Posted 19 February 2021
It hard for me to imagine that the day would ever arise when I would find myself defending Facebook.
This gigantic, mercenary, predatory commercial business, that has destroyed a number of my own online businesses.
But I cannot endure any longer the tirade of misinformation that spews from the mouth of the Australian parliamentary members, from the private sector Australian corporation media industries generally and even from selected journalists within the ABC.
Now, I’m not privy to the discussion between the Australian government and Facebook as to exactly what the Australian government wants from Facebook in the way of money and on what gound they demamd it. After all they are our government - so public transparency is not required- Correct!.
AlI I know is that they want Facebook to pay money to some of their political sponsors who run corporate businesses in Australia.
These are the facts as best I know them.
Facebook is a commercial company; it runs a commercial website; its a corporate in the USA. Their business model is, it provides free single Webpages on thier site to everybody who wants one, in the whole fucking world.
You can have a webpage (most people think of it as thier own website) on Facebook at no cost for the page and no annual fee for the hosting of it. - Without Facebook that would cost you a minimum of $50 annually PLUS of course you would need to have at least five active brain cells.
Currently there are about 2.8 billion users (individualy allocated webpages) worldwide that have taken up that offer and some of that 2.8 billion users are
Australian: -
- Businesses.
- Governments of sorts,
- Regulatory authorities,
- Health & Education facilities, and
- Community organisations
to name but a few
So let’s think for one minute how could the Facebook business models survive for more than 25 minutes, if you are not charging any of that 2.8 billion users anything to actually use disk space on your website and you are paying out money to have this happen?
Well their secret is...!
Actually it's not a secret. They make $billions out of selling advertising space on those 2.8 billion webpages to businesses that want to sell their products to the 2.8 billion user network that are on Facebook and using their webpages to undertake their social, business and community online information sharing activities.
I mean, I don’t know where some of you people live that you don’t understand this system.
Apparently you obviously haven’t ever gone to a Mardi Gras with a bunch of raffle tickets to sell to people. It so easy to sell when you have a huge bundle of people exposed to your offer.
Now the 19th and 20th century businesses, that largly had a monopoly on the discemintion system [Like facebbok has now] for information are finding out that they failed to understand and act on the consequences of the coming electronic information exchange age, early enough and to move into this new field of dealing with information.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that amongst the richest business people in the world today are all people who were smart enough and entrepreneurial enough to move into the information technology age, when it was beginning - while the corporate newspapers board members where snoozing, huddled up in their doonas, in corners of their cosy empires.
And what did the newspapers do when they finally moved into the digital age? - Well, they stayed with the old format of still charging people to have access to the place where they make their most money - the selling of advertising space.
By the yime they realized that you can deseminate to 2.8 billion webpages almost instantly for the cost of a an over sea's holiday (rather that the cost of huge metallic printing press) onto their phones -the game was over - New winners had arrived.
I think that when the printing press orignally came into operation the Town Crier should have went and spoke to the King and said “Hey Kingie why don’t you get down there, in the town square, and get them bastards that are passing out information on scraps of paper to the all the people and tell them barstards to start paying me, to just to stand here 1 hour a day yelling at them verbally".
And as for Google, which is even less scrupulous than Facebook, as it won the battle of introducing the planet to a system for finding information on the now 1.6 billion websites, which by the way, has not been filtered by the bias and prejudices of the old media barons through their editors in chief the game was also over. Google is how most people find things on line. -"Nobody come to the Father except the Son"
But of course, Google would come to the party with the Australian government, because like the Americans, British, Germans and Russians, in 1939 whose moral ethics allways are - “We’ll choose our friends based on how it helps conquer our enemy".
And I’ll tell you, how hypocritical the current Australian government is, being made up of the champions of private enterprise , they are now telling a private sector business organisation how to run their business and castigating them for having the audacity to say ‘I’ll decide who’ll come to my site and the manner in which they come’- Sound like a familiar chant - doesn’t it Uncle John!
