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The dangerous first step towards the end of the World Wide Web as we know it – politicalbetting.com
The dangerous first step towards the end of the World Wide Web as we know it – politicalbetting.com
So one day, when this terrible virus is finally under some semblance of control, we will be able to go back to the pub. We will be able to do something that we have been unable to do for far too long – socialise face to face with our friends. Hopefully we will be able to resurrect the Political Betting pub nights and prove to each other we really are human after all and not the product of some social media bot factory in Chernogolovka. We will laugh, joke, catch up on all the personal news and gossip about what is happening in the world – informed of course by what is being reported in the newspapers both hard copy and, increasingly, online.
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Let's be clear about this. It has nothing to do with freedom. It has everything to do with profit. The more Facebook can invade your privacy, the more it can manipulate what you see, when you see it, and what you can be coerced into buying. Facebook and Google are duopolies controlling around 65% of your access to the news and where a monopoly exists you can be certain that there your freedom and right to access any news you like ... ends.
As I say, a bizarre article. Richard has pinned his ultra-libertarian ideals to the wrong mast.
If anybody wants to access any news source on the internet why on earth does Facebook need to be involved?
Various people talking about damage to democracy - if anybody wants to access any news whatsoever why do they need to have anything to do with Facebook?
As for sharing links - if I see an article on a website which I want to tell a friend about, why not just send them an email or text?
It seems to me that people are getting brainwashed regarding the power of Facebook when there is no need whatsoever to use their services.
It's a complete farce - it is a completely optional leisure activity whereby people have fun sharing stories etc with their friends.
There's nothing essential about it. Nobody needs to spend a single penny on it if they don't like the way it operates.
There are numerous other ways to spend your leisure time.
If Facebook says they have no interest in selling news (if links are deemed to come within the definition of a sale) then how can anyone make them sell news?
Nobody would dream of introducing a law to force Tesco to sell cars or Marks & Spencer to sell holidays (though they obviously can if they wish) - so how on earth can Facebook be forced to sell news?
The whole thing seems completely baffling.
If the response is that they are so powerful that they must be regulated in this way, surely the answer is that by removing all news links they'll be a lot less powerful so the problem goes away.
Top 10 UK news sources (per OFCOM).
1. BBC1
2. ITV
3. Facebook
4. Sky News (TV)
5. BBC website
6. BBC News Channel
7. Channel 4
8. Daily Mail
9. Twitter
10. Google
Link- see 19/115
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/201316/news-consumption-2020-report.pdf
An excellent stone to throw into the pool at this time, Richard.
An issue that goes back down to very old and fundamental questions of principle wrt the Net. Who owns it? And who has a right tocontrol it?
One bit of evidence still above the surface is ... why is it the site not called politicalbetting.co.uk ?
If it is like my old site used to be, it is a combination of .com being the de facto world domain, and the USA being about the only place in the world where the belief in free expression is a dogma which is above the principle of tactical Government control, and no one trusts other Governments - including the UK and Australia - not to try and control it for any number of reasons.
Another one is ... why was it even *possible* for Boris Johnson's website for his Mayoral Campaign for London Mayor to be taken down by mistake as collateral damage when a totally different website was in dispute with a lawyer about a publication.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/sep/21/digitalmedia.politicsandthemedia
This is why much of the political blogosphere in this, and other countries, is still built on infrastructure which is indexed from outside the country.
There are other fundamental arguments above that, including "does a link constitute republication" and "is a link text a copyright violation".
Then @Mysticrose's explosion is layered on top of that, based on assertions about a company using the resources of the net to encourage customers into an environment upon which they become dependent, whether it is appropriate for a government to claim to control *that*, and whether such an environment-provider can decide to repattern the service it provides unilaterally.
Does Facebook owe Australian users of its service a right to control that service? Does the Australian Government have a right to interfere in the way it has?
Time to check up on the Australian Law.
But play nicely, folks, to make this educational as well as hammer and tongs.
Since we are in a period of encouraging new header writers, let's have a header arguing the other side from @Mysticrose .
The web's "social media" downside is that it gives too much leverage to individuals, although instilling scepticism from an early age would help.
