is the point.
WaterGirl
@Annoyed-Aussie: Welcome! Your first comment has to be manually approved, and then future comments will go through right away.
Brachiator
@gwangung:
Some of the justices clearly had their heads up their asses in the recent decision about allowing churches to hold services despite the pandemic.
I think one justice claimed that California was acting arbitrarily in singling out churches, but letting some private businesses continue to operate.
But it seemed clear even to a non-legal dummy like me that movie theaters, for example, and churches were closed because these were spaces in which large numbers of people would enter and sit for a couple of hours.
But the Court either did not understand or willfully ignored the science.
Denali
One thing that has eaten into Craig’s List is Next Door’s sell/free section. People are more likely to trust their neighbers – people they know are close by- than the general public.
trollhattan
@lee:
I did. Canada looked good against the initial US lineup, which could only threaten them on the left (I thought Chapman played lights-out defense on the other side). The mid second-half substitutes made all the difference because the attack opened up.
Fun match! I hope Christine Sinclair is okay, it’s the first time I can recall her missing playing time for injury and I want her to add to that world’s best goal total. ?
citizen dave
@trollhattan: Not just sportsball but the great (and my favorite) US Womens Team. Not a cable person but fox sports 1 is livestreaming it on the web–didn’t even have to deal with the disappointment of “who is your tv provider” crap–which is a firewall for me.
WhatsMyNym
OT: Craig’s List ad for themselves is pretty good —
Brachiator
@WhatsMyNym:
Thanks for this. I got my information from two separate sites that were both clearly wrong. Or, I totally misread something, also a possibility.
Still, this is not sustainable. The Times has recently gone through a couple of rounds of employee buyouts.
A more reliable site notes that in 2002 the Times had a print circulation of over 965,000 vs 170,000 digital subscribers in 2019.
trollhattan
@citizen dave:
Good to know it’s accessible. Have become a huge NWSL fan, along with the USWNT and broadcast access is so very important for building fan interest. ATM, Twitch and CBS All Access are the only way to watch NWSL. Uhhhhh…
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Our husk of a local paper costs an eyewatering $1500/year to get the dead tree edition (no paper on Saturday at all) so it’s digital or nuttin’. We hang in there to support local reporting but jury is out if they survive at all.
Depressing.
Anyway
@Denali:
From anecdata FB’s Marketplace section is pretty popular among those that don’t engage with the rest of ZuckBook.
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Yeah, I have seen some similarly bonehead decisions like this.
ETA: Even though it’s been a long time since I worked for the newspapers, it was overall a memorable experience. Lots of very interesting and talented people.
Major Major Major Major
@Annoyed-Aussie:
On accident, which they are undoing
This suggests your actual problem is a company which is too powerful, not a company which uses hyperlinks
I do, but not in every post ever
just complete Lol at the idea that this post is Facebook apologia
Major Major Major Major
@wizened_guy: yeah the problem with the law is that it doesn’t address the problem which is what this post is about!
J R in WV
@Annoyed-Aussie:
Facebook links those information sites to Facebook users — the actual sites are still there, can still be accessed by anyone, everyone, with the actual internet available. Facebook is a distortion of the real internet, not necessary at all for anyone who understands the internet.
There is almost nothing offered by Facebook that can’t be found elsewhere, everywhere on the internet, except perhaps for the white supremacy mostly now located on Facebook. Maybe that doesn’t matter to Annoyed-Aussie, but it does to me.
A-A, you just need to bookmark your governments’ various Covid sites, actual news sites, etc, and delete your Facebook presen… oh, wait, you can’t delete your Facebook information, ever. Oops, they’ve got you forever.
Brachiator
Wow. a warning on top of this story said that because of the Facebook actions, this news story cannot be shared. Highlights, no link
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: actually you can ask Facebook to delete what they know under CCPA!
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
Perhaps a Zuckerberg employee? . . . who knows?
AWOL
@Kent: I worked for a News Corp magazine many decades ago when Murdoch was broke because he had massive debt and was spending about $1M/day in legal fees fighting Robert Maxwell for the rights to Sky-TV.
Maxwell ended up in the ocean for a midnight swim; Murdoch ended up a rich bastard again and started Fox News on the Avenue of the Americas a few short years later.
There’s no moral to this tale. In fact, this tale reflects a not-so-recent belief that too many of our aristocratic fucks are above morals.
