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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TiredPG" data-source="post: 67560" data-attributes="member: 9578">I think this is especially important in the context of Facebook. A vast majority of media/news publishers were encouraged, and even payed, by Facebook to begin producing quick, shareable video content as that was what was effective on their platform. Then Facebook changed their algorithm to take users' feeds away from videos and towards even more hyper-personalised feeds - that is immense power. Clegg argues that a tiny proportion of Facebook's revenue comes from news, but the vast majority of Facebook users use it for news. I think Facebook may have overplayed their hand here, and Australia just happened to blink first/be the weaker party. If those users are using Facebook for news and are at the same generating ad revenue for Facebook via other interactions, I think profit sharing is a not unimportant conversation to have. Twitter just announced they're looking at some sort of subscription-type/Patreon model for users which could arguably deal with this type of legislation quite easily - I follow loads of journalists on Twitter, would happily pay for some of their content as it would be built in the platform itself.I think that the Australian requirement of notification of algorithmic changes is in response to situations such as that, which obviously affect small media publishers more so than big conglomerates. That is another conversation though, and one I think that Australia fails. You're right that 'significant contribution' could create problems down the line, which I think will negatively affect smaller publishers - why should a company have to make a small deal with a small publisher when it has already made a 'significant contribution' worth billions to the state's publishing industry? The whole point of this law was to protect the industry as a whole and all it really does now is create opportunity for large publishers.The US Supreme Court recently noted that social media is essentially 'the modern public square', which obviously hints at how they may deal with free speech claims against private actors in the future. There was a case in the 1980s where they held that a private shopping mall was a public forum, under California's constitution, in order for the plaintiff-activists to distribute leaflets. As a modern public square, to me, they're more akin to utility providers - they are necessary for democracy and life (especially at the minute) - and should be regulated as such. The Online Harms Bill duty of care goes some way towards that but we'll see how that plays out.</blockquote>

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