As so often in politics, it’s the wrong thing being done for the right reasons.
https://twitter.com/HeatherWhaley/status/1362509199012421632
So if Facebook's argument is that it has the right to offer plagiarised content that has been lifted from elsewhere and hosted on its own site, then surely the Aussie government is right? Facebook should allow people to *link* to news hosted elsewhere but not steal it for its own platform. Surely...
After all, why bother with the tedious business of searching the SMH less than user friendly page when CNN, BBC and about 1200 other news outlets will be more readily available through Google?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56107028
Having listened to the speech live I still can't tell you what he said as he didn't say much and what he did say was so bland and tedious as to make you zone out. Reading some of the reportage he was pro-business partnerships and anti-poverty - all good things but missing the so what factor.
Politics is sales, and sadly for Labour they have no idea what punters actually want, hence being Here to Here and agreeing with the government about the pressing need to cut funding for school breakfast clubs. Starmer is Milliband - nice but crap, someone who means well, probably genuinely wants to do good, but is so "other" that people won't listen or care what he says.
I would argue Labour should try again with a new leader but like the Tories I struggle to see who they replace their crap leader with.
After all, their entire business model is effectively the sharing of links.
Just as @Scott_xP seems to have it as his mission in life to share all those links with us...
It is - of course - entirely possible for websites to prevent any deep linking at all. One might be required to go via the homepage, and when you wanted to get the page on the latest juicy scandal, that could take the form of POST request which could not simply be copied and shared.
This case is very simple.
There is a law in Australia which says that if you link to a news story, then you have to make a small payment.
This means Facebook has two choices: (1) make the payment, (2) don't allow links to Australian news articles. They have chosen option (2).
This is *completely* different from your point about whether they invade privacy or behave badly.
Facebook has chosen not to allow links. Which is the other perfectly permissible option they have.
Which is insane. A link should be a free advert for a site. Not something to charge. If sites aren't making money from all these free adverts to themselves then they need to sort their own business model out, not demand payment from every link.
Facebook are entirely in the right here.
Certainly a number of posters say they get the majority of their news just by reading this site. Now that activity is not going to make much difference to the potential income of any news organisation, but laws such as the Australian one could potentially shut this site down.
Many of Facebook’s billions of users get most of their news there. It’s a hard problem for news organisations, which increasingly will get all of their revenue from online. Richard is right to say that this law is the wrong solution, though, and understanding that as a ‘defence’ of Facebook is misguided.
A link tax was nuts when the EU proposed it (did that go through?). Seems crackers.
That the Labour party marching over to the right is actually the less electorally sound position starts to have to be accepted even if you would prefer a different reality.
I don't plan to be here debating all day so firstly don't worry about reading lots of posts from me everyone can chime in and tell me I'm wrong because everyone only voted Labour then because of Brexit (and then all forgot to tell pollsters that is why they voted Labour https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/07/11/why-people-voted-labour-or-conservative-2017-gener)
I realise that for a lot of people here that conveniently the right leader of the Labour party is one they prefer politically (guilty here also) but if the facts (with recent elections being the best facts we have in this regard) point to a left wing Labour doing better electorally than a right wing Labour then surely it would be crazy for Labour not to go for a left wing leader if Starmer fails.
I mean are Labour there to try and win votes or to please the commentariat and right wing people on PB?
Also, this somewhat ties in with right wing Labour...
https://twitter.com/Muqadaam/status/1362390826928787456
Yesterday was the 2 year birthday!
They are kind of like UKIP in that their huge vote tallies pushed their former party towards them, I mean you can hold onto ideology but you can't find that kind of popularity.
Edit: In reference to the twitter response to Starmer's speech it was quite amusing...
The positive quote tweets to his speech consisted almost completely of people actually employed by the Labour party or the fabians. I counted 3 that weren't and one of those was Tom Watson, one of the others was mildly critical and positive.
There was one positive quote tweet from someone not paid and not Tom Watson!
The question is, can he make that into a widely appealing policy offering? So far, he seems to have struggled.
Amazingly, wiser heads prevailed.
This is not the right solution, but it indicative of the increasing tensions between governments, traditional media and social media.
Governments see social media as unaccountable behemoths, spending disinformation and polarisation among society while not paying taxes.
Traditional media has been slowly dying for a while, with huge numbers of redundancies especially at local publications and in smaller countries. They also have the ear of governments.