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: Well let’s not be silly.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: I suppose that’s possible, but that may not be true at all. I assume new peeps are good people until proven otherwise.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Thanks for this update… I started to sign up for FB when they were just starting up, don’t think I finished the process. Certainly have never actually used it except for links in other sites. Find it actually less helpful/useful than twitter, which I use in the same way, following links into someone’s post.
I used Google more when I first got an Android tablet, still have the gmail account, which I never use/sign into. Don’t use Google for anything but the odd searches, really. Went Amazon for books, better selection and user experience than Google was.
J R in WV
I specialize in silly some days.
Got our power/water back when we got home from Friday’s expedition. Opened the car door, our generator was silent! Hurray!
I will apologize if it turns out to have been that silly. It just felt like a paid advertisement for FB by the time I got to the end of the comment. I have been wrong more than once, of course… Two or three times at least… ;~{)
John S.
@Major Major Major Major:
You’re being extremely charitable if you think Facebook “accidentally” turned off all news, government information and other reputable sources of information while allowing the vacuum to be filled by Qanon, conspiracy nuts and white supremacists peddling nonsense.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/19/misinformation-runs-rampant-as-facebook-says-it-may-take-a-week-before-it-unblocks-some-pages
Carol
I exited Facebook years ago, but when it comes down to a fight between murdoch and facebook, count me in with facebook. Murdoch has done more damage to this country than Zuckenberg has ever thought about doing.
Subsole
@lee: Oh yeah. Know that pain. Best cure I ever knew for the myth of Republican business savvy…though I guess exploiting an utter lack of scruples is a type of savvy. On a short enough timeline. For certain metrics. Maybe.
Viva BrisVegas
I don’t get this. There is already a news service in Australia that is designed to reach rural, elderly news customers, and everybody else for that matter. It’s the ABC. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, founded in 1929 and government funded (very reluctantly in the case of the current government).
I wouldn’t touch Facebook with a 10 foot pole, so maybe I don’t recognise the difficulties involved, but if you can’t get your news from Facebook why not just turn on the ABC? Have people really become so brain dead that they are unable to type “abc” into their browser?
Major Major Major Major
@Viva BrisVegas: In the heads of many (including regulators, as seen here), Facebook is categorized as some weird immutable public utility, and regulated accordingly. The actual problem is that Facebook is treated this way. If the root of your problem is that a company is so powerful that its every action changes the fabric of democracy, but your solution doesn’t address the company’s power, what you have is not a solution. Here, people are adding friction to a voluntary activity and then calling foul when they get less of that activity, it’s dumb.
Subsole
@Annoyed-Aussie: Cheerleading how? I don’t think anyone is cheering either party.
I mean, I would be perfectly content with Zuck and Roop getting beat to death with a rubber hose, on the grounds that pluralistic democracy needs to defend itself from people who are actively trying to kill it. They are both about on the level of Limbaugh, as far as I care.
What most of us are discussing, at least as I read it, is harm mitigation. Granted both parties are bad, how do we chart a course that actually benefits ordinary people? How do we measure an outcome if we have no metric for what constitutes a good one?
I see a lot of that, and not much of what you’re discussing. What jumped out at you, cheerleading-wise?
@Brachiator: It’s the latter.
The one ‘nice’ thing I will say about Trump is that he has potentially taught America more about the church* in 4 years than a marching army of clergy could in 40.
*as an institution, at least
Major Major Major Major
@John S.: These things are really, really hard. Like when Twitter banned all those tens of thousands of QAnon accounts but also took out a bunch of lefty podcasters on accident. Maybe they could have tested it better and chose not to, idk. It does look like they’re being dicks about reinstating things though, which is bad.
Subsole
@Carol: Strongly debatable. I would argue they are about equal, because they are different components of the same mechanism.
I mean, the whackshit conspiracy theories don’t start on Fox, they start online, then get funneled up to Fox. Fox is an amplifier, for the most part.
Which is not to say either is less dangerous or reprehensible, merely differentiated in function. Not result.
Viva BrisVegas
While that is true, Australia lacks the capacity to address the power of Facebook. Only one country has that power. What the Australian government is doing is responding parochially to complaints by its most important constituent, Rupert Murdoch.
What I was musing about, is how we have gotten to the stage in which removing access to news curated by Facebook is seen as the equivalent of removing access to all news.
