Facebook profited from the decline of Australia's news organisations, but enforcing the News Media Bargaining Code will make a bad situation worse without solving the problem of who will pay for the news.

Try and get past the fact that this is sort-of about Facebook. Because it’s more about the demise of news than it is about Facebook, specifically.

news organisations were never in the news business, Amanda Lotz, a professor of media studies at QUT, said.

"They were in the attention-attraction business.

"In another era, if you were an advertiser, a newspaper was a great place to be.

“But now there are just much better places to be.”

The moment news moved online, and was “unbundled” from classifieds, sports results, movie listings, weather reports, celebrity gossip, and all the other reasons people bought newspapers or watched evening TV bulletins, the news business model was dead.

News by itself was never profitable, Professor Bruns said.

"Then advertising moved somewhere else.

“This was always going to happen via Facebook or other platforms.”

It’s a really fascinating read. We can all agree that independent journalism is valuable in our society, but ultimately, most of us don’t so much seek news out as much as we encounter news as we go about our day.

I’m sure the TL;DR bot is about to entirely miss the nuance of the article. I recommend reading the whole thing.

  • Zagorath
    115·
    4 months ago

    Facebook et al. established and grew their ad businesses by relaying journalists’ work

    Omg I am getting sick of hearing this lie. No, Facebook does not use journalists’ work. The send the newspapers readers. They are adding value to the news orgs by giving them customers. It’s ridiculous to double dip by expecting Facebook to also pay for sending them traffic.

    • CaptObvious@literature.cafe
      92·
      4 months ago

      We both know that’s not how stereotypical FB users work. They read the news on the platform. Full stop. They didn’t pause doomscrolling to go read the same article on the producers’ websites.

      • Zagorath
        4·
        4 months ago

        There is no news on Facebook. There are links to news articles.

          • ZagorathEnglish
            51·
            4 months ago

            Lemmy is actually far worse than Facebook*. We often get AI to summarise the article, or even just post direct links to an archived version of the article that bypasses paywalls and/or stops them getting advertising revenue or viewership metrics.

            As far as people not following, so? That’s not Facebook stealing value from them. It’s people deciding that there’s no value to them in clicking through. Probably in no small part due to a perceived decline in quality of reporting that means the headline is often all people feel the need to read.

            The fact that people see the title and thumbnail and decide not to click through is still not a valid reason to expect Facebook to pay news organisations anything.

            * to be more accurate, the culture that has evolved on Lemmy. The platform itself is no better or worse than Facebook.

            • CaptObvious@literature.cafe
              13·
              4 months ago

              Friend, good editors are trained to write BLUF headlines. That’s just doing their job. So yes, FB still profits from their work and should pay for it.

              • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa
                2·
                4 months ago

                Here’s a case i hope helps, and is illustrative,

                *Think of a newstand, an older style one. Painted dark green, a little kiosk with two stands either side, lets say street side in New York.

                The operator of the newstand sets the papers, magazines, et al, out along the racks. Its general practice to face the most eye-catching part of each out towards the eyes of passers-by.

                A potential customer stops walking and looks along the rack for a minute, looks at the Washington Post sitting there, maybe The Economist, but settles on the New York Times.

                That customer has seen the front page of the Washington Post, maybe even perused The Economist a bit, but they settled on the New York Times.

                In that situation are The Economist, and Washington Post entitled to a share of that newstands revenue from selling the New York Times? Afterall that customer did read the front covers, and then a little more of one of the rejected papers.*

                Facebook and Google, et al act as today’s equivalent of the newstand. The BLUF is no different from any other eye catching material editors/marketers put on their publications/products to generate sales. A marketer is trained to make a sale as enticing as possible, the enticement, in this case the BLUF, is not the product.

                The news business might suck at the moment, but the news media bargaining code is not the solution.

                Round peg, square hole.

                • CaptObvious@literature.cafe
                  1·
                  4 months ago

                  Interesting analogy, but it doesn’t apply. The Economist and Wapo were paid the wholesale rate for their papers whether the vendor sells them, gives them away, lines his birdcage with them, or burns them. Whether he sells them or uses them for decoration is irrelevant. All the Code does is restore that dynamic.