Posted on 02/20/2021 3:46:15 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Facebook's decision to block people from sharing news in Australia has been rebuked by lawmakers around the world, raising the specter of a much wider showdown between the world's biggest social media platform and the governments and news organizations fighting to check its power.
Elected officials and media publishers in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States slammed Facebook's actions on Thursday, suggesting they were anti-competitive and underscored the need for a regulatory crackdown.
"It is one of the most idiotic but also deeply disturbing corporate moves of our lifetimes," Julian Knight, the lawmaker who chairs the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in Britain's parliament, told broadcaster Sky News.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
What is idiotic and disturbing is the idea that media conglomerates will get an oligopoly over the distribution of news by cutting deals with the social media and search platforms.
Bout time
Facebook can’t afford paying Australia’s toll?
They somewhat have this anyway since the platforms and even many of the sheeple users will self-censor according to news sources that are deemed “correct”.
Australia should start RooBook.
Everybody would join, even me.
Would live it if Australia simply banned Facebook in country.
What could Facebook do, complain about freedom of speech?
LOL
Tried to post story about this yesterday on Facebook. Wouldn’t. No error message, just failed to post.
The Australian government said “You can’t post media content without paying the media corporations”.
Facebook replies, “OK, we will disallow sharing any content for which we would be charged”.
Sensible business decision. I often follow a link leading to a news site which demands I disable my ad blocker, or buy a subscription, in order to read it. I always decide that I’m not that interested
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