Google and Facebook

If you haven’t heard or read about it… The Australian government is proposing to introduce legislation that would compel social media companies like Google and Facebook to pay the original producers of news content when they (Google & Facebook) place it on their platform.  The news producers claim the big social media companies are generating advertising revenue from their (the news producers) content and they (news producers) receive nothing. 

The Australian government’s approach has been to tell Google and Facebook to reach a commercial agreement with the news providers or they (the government) would enact legislation setting an amount Google and Facebook would pay. 

Both Google and Facebook argued against the proposal but in the past few days Google has started reaching financial agreements with the news companies.  Facebook has taken an entirely different approached and yesterday blocked all Australian News outlets pages on their platform.  Along the way they also managed to block a number of government pages, charities, etc. 

This is my analogy

1.  I have a large and popular noticeboard.   I go to other people’s noticeboards and copy information from their board placing it on my own which makes my board even more popular and generates more revenue for me.  I don’t pay others for this information I take.  This is the Google model.

2.  I have a large and popular noticeboard.  I allow others to place notices on my board.  I don’t charge a fee for them placing their information on my board.  However their information assists me in generating more reveue.  This is the Facebook model.

I think Zuckerberg has a case!  Google takes information from news companies without paying.  However the news companies give the information to Facebook and Facebook doesn’t charge them.  If the news companies don’t like their information being on Facebook then they should unsubscribe their pages.

My point has just been confirmed by the ABC (Aust equivalent of BBC).  When you go to their news page <here> there is now a large banner across the bottom of the page which states.

Missing our news on Facebook?

Get the latest news and live notifications with the ABC News app – be alerted to must-watch news events, follow topics of interest, and save articles for later.

Whilst I was in the ‘man cave’ this morning a courier delivered a package address to Jan .  Jan realised it was for me.

It’s the en-suite enclosure I managed to buy at a very discounted price.

This one!

My initial thoughts are it should be mounted on the front of the trailer roof rack on a 180° swivel arm.  Next step is to come up with a method that will achieve this.

Meantime it’s back to working on Jacques Cousteau’s house.