The Bizarre Reaction To Facebook's Decision To Get Out Of The News Business In Australia

Mon, 1 Mar 2021 08:33:45 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210217/22383446265/bizarre-reaction-to-facebooks-decision-to-get-out-news-business-australia.shtml>

"None of this should have been a surprise. Back in September we wrote about
Facebook publicly saying that if Australia went forward with its ridiculous
attack on the open internet, and instituted a "news link tax" on Facebook and
Google, that it would block news links on Facebook in Australia... and
basically everyone ignored it. So, yesterday, when Facebook announced that it
was no longer allowing news to be shared in Australia (and relatedly, no longer
allowing the sharing of Australian news services on Facebook), it should not
have been a surprise.

And yet... it seemed to make tons of people freak out for all the wrong
reasons. Almost everyone started blaming and attacking Facebook. And, look, I
get it, Facebook is a terrible, terrible company and deserves lots of blame for
lots of bad things that it does. But this ain't it."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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