Are people really that helpless without Facebook? I just don’t know, but if it’s true I suggest we fold up Western Civilisation and wait for something better to come along.
J R in WV
@Viva BrisVegas:
Evidently so! Although here in the US, ABC will get you the American Broadcasting Company, most probably. But I like the down under ABC too; it will be better news coverage than FB, also, too.
Rokka
If you want to get a better understanding of these issues, you should stay away from anti-copyright trolls like Masnick or Doctorow and read sites like thetrichordist.com and the illusionofmore.com.
Anyone that says the internet should be “free and open” is really advocating for endless monopoly control by Google and Facebook.
illusionofmore.com/facebook-blocks-oz-but-why-shouldnt-platforms-pay-for-news/
“What Facebook in particular has done to news—including where it has siphoned off revenue streams—has largely exacerbated the plague of alternate realities now threatening to unravel democratic societies worldwide. More specifically, to the extent that Masnick’s comment represents Facebook’s view, it obscures a much bigger truth: that the major platforms have long been subsidized by the creators of works in nearly every field. That’s corporate welfare”
Major Major Major Major
@Rokka: It’s interesting, when I post here I get called anti-copyright, and when I post the same thing in neoliberal/libertarian spaces I get called a bootlicker for thinking writers should be paid for their work.
There’s a reason I featured Drum’s piece, also too, to avoid getting too much Doctorow stench on things. He’s a very silly polemicist. You can even take out the sentence where I link to Masnick if it will improve your reading experience.
Major Major Major Major
@Viva BrisVegas: Yeah, like, I get how an amorphous, information-based, distributed, nation-scale corporation totally breaks our brains to think about and to live with. This is a really interesting challenge that deserves some interesting solutions, or at least some structural ones. Elizabeth Warren’s pronouncements on this have some significant flaws but at least she’s smart and thinking at the right scale.
(Just some more Facebook apologia from me I’m sure!)
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Viva BrisVegas:
I think the context you’re missing is that the people in these rural communities are losing access to local news – the kind that doesn’t get covered by a national news service like the ABC. So rural people are turning to Facebook to share local news and gossip with each other instead.
At least, that’s my take away from the story Brachiator quoted.
Viva BrisVegas
@Lacuna Synecdoche: ABC Australia has specific regional news services tailored to rural people. Mostly on radio. This link shows the ABC regional radio stations. They also have several rural themed TV shows that even give cattle and grain prices.
Major Major Major Major
@Lacuna Synecdoche: That’s the thing, though. Facebook isn’t their internet service provider or their browser. Nothing is preventing them from accessing these services.
It’s an issue that a handful of corporations are quasi-utilities in our collective imagination, no question! But the Before Times weren’t really that long ago and we still have all the tools we had then. There are even competitors to Facebook that they could use, like Twitter or Google News!
Matt
@Brachiator:
FWIW, ASCAP is also a dumpster-fire of legacy industries shaking down anybody who’s handy: for instance, charging an oil change place for music played on **customer** radios while they wait.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
And yet I am here in the US and the news story I googled came up with a warning plastered on it saying that it could not be shared. I had to use a couple of tricks to get the snippet that I copied.
Rokka
@Major Major Major Major: Stop condescending. This isn’t the first time you have linked to the “always-worthwhile” Mike Masnick. I’m a songwriter and know which side I’m on. Take a look at the lead story on thetrichordist.com about $424,000,000 that was “loaned” to streaming companies.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: If it’s this story, it has a picture of the notification Australian facebook users are getting at the top, but it’s not saying you can’t share this story. I did just plop a boring old hyperlink down here that’ll send people to it, after all. Very easy for me to copy from as well. If you’re having a different experience, then they’re using javascript douchebaggery to make you think Facebook has somehow prevented you from dropping a link to an article in a blog comment, and I recommend upping your browser protections. I use Privacy Badger, Malwarebytes, and uBlock.
Major Major Major Major
@Rokka: Again, I encourage you to read around the offending sentence. I’d love to know what sin I committed–or which of my other posts you take issue with. What opinion do I hold on copyright that you disagree with?
Rokka
Your sin is acting in a condescending manner. I have little confidence that you read all sides on an issue like this. As wizened_guy pointed out in post #86, Masnick is a Google shill.
Major Major Major Major
@Rokka: so you’re not gonna help me out by giving an example of us disagreeing on copyright, you’d rather yell at me for a source I use on non copyright topics. Guess I can’t trust you to do the reading either.
