Facebook needs to be ‘brought to heel’ and pay for UK news, the head of Britain’s Digital, Culture and Media Committee has said, as the company’s Australian blackout continues to draw a global backlash.
Um, well, yes, but this isn’t the reason why. And look how well it’s working in Oz.
Yes, the tech giants do behave as if they are bigger than governments and have engaged in effective censorship of voices that dissent from their progressive group-think. They are, indeed villains.
But so is government. So which is worse? There’s only one way to find out…
The company’s move to block all media content in Australia is a staggeringly irresponsible attempt to bully a democracy and will stiffen the resolve of legislators across the world to get tough with the technology giant, Julian Knight said Thursday.
Facebook ‘should face stern legislative action and be brought to heel that way rather than through the softly-softly approach which they said they wanted,’ Mr Knight said.
Um… No. They have been told that they must pay for a service or not use it and have decided that they will go without. You can’t force someone to use a service and pay for it if they don’t want to. They were presented with a choice and they chose “no, thank-you.” Facebook has called the Australian government’s bluff. And this idiot wants to try the same trick here?
This is much like the buggy whip manufacturers insisting on a tax on cars to keep them in business. It will end in tears.
Don’t get me wrong here, I despise the big tech companies because they are a cartel and are abusing that position. I would like to see them get a bloody nose. I’m just not sure that this is the right fight. That said, if it is going to be a fight, may they both lose good and hard. No one is going to come out of this one smelling of roses and there will be blood on the floor before it is done.
Popcorn time, I think.
Spot on Mr LR
Julian Knight, MP (Con) was on C4 News – a know nothing tantrum
Spain (or Germany?) tried this with google a few years ago and google pulled all news links. Politicians never learn, they keep repeating with fantasy belief “It will work this time” eg Socialism, Lockdowns, Green Crap, High Taxes…
News sites have only themselves to blame: click bait, paywalls, ads etc have taught people to not click through
Have a look at source code for eg a DM or Telegraph page: >90% ads, trackers and other crap
That’s why I use pi-hole. It’s such a blessed relief to block adverts at the DNS level. Pages load faster and you save a huge amount in not having to download useless Mb of data. The outfits that spaff their pages with adverts are nothing more than bandwidth thieves.
And oddly enough, they still don’t learn.
What “news” originates from MSM investigations these days?
Especially investigations into things TPTB don’t want investigated.
All they do is regurgitate press releases.
I have a choice to use Facebook. What choice do I have to live without government interference?
We ‘the people’ at least get the choice to fire a government whose conduct we don’t like – our only choice with Big Tech is whether to use their services or not, we can’t fire them just because we don’t like what they’re doing.
“You can’t force someone to use a service and pay for it if they don’t want to.”
Unless you’re the BBC of course.
I do have a Facebook account but I never pay any attention to it. My wife and daughter use messenger, that is the only thing I use.
Seems to me that newspapers et al are largely governed by the policies of social media. Since they can’t espouse anything contentious, or at least considered contentious by SM, they’re just free content providers for said SM.
Seems to me that if people need to buy newspapers, they will have more journalistic freedom. Dependent on people paying for their news of course. I don’t mind paying if it’s actually news, I find of miss reading a quality paper. It’s all line Hello magazine to me at the minute.
Kinda feel like big gov and big tech fighting is better than colluding.
Freedom only survives when the enemies of freedom fight each other….
Which is why a big bag of popcorn is in order. Sit back and watch the blood spill.
“If you want to do [some thing] you have to pay for it”
“OK, I won’t do [some thing]”
“No, that’s not what I meant. You have to pay.”
🙂
Pretty much. They have called the Aus government’s bluff. Much as I hate FB, I would have done the same thing given the ultimatum.