Social media have been laughing all the way to the bank for years, without a thought as to their negative externalities of their business to society. Australians see Facebook as a massive oil tanker polluting their coastline.
We will be seeing a lot more attempts by government to rein in social media companies in the coming months and years, especially as we see them responsible for spreading more disinformation, and they think of themselves as above regulation by any single state.
Facebook may be - in aggregate - bad for the world. But it doesn't mean they aren't right in this particular case.
The law is stupid and the only thing of interest was Google's rapid change of viewpoint (from removing all links to paying) after Microsoft decided it was worth paying Murdoch to try and purchase some users for Bing.
Many thanks to OGH for putting up my thoughts on this. I said when I sent it over that I thought it probably wouldn't be a popular position but hoped it would stimulate debate.
Just before I went to bed I had a count up of the number (including repeats of the same link) on the previous thread. There were something in excess of 50. And that was not a particularly heavy link thread compared to others. Debate on here cannot really survive without links to media articles. It is a basic demand of proof in many cases, not least because of course context is all and simply making a claim without showing context is open to massive misinterpretation (at best) and abuse (at worst). A link tax would kill that. What is happening in Australia, if allowed to spread, will kill that.
I think this matters far more than people realise - and certainly far more than Facebook or even Google.
Spanish news websites lost 20% of their audience and that lose was felt more by smaller sites without the name recognition that results in people going there directly.
https://twitter.com/natematias/status/1362195616730914820
The alternative is a long slippery slope into authoritarianism, where saying that women have children is a crime that costs you your job.
Turned out it was anti-poverty. A much more sensible campaign.
This is a very dangerous idea. Simply linking to a site should never be charged. If it was a charge for copying and pasting that would be fair enough but that's not the case.
Starmer has said lots of left wing stuff in the past, abolishing the monarchy for example a long time ago but his actions since becoming Labour leader have all been towards the right of the party. I mean Tony Blair was some kind of far left when he was younger as well but the better guide to how he would govern was his time as Labour leader (and then to the right of that)
You can make a good argument for Starmer being somewhere in the middle of the party before his election as Labour leader, it is why many Corbyn supporters voted for him and some even more than just voted for him. If Starmer were to fight for reelection as Labour leader (he should be okay, checks only needed with left wing leaders) it seem very likely that he would either be the candidate for right wing members of the Labour party (unless trumped by another from the Labour right) rather than the candidate for the left.
Prior to becoming Labour leader he mostly had just words, now he has actions and for me someone's actions are a much better window to their true beliefs than their words.
I don't have a problem with lawyers* (if anything I guess this is a compliment to their skill) but especially in such a profession almost anybody competent should be able to weave together something word wise that is completely removed from their beliefs but convincing.
*lawyers/solicitors or whatever else you law nerds call yourselves!
@rcs1000 Heidi was the one for me!
Local papers were actually killed off not by social media but by Craigslist and similar sites which destroyed their profit base that was local classified advertising. Around the same time Jobsites destroyed the equally profitable job advert market and Rightmove slow destroyed estate agent advertising.
That gave people less reasons to buy the local paper (hence reducing a second income source) which resulted in less reporting so even less reason to purchase the paper.
Social media still drives people to news sources - without links from other sites no one would visit them in the first place (as Google demonstrated back in 2014).
And there is a way of fixing it but that requires subscription services and a standardised pay to view page solution.
What Starmer is trying to do is get Labour back to government so they can at least do some left wing things, even if they can’t do the lot.
He has calculated the way to do that is to tack towards the centre on some things to peel off soft Tory voters.
Can he do it? So far, so underwhelming. But at least he is trying.
Thanks Jezziah! 👍
Facebook provides the news of what your friends are doing - Facebook doesnt control what Facebook's users post.
I suspect Facebook can live without Australian news and will accept a lot of grieve because the other option is losing complete control over it's business model.
It was a stunningly bad performance by Labour from every metric. It just should not have happened.
Rightmove is one of the most annoying website business models - basically the estate agents got together to protect their oligopoly, and did it early enough to entrench themselves online. There's a huge market for disruption there, cutting out that expensive middleman with a basic advertising and conveyancing service.
For us, not the left.
Facebook will continue their block as removing it destroys their advertising business model.
It was a very bad result for anyone who wants proper two party democracy. In fact, just about the worst imaginable.
