[teraflop]

It's even broader than that. The law applies to any "alterations to the ways in which a service distributes content". The law never actually defines what this means, but it gives a bunch of examples that go beyond ranking. For example, anything that affects a particular "class of content", such as deciding whether or not to make all videos auto-play, is an alteration.

Basically, this law would prevent Facebook from deploying just about any non-trivial change to its product without first doing a detailed analysis of how it would affect the Australian news business, in order to determine whether a notification is required.

See sections 52D and 52W of the bill: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...

[yellow_postit]

Thanks for highlighting this. The initial reporting and FB’s own blog posts do not make this clear. Even running experiments at scale could be problematic with the way this is written (interpretation as a non-lawyer).

[908B64B197]

So it's just like GDPR?

Guidelines intentionally kept vague so that some bureaucrat can slap a huge fine and collect the rent?

I wonder if that rent-seeking attitude will accelerate or curb the current brain drain Australia faces.

[donnythecroc]

Google has been busy making major deals with news organisations. Facebook has chosen the opposite track. The problem Facebook has is government in Australia is wildly popular because of the pandemic. They can do what they want right now it won't lose them any votes. Ministers are already telling Facebook to leave the country completely!

[NamTaf]

I would not call the federal government “wildly popular”. Most people are (rightly, IMO) laying our pandemic success at the feet of state politicians and realising that the federal level had been ineffective at best.

[Wolfenstein98k]

Fellow Aussie here - this is simply incorrect.

Australia does have competitive federalism, and so many of the localised decisions have been from the states, but the major decisions for seeding - closing borders, acquiring vaccines, etc, along with fiscal backstopping - are federal.

The federal government (under ScoMo) has never polled so well as it has during covid, and for good reason.

(NB: I am no blind Coalition supporter, but they have made decisions which are very popular, and no amount of directing attention to the states would absolve them from blame if we had a situation more like Europe or the US.)

[NicoJuicy]

But Australia is an island. It's much easier to be effective against covid.

Not really sure why the politicians get the slack. Which measurement was highly effective that could also be done in a country with neighbors.

Ps. I'm not pro Facebook. Just curious

[pasttense01]

The United States has land borders with two countries: Canada and Mexico. However these are NOT considered to be major sources of Covid infection in the U.S.--instead it has been China and Europe. The U.S. could have set up controls eliminating people movement by air as easily as Australia did--but it failed to do so.

[elyobo]

> Which measurement was highly effective that could also be done in a country with neighbors.

... All of them? I'm not sure why so many people seem to think water is required to make a border effective.

[Wolfenstein98k]

I agree, we are extremely lucky to be an island with hard borders. Most countries that have been very successful are hard islands.

But politics responds much more to outcomes than causes

[elyobo]

Facebook and Google have not taken opposite tracks; Google hasn't made deals to pay for linking, a major problem with the legislation. Google's deals are around news content, but FB lacks comparable products to negotiate deals around, leaving them with only a refusal to pay for linking.

[chris_wot]

Yup, and given that we have largely managed the pandemic extremely well as a society with a competent government that has a publicly funded health care system, I think it's unlikely that Facebook preventing us from reading the news via Facebook is much of a concern.

We were a large consumer of news before Facebook. We will be a large consumer of news after Facebook.

[nl]

That is nothing like the GDPR.

[SgtBastard]

That’s not a fair characterisation of GDPR, nor one borne about by examples.

And 2020 put pause to any Australian brain drain and given how well we’ve handled the pandemic, is likely to be seen significant increases in net migration.