So I have a suggestion for the Federal government
If you really want to get some money for the journalism industry why don’t you charge a connection tax on everybody that connects to Facebook. Say 10 a year tax? [Like the radio licences in 1950] and called it - 'The Oz Gov Special Help Your Mates Tax'.
You know, like you recently did to the companies overseas that were selling things to Australians online from overseas and you made them collect GST off any Australian doing business with them - even if for things they were purchasing that weren’t going to be used in this country.
That’s will give you $160 million annually to put towards' good quality journalism' – No!, no!, not to give to some of your crony mates to try and promote your success in the next election.
Be genuine with this and give it to all those hard-working journalist out there, particularly the ones in the Daily Telegraph, in appreciation of their efforts over the years to fight with the sub editors about printing credible material.
I posted the below article on my Facebook page on Thursday 18 February @3"25pm it contains commentary on a news article published by the Daily Telegraph the day Facebook decided to managet their business site in the way they wanted and stopped providing posting facilities to some of thier FREE webpages.
Today I read headlines of two articles on the Daily Telegraph they were:
- "An assault on Australia and freedom': Facebook lashed out"
- "Outrage as 'power hungry' Facebook bans children's cancer charity" Telling me - "Facebook's "outrageous" abuse of power is harming Australians' ability access critical medical information says Health Minister Greg Hunt".
AND
Now by reading this article on Facebook you'll see two facts
1.- Is that Facebook is not denying any of your freedom to use its platform to communicate with people; and
2.- Is not denying the Daily Telegraph from having its website content discussed on Facebook
What I can't do now however is put a link in this post to that article - like I used to do before Facebook close down that option.
But I want to ask you, is that a good or a bad thing for the Daily Telegraph, that I can't now link you on my news feed post to their website to read the article for yourself?
So! what is all the hoo haa about?
Well you see a hell of a lot of people in Australia (as elsewhere) spread gossip around their communities by using Facebook platform and up until now that's included links in their post, to articles or material from news businesses websites.
Because million of Australians use Facebook just like millions used to read 'the paper', it's a great place for businesses who want to get your attention to buy their products, to advertisments in - and now Facebook is taking/taken this advertising money away from other news and entertainment media businesses.
Further, to read a newspaper (on paper) you needed to purchase it and that was how we got our news, 20 odd years ago. But now thanks to technology we don't need paper and in many cases, don't need to even buy the news - it (used to) comes free.
You may have noticed recently that most newspapers have now finally put up a firewall so that you can't read their content without paying a subscription and that's absolutely fair - if that thier business model. But what you need to know is that they're still going broke because the days of the only newspapers model are numbered - no matter how much a diminishing portion of our community might refuse to accept that.
And why is the federal government taking action against the technology companies?
Well because they have become super rich while the old news businesses are rapdliy going broke and business owns the political parties that resource the vast majority of politicians, SO these business have flexed thier muscle and used its purchased government clout, to step in, like the mafia, and demand protection money from these very wealthy new technology businesses.
But Facebook is not targeting you, the social user, in fact you are the source of their income they make lots of money out of you using their platform to communicate with your friends and you see, unfortunately for the old news businesses that used to live very high on the hock because of their advertising income and the ability to have a monopoly on the method of spread of news, they are now fighting in their death throes to try and stay viable for a few more years.
I suspect that the five people who receive my post are unlikely to re-post this because it's not a the popular mantra that is currently being feverishly promoted by politicians (the recipients of big business funding) and corporate news outlets (who have a vested interest in the outcome).
.Paul Fletcher the Minister for Communications made this statement on a Daily Telegraph web site video
[Ref]
"....Google and facebook are important part of the echo system in Australia...."
Yep that right, the 'echo system'. Band new type of IT inovation - straight from the Minister in Charge of Communictions.
Contact Paul if you want to know more about his "echo system".
Oh! Fuck!!! - Now I've have done it. - I put a "video link" to a Corporate News website. Shit! under the new legislation I have to pay the Daily Telegraph some money - Better get in contact then, see how much they want for me to raise thier profile.
Bloody Hell! only got $28 bucks in the bank - hope thay arn't to greedy or else it off to Jail for me
Warren Bolton
26 Febriary 2021