And in my eyes the country, but that's just my opinion.
And in my opinion for those who want proper two party democracy since it should have provided a wake up call to the left rather than them wanting a "one more heave" approach.
One thing that I notice about most news websites is that they understand the power of links and they minimise outbound links.
So, if you have a Guardian article about any ONS statistics you will very rarely, if ever, see a link to the statistical release on the ONS website. They know that they don't want to boost the ONS in the search rankings by linking to them.
This demonstrates how important inbound links are. Why would you want to charge for them?
I take pedantic umbrage with Tim Berners-Lee being "credited" with inventing the Web. He did invent the Web.
I said the word Labour leader in there repeatedly, Corbyn was Labour leader wasn't he?
I don't actually understand the point of deliberately misunderstanding what I wrote, it seems very unlikely you missed the phrase Labour leader as I said Labour leader 4 times!!
Now you could argue that Starmer in the future will swing to the left if elected, you could equally argue that Starmer will swing to the right in future if elected, you can make the argument about anyone doing any number of things in the future. If I join the communist party in the future I will become a communist, but that doesn't make me one now.
Starmer is representing the right of the party, if there was an election now for Labour leader he would either be the choice of the right, or somebody else would, he wouldn't be the choice of the left of Labour. Pretty much because his actions since becoming leader have been to the right.
Starmer's reasoning for representing the right of the party don't really affect his place in the party. Blair was clearly from Labour's right, whatever motive you gave to his time in office wouldn't change his position within the party he'd still be Labour right.
And the trying to get Labour back into government bit is also suspect, looks more like the right of the party taking revenge now they have the leadership back.
Possibly one more teachable moment in 2024 then it can sink in? Happy for them to get as many lessons as they need.
So Corbyn did not do anything left wing. Other than lose two elections, which is fairly standard for the left wing in this country (cf 1983, 1987, 1959...)
So there's less sharing of personal photos/news and more sharing of memes and news articles.
The former is more valuable to facebook than the latter.
Seems many hate Facebook more than Murdoch now. Two minute hate has moved on.
"If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
Sadly further research this morning has shown that in fact the EU Parliament has passed the Copyright Directive including the 'link tax' and 'meme ban'. It will effectively come into force in the EU in June 2021.
https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/32552/what-is-article-13-and-article-11
Up early for the ludicrous 2-hour delivery "window" so, rather than starting the proper job,......
Excellent piece @Richard_Tyndall and all too symptomatic of the attack not so much on democracy per se but what makes democracy effective and that's plurality.
There's two sides to this - first, creating a climate in which all opinions can be freely and fairly expressed. It's called Freedom of Speech and while this liberal authoritarian chafes at some of the pernicious nonsense he is forced to endure on this site, I wouldn't have it any other way. Democracy and the process thrives on serious lively debate between opposing viewpoints - it has done since Athens and does so still.
The other aspect is not the freedom of speech but the fairness of speech. It's all very well saying people have Freedom of Speech but the Internet doesn't just provide that. It allows for individual or sectional viewpoints to be expressed ad infinitum and usually ad nauseam. The echo chambers exist usually because opposing views are chased out by the volume of posts from those on the other side.
I often remind new posters on here their first post is usually their best and the quality of posts in inversely proportional to their frequency - by the time you are at your 40,000th post there aren't many surprises left.
The echo chambers also exist because many people feel comfortable only reading views that accord with their own. All the legislation in the world can't force the minority view on the majority if the majority doesn't want to see it or hear it.
That's the tough thing with plurality - so many only want to hear confirmation or affirmation. They don't want to be challenged or to argue.
This leads to compartmentalisation of opinion - we are seeing it in the news market where the BBC is under constant attack primarily by those who want only their version of the truth to be broadcast. Before, they had no option but give a man (or woman) enough money and they'll change the way you think so we're going to have GB News which I suspect won't always be friendly to Labour.
Money talks, minds follow you might say.
The W3 org has this to say though:
"Some commentators suggest that Robert co-invented the WWW. To set this straight, he did not invent it. It wasn't his idea."
One hopes (but does not necessarily expect) the UK to avoid this sort of lunacy.
This is, obviously, deluded. But it doesn't stop people thinking like that.
