beigegullHow is making Facebook pay for user-posted news links a good idea?
Should every instance this post shows up on pay the WSG for this link? Should there be piracy charges for the use of the archive service?
Art35ianWe tried this in Australia and woke up to every news page in shutdown, including anything that even resembled news - weather pages, Council and government pages, community pages.
It was a shit show and Australia quickly backflipped in 24 hours.
WeirdmusicNo. No they didn't. Facebook tried to extort the Australian government by removing all news content but phuked up and removed emergency warning and community notice boards. Then it was Facebook furiously backtracking and attempting to undo the shitstorm of PR damage they themselves had created.
Are you sure? I remember it as Australia demanding payment on media links, Facebook shutting everything down overnight, then an ‘agreement was reached’ and everything was quickly restored.
I work in digital marketing and had to report the issue to my Board.
You may have missed a few details then (ie; the mad scramble by Facebook to restore emergency and community services pages) and Australia passing legislation (albeit amended) to make social media Giants pay for content. Google also threatened to disable Google searching, but once again, didn't withdraw any of its services. And really, why would they? They make mountains of money in western countries.
If anything, Canada had to pass this law to gain the same foothold as Australia had, and FB+Google kinda endorsed the idea that paying for news will NOT actually harm their bottom line enough to be not-neglible.