Australian officials are pushing back against the totalitarian grip of Big Tech. {Go Deep} As a result of investigations into Google and Facebook the Australian government is set to establish fines against tech companies for anti-trust violations. However, some officials are now discussing taking actions that are beyond civil lawsuits, and are now advocating for arrest of company officers for unlawful conduct. {Go Deep}
The battle lines are being drawn, and in response to the Australian government position on anti-trust Facebook (feeling they are elite and above the law) has now decided to block all news articles from the entire country from their social media platform.
FACEBOOK ANNOUNCEMENT – […] this means people and news organisations in Australia are now restricted from posting news links and sharing or viewing Australian and international news content on Facebook. Globally, posting and sharing news links from Australian publishers is also restricted. To do this, we are using a combination of technologies to restrict news content and we will have processes to review any content that was inadvertently removed. (read more)
The hubris deserves fateful response. I say Congress enact a law that prohibits, makes it a crime, for tech companies to collect and sell data from their platform users, unless they either 1) pay some percentage (10%) of monthly gross revenue collected from the sale to the user, or offer the service to users for a subscriber fee but agree to protect the data from any use by anyone. Violations to include fines proportional to gross revenue, a multiple of payback wrongfully withheld, and prison time for key employees.
Our Congress LOL
Leftwing big tech deserves every penalty and fine they get.
As an Australian my reaction is somewhere between a yawn and wondering why our government gives a fig about the fate of the big media companies in this country. And just how stupid would you have to be to rely on Facebook for news?
As I understand it, this all happened because the government decided that they were going to force Facebook (etc) to pay fees to “news organisations” whenever their users shared news articles. If that’s true, then I don’t really blame FB for doing what they did… not that I really care. “Big Tech” and “Big Media” are just two different faces of corporatism; nobody should be trusting either one to provide truthful content.
After I read up some more on this, it turns out it’s even worse than I thought: Facebook would have to pay “media organisations” for any “news” posts, including posts made by the media organisations. So basically FB is having to pay other people when those people promote themselves on FB’s platform… which is ridiculous.
The only reason people don’t think this is terrible is because it’s Facebook. (Consider: what if CTH links to an Aussie news article, and an Aussie reader views that post…. is Sundance going to be sent a bill? Hopefully not because CTH isn’t “big tech”, but in what world is “it’s ok to do it to them if they’re rich” a good excuse?)
Google had a motto, “Don’t be evil”. The motto was quietly removed in 2018, twelve executives left the company. Google took a wrong turn. It is time to clean up the company.
Actually, I think they just quietly dropped the “don’t”. 😉
Honestly, you don’t need Facebook nor any of the Social Media to browse the Internet.
Just keep an eye on what Goggle does with their search engine.
Oh, do NOT use hotmail, googlemail, or anything like that… they filter the links based on political bias.
Don’t use their search engine either
Although our current congress and President won’t do anything to deter FB, Twitter, YouTube etc I am confident that the complete overstep by liberals will lead to a massive conservative gain in the house in two years and potentially the senate and a conservative in the White House in 2024. If it is Trump or an America First candidate I am confident that not only will FB and Twitter be penalized harshly, monetarily and through regulation but that Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Pichai (Google) will have serious legal punishments imposed.
Dominion? Smartmatic? Illegal amnesty? Everyone needs to demand election integrity for Nov. 3 or we will be a one party country….possibly forever.
As an Australian I am glad that we are standing up to Big Tech. All those reading this blog know of their motives and its clearly obvious that Joebama is their creature, unlike the govt here.
Aussie, I am proud of you Guys as well. Also your recent attitude towards China and the CCP. Working with India to give the middle finger to CHICOMS.
China has immediate aims towards Australia. The Aussies have been very vocal about their resistance to CCP interference in their government. This is the first step of the strategy to isolate Australia so they become and easy pick off for the Chi-coms. First take over the communications industry. Next will be transportation logistics – shipping.
The Chinese use a system of take over sans military developed by Japan. It’s called Keiretsu. It was used in Japan to take over their economy. The tech mega titans use/ used it to take over entire industries. Learn about it and you’ll know where the Chinese were headed.
test, ignore (if possible 🙂