Myanmar coup: Woman shot during anti-coup protests dies
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-56122369
A nasty situation is set to get much nastier.
Have a good morning.
Equally to blame is Microsoft who decided to pay Murdoch money in an attempt (as I stated earlier) to buy some customers for it's Bing search engine.
Emotive language around "govt wants to control X" and "media to spread their gossip" is a bit of a warning flag for me that the author is not considering both sides of the issue.
As for the expensive middleman approach - Purplebricks and various others all offer far cheaper solutions but that is a market which is very much all or nothing (scale to 1000+ properties quickly or die). And most attempts have died.
One thing that I've found surprising is that high street estate agents still exist as you would expect them to have tried to move to cheaper locations binning that shopfront. It turns out that the shopfront is needed to convince sellers to list with you...
The last conversation I had regarding Facebook is that their biggest problem is still far too much content (posts) from friends compared to the time people spend on the site reading posts.
but then with the people I follow it's either 100% posts or 100% memes and little in between.
But "won't always be friendly to Labour"? Did you phrase that right?
No news source should always be friendly to a party, if it is it's not a news site but a partisan hack source (eg The Canary when Corbyn was PM).
On TV at the moment there's definitely left leaning "news" (Channel 4) already. Even without getting into an argument about the BBC.
There's only one divide: electable and
bat-shit crazyunelectable.There were plenty of early signs that Ed Miliband was unelectable.
There was a wilful mass misreading that Corbyn was electable. He was never going to craft a coalition of voters to give him power. He was the unelectable candidate. Hence the sense-check of the 80 seat Tory majority in 2019.
There are plenty of early signs that SKS is unelectable. Yesterday's "bigger than Ben Hur" policy dud being another such sign.
I can understand the howls of anguish from Labour's left that "not enough was done by the Blair government" because its clearly true. However, the reality check has to be that you can't win an election by promising to go much further as the votes aren't there. Unless you are elected into office you can't actually do anything, regardless f how righteous you may believe your cause to be.
Whether Starmer is left or right is a distraction from the real question of "is he any good". I'm not sure the Labour Party is leadable at the moment, anyone would struggle in the job. Keith though seems to be missing any real political antennae, and that ultimately is why he will fail.
Also, why Chernogolovka? I'm Vladivostok.
Capitalism meets Democracy - news is a commodity just like baked beans. Those who "own" it wat to charge those who don't own it. If you don't want to pay for it, you don't hear it.
I'm a capitalist but I'm profoundly uncomfortable with that.
I think he's strong enough to try and have his cake and eat it. He wants the links and he wants the moolah.
Hence the anger at Facebook's decision to not supply either.
Is there some logical consistency in here or are we going to circle back around at some point because I can't find any logical point in here whatsoever.
So you started by disagreeing we me and saying Starmer is actually a left Labour leader.
I countered by pointing out all his actions since becoming Labour leader show him to be on the right of the party and if he was voted Labour leader today it would be votes from the Labour right with the Labour left voting somebody else.
You then claimed my metric actually showed Corbyn was really right wing because he didn't become prime minister.
I then pointed out that my metric was on their time as Labour leader as I had mentioned Labour leader in my post multiple times.
Now you have said LOTO can not to anything so Corbyn did not do anything left wing.
So why did you say 'Starmer *is* a left wing Labour leader. Very left wing, in fact.' but now say 'My point was that the only thing the LotO can do is talk. They cannot do anything.
So Corbyn did not do anything left wing. '
Either we can ascribe a political position to LOTO who hasn't been prime minister or not.
You seem to want to have your cake and eat it here by both describing Starmer as left wing when his highest political office is LOTO but claim Corbyn cannot be described as left wing when his highest political office is LOTO.
In fact using your metric from this quote (you claim its mine but it never appeared in any of my posts)
'Corbyn *said* lots of left wing stuff, but he didn’t *do* anything left wing in government for the very simple reason he never got there. So judged by your metric he is in fact quite right wing.'
Going by the metric you use above Starmer is actually quite right wing.
But what the hell is your point really, you argued with me that Starmer was actually on the left of the party and when I pointed out his actions since becoming leader and his support base make him part of the right of Labour you claimed Corbyn was actually right wing.... I mean If your point is Corbyn is bad and Starmer is good knock yourself out but just say that rather than making up some rubbish...