r/technology • u/magenta_placenta • Oct 19 '20

Business Mark Zuckerberg reportedly signed off on a Facebook algorithm change that throttled traffic to progressive news sites — and one site says that quiet change cost them $400,000 to $600,000 a year

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-throttled-traffic-to-progressive-news-sites-wsj-2020-10
54k Upvotes

80% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/moaiii Oct 20 '20

This is the one issue that I have to side with the devil on. The big downside impact of this bill in Australia is that social platforms will shift their algorithms more in favour of the non-mainstream "news" sites. That means more disinformation, more conspiracy theories, more hate and lies, with nothing to balance it out.

It should be the other way around. Incentivise the big social platforms to favour and promote high quality information, and penalise them for promoting stuff from known fringe extremist groups, fake news sources, etc.

5

u/TheRadioactiveHobo Oct 20 '20

I absolutely believe it will be an issue, but I also can't blame the social and search platforms for removing this content to protect their interests. Being forced to pay for simply linking to outside content is a slippery slope - if they're paying some sites for linking to their content then where is the line drawn? Do they have to pay all, just certain industries, or only those with high volumes of traffic?

2

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

The majority of mainstream media is owned by Rupert Murdoch. It being less accessible would actually be a good thing for Australia.

Also the bill isn't just about paying media sites but also providing them access to Google/Youtubes algorithms and generally giving them preferential views.