Bill Arnold
People need to separate the loathing and/or hatred of Facebook (and Google, as appropriate) from very reasonable loathing of toxic legislation written in service of a RW press baron (and others). (Also, I will not soon forgive Australia for gifting the US with R. Murdoch. :-) (I mean, at least one person here is unemployed and yet has refused multiple recruiter probes (and an interview) from Facebook though having appropriate skills.)
These are different dimensions, that should not be conflated. Collateral damage needs to be carefully projected and minimized.
Here’s the legislation as it was 17 Feb. Only 58 pages. (I have only skimmed it and looked more carefully at a few problematic areas.) Advance 14-day notification in easily human-understandable form means essentially no AI automation or automated curation, certainly nothing that could do e.g. categorization of new breaking stories.
Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2021 (Date: 17/02/2021)
The search results include all the chatter (some more recent) on this bill
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/summary/summary.w3p;orderBy=date-eFirst;page=1;query=%22media%20and%20digital%20platforms%22;resCount=Default
Annoyed-Aussie
@John S.: Thank you. “By accident” indeed.
And LOL at the idea that I’m a Facebook employee. That doesn’t even make sense.
Rokka
@Major Major Major Major:
Why should I help you when you continue to condescend? It’s bad form for any front pager on any site. Have you ever read the sites that I linked to?
Rokka
The edit feature isn’t working for me
Annoyed-Aussie
@J R in WV: thanks for the condescending reply to someone you literally have never interacted with before.
I don’t have Facebook and, in fact, I do have NSW Health and ABC bookmarked (not for me, so that I can keep informed for my parents who are in Australia. I’m in the US).
I’m worried about people besides myself, who a) aren’t on Twitter, and b) aren’t going to scroll through the daily health dashboard or the ABC live blogs to find salient information. Imagine that – worrying about other people. I thought that was a ‘liberal’ thing to do, but maybe not.
Annoyed-Aussie
@Major Major Major Major: I appreciate the reply. I guess I misinterpreted and thought you were saying Facebook’s actions are justified? If you’re not, I withdraw my comment about cheerleading.
But if you are, then you are going beyond critiquing a law as dumb (which it probably is!) to justifying Facebook’s disproportionate response as OK – a response that I have zero reason to excuse as “accidental”, because why should I? Their whole point is to show the damage they can do: the law isn’t in effect yet, so no one is charging them any money for these links right now.
If that’s your position – sorry, that reads a lot like cheerleading the Big Bad to me.
Gvg
@Another Scott: auto trader wasn’t free. You had to buy a weekly copy. Also pay to sell. It was a classified ad magazine.
Major Major Major Major
@Annoyed-Aussie: it would hardly be the first time somebody bad did something justifiable. To be clear, I’m referring to deciding “ok, we just won’t link to Australian sources” here, not other actions that we apparently get different psychic signals from. I work at a big tech company and can confirm that a lot of people just don’t know what they’re doing! I sincerely believe this is a case of overzealous AI.
Now, should they have been all hands on deck trying to fix it? Is their decision not to be callous and abusive? Yes and yes. But I don’t think anybody woke up and thought “today we shall ‘accidentally’ prevent Facebook users from linking to some government sites and a funeral parlor.” Maybe that feels like hair splitting to you, your mileage may vary.
The actual thesis of this post is that Facebook is bad and so is this law but Facebook’s actions aren’t as apocalyptic as you might think once you know more about the law. I agree that it’s a capital strike—I called it such—but I put it in the same category as when Google did it in Spain, not like, the danger-to-the-free-world bucket.
ETA: broadly speaking, it seems to me that all of our options are bad, but some are worse, and this law would be a step in the wrong direction, for reasons I hope I’ve outlined satisfactorily.
Gvg
@J R in WV: the pandemic is affecting craigslist IMO. I have a lot more hesitation. Anything I would have to go inside to see like a couch gets passed on. I have passed on a bunch of good deals. The number of items for sale in categories is way less than before. Some towns nearby seem to have rebounded more than my own and it matches news reports of where people are ignoring the dangers…
seriously, less than half as many items for sale as before COVID.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: I think that “warning” was a example of what affected FB users in OZ were seeing.
This is the link and it works fine.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Gvg: Now that I think about it, I think you’re right.
But it was still taking money out of the traditional newspapers’ hands.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.